​This story was originally published by Canary Media. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

The U.S. Department of Energy is backing a major battery project to bolster Puerto Rico’s fragile electric grid – even as the Trump administration axes funding for key clean-energy initiatives across the U.S. territory.

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As an industrial powerhouse, it has more recently turned into an example of Chinese green transformation, boasting the world’s first smart and zero-carbon port that is 100% electricity driven and green-energy backed. Onsite industrial-scale wind turbines and solar panels ensure renewable-energy self-sufficiency in the 10th-busiest port in the world, handling more than 20 million shipping containers annually.

It’s perhaps no wonder, then, that China chose to host last year’s summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tianjin, on the banks of the Bohai Sea, in yet one more show of growing influence from Beijing. With twice the number of world leaders in attendance since the summit launch in 2001, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Indian head of state Narendra Modi, Xi Jinping called for an end to the “Cold War mentality” that was triggering “turbulence and transformation” and called for “equal and orderly multipolarization” of the world that could pave the way to a “more just and equitable global governance system.”

The group pledged increased cooperation in energy, infrastructure, green industry, AI and innovation. These are the economic pillars of the present and the future that is being built. And they are the architecture for a new kind of cold war, one over our ecological future, propelled by a growing geopolitical rivalry between the giants of the 21st century.

Great power rivalry

In an article last year in Foreign Policy magazine, the influential historian and futurist Nils Gilman argued that the advent of the “ecological cold war” is upon us, driven by a struggle “over the metabolic basis of modern industrial society.”

“Call it a Green Entente vs an Axis of Petrostates,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

In the wider transition to a low-carbon economy, China needs no introduction. Its influence in the green transition – through supply chain routes and cheap hardware – is plain to see. It has installed more solar and wind than the rest of the world combined, the United Nations has said. Its capacity to drive down the cost of clean technologies has been a boon for reining in the growth of carbon emissions, giving vast swaths of the planet the tools to shift to renewables.

It has also played at least some role in the U.S. decision to retreat from climate policies, with a Trump administration that has made a U-turn to a fossil fuel agenda and adopted protectionist measures in an “America first” attempt to decouple from Chinese economic might. At the same time, the United States has signalled a sharp interest in ridding itself of dependency on China for critical minerals, which are not just key to green tech but intrinsic to military hardware. This year, Trump launched “Project Vault,” which includes loans for domestic mining and a bid to stockpile reserves.

Europe has responded to growing national backlash to climate policies by cooling them down and doubling down on its own protectionist measures. In the midst of all this, emerging economies that could help accelerate the energy transition are running up against roadblocks.

A piece of the green pie

While some observers take issue with Cold War framing, others are mapping out the ripple effects of these geopolitical tensions when it comes to the race to slow down planetary warming. “We are in the midst of a green cold war,” agrees economist Jorge Arbache, a professor at the University of Brasília. “The implications are that China, which is already leading, will probably lead even more because China will keep investing in green production.”

For Arbache, the heart of the struggle has to do with the amount of money that is at stake. Suffice to say, it’s a lot. One 2025 estimate from the Boston Consulting Group pegs the opportunities embedded in four key sectors – critical minerals, green tech manufacturing, green industrial material and green services – as US$11 trillion by 2040. “We are talking about an extremely big business agenda, and of course there is a competition in terms of who will eat what size of the cake,” Arbache says.

Although many developed countries are well positioned to participate in that agenda, it is also true that they do not necessarily have the key elements, such as critical minerals, available clean energy, carbon markets, abundant water and biodiversity. “Geography is back,” Arbache says. That means that developing economies that do have those assets could find themselves better positioned than before. “It gives those economies a bargaining power that they did not have very recently,” he says.

Chaos vs. foresight

But the name of the game, lately at least, has been chaos, driven by its number-one agent, U.S. President Donald Trump. “If I could sum it up, it’s better to govern chaos, because order is too costly,” observes Sabino Vaca Narvaja, a political scientist and former Argentine ambassador to China. “A fragmented society is easier to manipulate.”

China, of course, is steeped in contradiction, pouring money into coal projects, and facing accusations of human rights violations. It also has a different logic to its movements, Vaca Narvaja notes, one that bets on the long term. And so far, it has paid off.

The Chinese incursion into the green market was not about business at the outset, Arbache notes; it was about domestic security. Beijing registered, decades ago, the vulnerability it could face when it came to power supply. A desire to become energy self-sufficient shifted it into green-tech development, which has positioned it as a leader in renewables development. It now has a stranglehold on a huge chunk of the critical-minerals market, controlling 50% of global production and 87% of processing and refining.

China’s formula also relies on the rest of the world, Vaca Narvaja notes. It needs the world to buy its products. And it is. “China’s cleantech products are going basically everywhere in the world,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, non-resident senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Climate Hub, in a conversation held last year on China’s climate path amid trade tensions.

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For all major cleantech products except batteries, “the Global South, broadly understood, has overtaken the old developed world as the larger destination,” Myllyvirta said. There are countries with impressive uptake in solar, such as Pakistan, South Africa and Middle Eastern countries, but it’s the broad-based nature of the boom that’s sending the biggest signal. “From one side, there is the cost competitiveness of Chinese supply, and from the other side, there is a massive diversity of drivers,” he said.

Electrification is everywhere. Cities are turning to electric buses. Drivers are turning to electric vehicles. Governments and individuals alike are turning to solar power in the Middle East and Africa. Clean-energy sectors continued to drive growth in China in 2025, doubling in value from 2022 to US$2.1 trillion – which is equal to the economies of Brazil or Canada, according to an analysis from the think tank Carbon Brief.

At the same time, a glut in solar panel production is leading to uncertainty. Beijing set its 2026 growth target between 4.5% and 5%, the lowest level in 35 years, noting a “grave and complex” landscape.

“I don’t think we will be talking about renewable energy the way we are if it wasn’t for what China has been able to accomplish in the last decade,” says Jai Asundi, executive director of the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy, in Bangalore, India. “Taking a technology that has been developed somewhere else, and driving the price down. A classic capitalistic efficiency market. That is, if you are more efficient in the way you use a resource, then the capital flows to you.”

Emerging economies demand protagonism

The flip side of that efficient flow of capital, of course, is that it can make it difficult for other economies to compete. Take a place like India, where attempts to jump-start domestic green-energy device production have stalled. “Energy prices are very high in India. So to produce something is already very costly. And some of these technologies are very energy intensive,” Asundi says.

India, which represents 17% of the world’s population, is a prescient case study for wide swaths of the world that are trying to shrink a yawning inequality gap by raising gross domestic product, without contributing to global warming. The developed world built its industrialized wealth at the expense of the environment. That is no longer an option.

“What we are struggling with is this notion of how we work as an ecosystem,” Asundi says. “How do we work as a global society as opposed to a country-driven society? Because after all, climate change is not a country phenomenon; it is a global phenomenon.”

Chen Yu, senior policy officer at the non-profit Global Witness, agrees. “U.S.–China competition may continue, and the global energy landscape seems to be becoming more regionalized and multipolar, but this does not necessarily mean inevitable confrontation,” she says. “The key question is whether competition preserves space for cooperation and allows for fairer rules and resource distribution, rather than creating exclusive blocs.”

Whatever the mix, what matters, she stresses, is that the process of reducing emissions is not delayed.

The rise of ‘powershoring’

Unfortunately, the current moves and countermoves of nations trying to bolster national economies, and respond to electorate demands, is proving detrimental. Arbache says there are alliances available now using today’s technology that could speed up decarbonization, but they are being squandered. The Brazilian economist, who is also the former vice president of the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, coined the term “powershoring” to describe the strategic relocation of energy-intensive industries to countries that have clean, abundant and secure energy. To produce one tonne of aluminum using coal-fired electricity results in 20 to 22 tonnes of carbon dioxide, Arbache says. But if you produce that same aluminum in Iceland, which runs on nearly 100% renewable power, the carbon output drops to 2 to 3.5 tonnes.

Countries like Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay also offer abundant green grids for manufacturing. But they are not attracting as many powershoring projects as anticipated from places like Europe, Arbache says. “Although they need new allies and friends to solve their problems, they are still very skeptical because of this very notion of protectionism,” he says. “In the end, they are harming their own economies and they are also harming our economies.”

Canada’s balancing act

Canada, with three-quarters of its exports going to the United States, is also navigating tricky terrain. The shifting sands of Trump tariffs has led the government to overhaul how it approaches trade and put it in hot pursuit of new partners – or increasing the strength of existing ones.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said as much in his headline-grabbing speech at Davos this year, where he warned middle powers that if “we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” The phrase carried added weight because it came on the heels of an announcement to expand trade with China, and, crucially, allow at first up to 24,500 Chinese EVs annually into the Canadian market. Carney has since signed agreements with India to export uranium for its fleet of nuclear reactors, critical minerals, and oil and gas. The government also announced a split from the United States over auto policy, revitalizing incentives for EV production and purchase, and the intention of customizing new tailpipe emissions rules, rather than defaulting to the U.S. ones.

The divergence from U.S. policy is significant, says Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute. “All we get from the Trump administration is this drumbeat that fossil fuels are the future. It’s very easy to let that overwhelm us as Canadians – to assume that that’s correct, and it’s not,” he says. “The actual economic opportunity is in decarbonization.”

While there are inherent challenges to decarbonization for an oil- and gas-producing country that other nations do not have, Smith says Canada is in a privileged position to move in on the booming battery market. “We’ve got all the elements of a very significant battery supply chain in Canada. And very few countries can say that,” he says. “In a grand contest between China and the United States, should we just be happy that China’s winning on the decarbonization front? No. We should also be getting our elbows up and trying to compete.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor of Corporate Knights.

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Husk’s expansion is an example of the solar boom taking off across Africa. The continent holds 60% of the world’s best solar resources; while it accounts for just 1% of global installed solar photovoltaic capacity, the tides are gradually turning.

Africa added 54% more solar capacity in 2025 than the previous year, according to the latest Africa Market Outlook for Solar PV released by the Global Solar Council. This is the highest annual deployment Africa has ever recorded, led by South Africa, which added 1.6 gigawatts of new solar capacity. Nigeria followed with 803 megawatts, and Egypt with 500 megawatts.

The immense potential that solar holds has “hit everybody” on the continent, says professor Chiso Ndukwe-Okafor, executive director of Consumer Advocacy and Empowerment Foundation, an advocacy organization that works on the energy problem in Nigeria.

Ndukwe-Okafor contends that African countries are looking for ways to increase the productivity of their economies and recognize affordable energy as essential to that goal. “To have a productive society, there [must] be an enabling environment,” she explains. “And an enabling environment means you have to have constant and affordable power.”

The Global Solar Council report found that solar installations on the continent are being driven by both large utility-scale projects, which feed electricity directly into national grids, and distributed solar systems, which include rooftop installations and mini-grids to meet the energy demands of households and businesses.

Distributed systems are rapidly increasing even in off-grid African communities. Last year, for example, Ghana and Switzerland jointly launched a $200-million National Clean Energy Programme to develop 137 megawatts of rooftop solar photovoltaic capacity across approximately 4,000 installations.

Solar power “reduces the cost [of energy] to the community while improving their ability to become more productive,” Ndukwe-Okafor says.

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Meanwhile, investments in solar power are increasing on the continent. Between 2020 and 2025, Africa invested US$34 billion in clean power technologies, out of which 52% was allocated to solar energy, according to the State of African Energy 2026 Outlook Report. These investments were also possible because of policy reforms and the support of governments, including in Nigeria, where its Nigeria Electrification Programme initiative deploys mini-grids, rooftop solar and other solar solutions to people without access to electricity. Since 2018, the private-sector-driven program has helped at least 5.9 million Nigerians access electricity services, in part through the commissioning of 180 mini-grids.

Despite the boom, Africa still lacks adequate financing and investment, which could limit the continent’s potential to generate at least 300 gigawatts by 2030, a goal set by the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative. Besides, the capital costs for solar projects in Africa are three to seven times higher than in developed countries.

This financing gap widened after U.S. President Donald Trump ended Power Africa in February 2025. The Power Africa program was launched during the Obama-led administration in 2013 and aimed at providing electricity to millions of households in Africa. Before it ended, the program “contributed to 14,300 megawatts of capacity reaching financial close”  and “facilitated over 41 million new or improved connections for homes and businesses.”

Nevertheless, Ndukwe-Okafor believes that “Africa is a huge [solar] market” with existing policies that can attract the right investment to the solar sector.

Saint Ekpali is a Nigeria-based journalist who covers the environment, health and energy in Africa.

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Cubans have been navigating chronic blackouts for years. A routine built around flickering light has created a sort of collective muscle memory for the country’s inhabitants. “They turn the electricity on at 7 a.m., and they turn it off at 1 p.m.,” says Ramon, a vegetable delivery worker who lives in Güira de Melena, 50 kilometres from Havana. “They turn it back on until 10 p.m… It’s a fixed cycle.”  

This power-supply free fall has also expedited the energy transition. In the midst of a crisis, the renewables lifeline appears, albeit incrementally.

The stranglehold on oil shipments has placed renewed emphasis on a plan to transition to renewable energy. At the start of 2025, just 4% of Cuba’s electricity came from renewables. By the end of this year, that is supposed to jump to 17%, according to Ramses Montes, director of national energy policy and strategy at the Cuban Ministry of Energy and Mines. China has been donating thousands of solar panels to Cuba, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. Brazil sent 300 solar panel kits in 2025, and a new activist-led campaign is raising funds to install the equipment in schools. 

In March, Cuba’s Communist Party announced via Granma, its official newspaper, that it would soon begin installing 5,000 panels donated by China, following another major blackout that plunged two-thirds of the country into darkness. Half of the panels will head to maternity homes, seniors’ centres, hospitals, banks, radio stations and other public infrastructure.  

There are about 30 solar fields in operation now on the island, with plans to add 92 more by 2028 with the help of China. But for the average Cuban, who earns around $16 a month if employed by the state, the options are slim. Many people rely on coal or firewood to cook and stay warm. Most Cubans can’t afford to install solar panels, which can cost thousands of dollars. Electric power generators that run on fuel are a more affordable option, but they are noisy and still cost-prohibitive. A 4,600-watt generator uses about 15 litres of gasoline every 12 hours, with each litre of gas costing as much as US$8 on the informal market.  

Christa Hernández is among the privileged few who were able to install solar panels last year. At that point, the scheduled blackouts were between two and six hours in Havana. But Hernández, who owns the hostel Kerida and the Cimarrón dance school, could see that the power situation was going to make or break her business. Gasoline generators were too loud. She looked into buying solar panels on Amazon, but her credit card kept getting blocked. Finally, she connected with a friend living in the United States who purchased the panels for her, and then she hired a company in Miami that packed them up and delivered them to her doorstep in Cuba. All the equipment, including batteries and shipping, cost US$12,000.  

Our workers come in from their homes already tired, because they weren’t able to sleep, because there is no electricity, there is no water, there is nothing.

— Christa Hernández, business owner in Havana

“We made the switch just in time, because soon after, travel agencies stopped working with hostels that did not have that safety net,” Hernández says. “We’re one of the few privileged people who can invest in this,” she adds. If you don’t have a business, or family who live outside the country, it’s impossible to make the investment.  

“The neighbourhood is very dark. When you look outside, you see how few people have light,” she says. “Life is not the same. You go out into a darkened Cuba, where the cost of everything goes up and there is suffering.”  

“Our workers come in from their homes already tired, because they weren’t able to sleep, because there is no electricity, there is no water, there is nothing.”  

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. Berta Reventós is a Buenos Aires-based Latin America correspondent who works for Spanish media and reported from Cuba.

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Lauren Phillips’s balcony just became a power plant. A very small, carbon-free one.

A few weeks ago, the attorney set up what may be the first plug-and-play solar panel in the Bronx. The 220-watt installation, which is secured to the balcony railing with zip ties, has been a boon for the renter and mother of two. “I have an enormous childcare bill every month. My electricity bills never go anything but up,” Phillips says. ​“Everywhere you turn, things are only getting more expensive.”

Plug-in solar non-profit Bright Saver, which provided the roughly US$400 panel to Phillips at no cost, estimates that it will produce about 15% to 20% of the electricity her family uses and save her about $100 per year. Every time Phillips gazes at the device, she says, she’s amazed that ​“this is just a thing that I plugged in, and I’m generating my own power.”

Phillips is one of the few intrepid Americans installing DIY solar without the permission of their utilities, taking advantage of a regulatory grey area. Only deep-red Utah has a law, passed in March 2025, that explicitly allows residents to plug in these devices. A few thousand households there have installed systems so far, Bright Saver says.

But other states, including New York, could soon follow Utah’s lead and unleash much broader adoption of solar panels that plug into a standard 120-volt wall outlet. As of Wednesday, Democratic and Republican lawmakers in 27 states and Washington, D.C., had announced their own legislation to make these systems permissible, according to Bright Saver.

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The blackout would become the longest in U.S. history. Prior to Maria’s battering, Puerto Rico’s solar industry did a modest business.

That quickly changed. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, solar panel purchases soared. They became so ubiquitous that when Hurricane Fiona landed in 2022, the national grid operator launched a pilot program connecting batteries to residential panels for backup power in the event of future blackouts and as an alternative to using gas peaker plants.

Today, solar panels are installed on the rooftops of some 175,000 households; of those, approximately 160,000 also have storage. The pilot program has since become a pillar of the island’s energy system and is the first operational virtual power plant (VPP) in Latin America and the Caribbean, helping to deliver electricity to three million residents.

Now Canada is getting in the VPP game. Utilities and regulators are initiating programs that reward energy-efficiency measures while testing projects that pull energy from unconventional sources such as electric school buses that are hooked up to the grid.

But there’s still plenty of room to grow. Canada boasts only a handful of fully functioning distributed power plants.

Some argue that this slow deployment is due, at least in part, to regulatory policies that fail to prioritize energy efficiency over additional, capital-intensive, supply. Expanding VPPs may also require a mind shift. Speaking with Corporate Knights, experts agree that it’s past time to move from pilots to programs at scale.

What is a virtual power plant?

A virtual power plant is a collection of devices – home batteries, electric water heaters and vehicles, solar panels – connected to each other and to the grid. Combined, these multiple small energy sources form a network that acts as a power plant, supplying electricity to the grid when demand surges. In addition to supply, efficiencies in energy use can also contribute to a VPP.

For example, smart thermostats alleviate stress on the grid during periods of high consumption by automatically adjusting the temperature up or down depending on whether demand is for heating or cooling.

“Using energy sources that are responsive to demand fluctuations isn’t new, but it was always done with big industrial partners,”says Brendan Haley, senior director of policy strategy at Efficiency Canada. “What is new is the electrification of end uses, especially on the residential and commercial side, combined with digital technologies that allow communications to happen in real time. This enables rapid demand response.”

Many regions around the world are catching on. Vermont-based Green MountainPower sources power from solar-charged batteries, EV chargers and remote-controllable water heaters while incentivizing the use of smart thermostats. The company’s clean-energy network provides 72 megawatts of extra capacity that can be deployed in emergencies. In Germany, more than 144,000 home batteries automatically dispatch daily to help stabilize and bolster the grid in real time. Sunrun, the largest rooftop solar and home battery company in the United States, has enrolled more than130,000 systems in its VPP program. The distributed power plant supplies 480,000 homes with electricity.

Cost savings and reduced emissions

Utilities and consumers alike can realize significant cost savings by drawing on power from distributed energy sources. B.C. Hydro in British Columbia estimates that by coupling its energy-efficiencies program (Peak Saver) with a new VPP project using residential batteries for energy storage and supply, the utility will save customers as much as $80 million annually by 2030. The savings in energy will amount to more than 2,000 gigawatt-hours – enough to power more than 200,000 homes. B.C. Hydro’s director of energy management and innovation, Brandon Young, says that demand-side management and optimizing energy usage is cost effective “because the benefit to us is greater than the cost of all aspects of the generation and distribution that would be required to deliver that additional energy.”

Power plants only supply power. VPPs do that but can also store electricity and use energy more efficiently.

—Brendan Haley, senior director of policy strategy, Efficiency Canada

By shifting demand away from periods of peak usage, when the grid relies most heavily on fossil fuels, and redirecting energy consumption to times when carbon-free resources are available, distributed power plants directly contribute to lowering emissions.Again, the return on investment is compelling: a U.S. Department of Energy study found that VPPs are 40% to 60% cheaper than alternatives when it comes to managing peak demand.

Policies can obstruct growth

“VPPs provide more benefits than a conventional power plant,” Haley points out. “Power plants only supply power. VPPs do that but can also store electricity and use energy more efficiently.”

Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) now runs a program called Save on Energy Peak Perks. Participants permit their utility to adjust their home thermostat up to 2°C during periods of peak electricity demand from June1 to the end of September. IESO reports that up to 90 megawatts are saved each time thermostats are activated – roughly equivalent to taking a mid-sized city off the grid.

Despite the benefits, regulatory regimes are a roadblock to expansion. In Canada, there is no requirement that customer-side sources be optimized.

“In states like Massachusetts, they’re required to invest in all energy efficiency that’s cost effective before paying for a supply-side measure or power plant,” Haley notes. “There’s no utility in Canada that has a similar rule, which, essentially, requires the demand-side option be considered first before a supply-side option.”

Indeed, capitalizing on small pools of existing power sources – before building out more infrastructure or firing up natural gas plants – may turn out to be key to helping the grid address its biggest challenges.

Victoria Foote is a writer and editorwho specializes in clean energy and climate.

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Then, an unexpected opportunity to reclaim the land presented itself. In 2020, the municipally owned company that runs Antigonish’s utility and those of two other Nova Scotia towns set out to develop three community solar projects for each of the three towns it manages. The residents of Antigonish hope to make their town one of Canada’s first net-zero communities, including with community solar. But to get the project off the ground, they needed space – and the idea of a solar farm offered the chance to give the former landfill new life. 

Since January, the Antigonish Community Solar Garden has been producing 1.65 megawatts of power for residents and businesses, providing roughly 4% of the town’s energy needs (another 40% comes from wind). It’s just one of dozens of projects across Canada that are using brownfield sites – land contaminated by past commercial or industry use, such as landfills, oil refineries and gas stations – to host solar farms. 

In a net-zero world, vast amounts of power will need to come from wind and sun. But real estate is a bottleneck: to phase out oil and gas, panels and turbines need somewhere to go. Ideally, this land needs to be located near existing roads, communities and grid infrastructure – exactly the kind of land that’s in demand for other uses. 

European non-profit the Renewables Grid Initiative estimates that to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, the EU will need to allocate roughly 100,000 square kilometres to renewable-energy generation and grid expansion – an area roughly the size of Iceland. A 2021 paper published in Nature Scientific Reports estimated that to provide 25% to 80% of the electricity mix in some parts of the globe, solar energy would need 0.5% to 5% of total land in those areas. And that has communities like Antigonish going to the old dump for spare land. 

Such projects hold the promise of repurposing lands that meet many of the requirements for renewable power generation, while not being suitable for any other purpose. But as the Antigonish experience shows, they can also be unexpectedly complex, with issues ranging from unstable footing to unhappy residents. “It’s like buying an old house that you’re going to renovate . . . You open the floor and you’ve found that, you’ve found this,” says Antigonish Mayor Sean Cameron. “That’s the kind of the thing we fell into with this one.”

These are the kind of complexities that have turned brownfields into an albatross around the neck of many communities, as governments struggle to deal with the toxic legacy of contaminated sites; in Canada alone, there are tens of thousands of brownfield sites, and the cost of cleaning them up can exceed the value of the land. But with land at an increasing premium and the deadline to shift off fossil fuels approaching, interest in repurposing those sites for renewable energy is growing. Has a brighter future for brownfields arrived?

A tailor-made solution

The concept of “brightfields” – as brownfields used to generate renewable power are known – originates in the United States. In 1999, the U.S. Department of Energy launched the Brightfields Initiative, aimed at helping communities turn former toxic sites into solar energy producers. By 2010, a seminal study in Michigan found that existing brownfield sites could provide 43% of the state’s residential electricity consumption. “They said, for sites that are either heavily contaminated or the market can’t address them, why don’t we put solar panels on them as an interim use or permanent use,” says Christopher de Sousa, professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University and head of a research lab looking at brownfield reclamation. 

De Sousa says these early initiatives established a blueprint, and not just through large-scale efforts; small projects, such as the 3.7-acre, 425-kilowatt solar garden built at the site of a former gas works in Brockton, Massachusetts, also helped set a new paradigm. Nearly every closed landfill in Massachusetts is now a brightfield, and there are more than 600 brightfield projects scattered across the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues to run a program called RE-Powering America’s Land, promoting the redevelopment of brownfields for renewable energy.  

Solar is one of the most approachable uses for brownfields; unlike wind turbines, panels don’t require digging deep into the ground, which could disturb hazardous material. Solar farms also don’t expose people to contaminants the way that residential developments or parks would, de Sousa says.

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But while Canada has a federal strategy for contaminated sites, the repurposing of brownfield sites for renewable energy has lagged behind other jurisdictions. A 2016 paper by de Sousa estimated that there were only about 30 brightfields in the country.

Meggen Janes, executive director of the Canadian Brownfields Network, says that’s changed in the last five years, as the conversation about converting brownfields to brightfield projects has accelerated, putting sites that can’t easily be developed for housing or parkland to use. 

This includes an initiative in Alberta, where a company called RenuWell Energy Solutions has conducted a pilot project to turn abandoned wells and oil and gas infrastructure on farmland in the southern half of the province into a 1.45-megawatt solar project across two sites. Because the approach uses existing roads and power lines, it can offer power from small-scale solar at close to the cost of very large sites. Meanwhile, it addresses an existing environmental liability by mitigating the expensive process of closing down old wells; much of the expense of remediating a well site is from removing access roads and revegetating the area, neither of which are required if it’s used for solar.

This significantly reduced the cleanup bill facing the Orphan Well Association (whose coffers are significantly short of the money needed for well cleanups): costs were 80% less than they would otherwise have been, says Keith Hirsche, founder and president of RenuWell. Hirsche says using brownfields for solar is not only cost-effective; it also reduces carbon emissions. “You’re basically [removing] both the energy that it would take to clean that stuff completely up, and then also the energy it would take to put new stuff down . . . across the board, I think it’s a helpful solution.”

RenuWell is now looking to scale up, including with provincial support to build a 20-site grid-scale pilot for solar plus storage, though the company is facing inertia caused by political divides and entrenched interests, including the legacy energy sector. Still, with abandoned oil and gas infrastructure covering at least 340,000 acres in the province, Hirsche says there’s significant room to grow. “This only can impact 10% of [sites] maybe, but . . . if you converted 10% of these abandoned gas sites, you meet almost the projected growth of power demand for the next 10 years in Alberta.”

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No smooth sailing

In Antigonish, the goal for brownfields is more modest.

Unlike most communities in the province, Antigonish owns its own electrical utility. This allows the community more autonomy in setting clean energy targets, and the town has the ambitious goal of producing 80% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. To help with this, the town’s plan was initially to build a 2.1-megawatt solar garden that would expand access to solar for the town’s residents, including those without the means for their own rooftop solar. 

But landfills are among the most challenging types of brownfield sites to develop, and that proved true in Antigonish’s case as well. Because the site was a former landfill, it didn’t provide stable footing, which meant less of the available area was suitable for panels than planned. The town then had to clear some forest to create more space, causing runoff and increasing tensions with some residents. Grid connection was also pricey. The dumpsite was outside of the town, so the municipality had to pay to run power lines to the site, which cost around half a million dollars. “There was a bunch of issues that kind of snowballed,” Mayor Cameron says.

In the end, the solar garden took two years and $2 million more than anticipated – but Cameron says he would still consider brightfield projects in the future, especially on a less complicated site. “If we get more funding, I would certainly explore another solar garden.”

Remediation and reparation

These kinds of issues can drive developers away from brownfield sites. But brightfield projects have an additional benefit working in their favour: righting wrongs done to marginalized communities.

In 2019, the Tŝilhqot’in Nation celebrated the opening of a 1.5-gigawatt solar farm at the site of a former sawmill. It is the first 100% Indigenous-owned solar farm in Canada, on the first such timber mill to be redeveloped as a solar farm.

Since then, other Indigenous communities have seized similar opportunities, including in the Northwest Territories, where an Indigenous-owned business has developed a one-megawatt solar farm on a former brownfield site in Inuvik, and in Nova Scotia, where two Mi’kmaq Nations have partnered with a local municipality to develop a seven-megawatt solar garden at the site of a capped landfill. 

Christopher de Sousa says that because of the legacy of environmental racism, where polluting activities were located near marginalized communities, many brownfield sites are now located on Indigenous land. In some parts of the country, Indigenous communities are also more reliant on diesel and other forms of fuel, making renewable energy on brownfields especially appealing. 

For these communities, de Sousa says, brightfields offer the possibility of remediating contaminated sites, switching to cleaner energy and creating jobs and revenue – projects that have the potential to be “win-win-win.”

Incentives incoming

Across the country, advocates say the primary barrier to accessing these wins is financial. “You know, why am I going to invest time and effort into developing a site that might take . . . a million dollars to clean up,” de Sousa says, “when right next door I have a clean one?” 

This is less an issue for large centres, where land is at enough of a premium that developing a brownfield is worth the cost and risk. Meggen Janes says that small communities, by contrast, often struggle to find the resources to deal with brownfield sites. “I’ve talked with many mayors across the country, and they’re trying to find programs . . . that would support their initiatives.” 

Still, local governments can also be leaders; in Calgary, where two solar farms recently opened on contaminated sites that had been used by a fertilizer company, the city has created a program to incentivize brownfield redevelopment for wind and solar with a reduction in municipal taxes. And in Nova Scotia, a new provincial program that aims to create 100 megawatts of community solar is prioritizing projects located on brownfields.

Ultimately, Janes says, the potential of brownfield sites is vast. In Europe and North America, there are an estimated 3.5 million brownfield sites, making a significant source of developable land. 

In this respect, crises can serve a useful function. The affordable-housing crisis has prompted some Canadian municipalities to focus on brownfield sites for affordable housing. After another summer of droughts, fires and floods, the climate crisis may serve as the motivator to turn polluted sites into the engines of a more sustainable future.  

Moira Donovan is an independent journalist based in Nova Scotia, specializing in the environment and climate change. 

The post A ray of light for brownfields appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Traditionally, Pakistani women have accumulated jewellery, particularly gold jewellery, as an investment – ornate accoutrements that double as savings accounts for families and may be passed on to future generations. Lately, as an electricity revolution takes hold, women are trading some of that jewellery for a different kind of bling, using the proceeds to finance rooftop solar panels.

“People are understanding it is a very good investment,” says entrepreneur Waqas Moosa, a member of the Pakistan Solar Association.

It’s one sign of the solar boom that is happening in the fifth-most populous country in the world. Across industry and class, solar has planted seeds and is flourishing on Pakistan’s rooftops. Turnkey homes now include solar panels as if they were fridges. Young people save up for photovoltaic kits before they buy cars. There are hundreds of solar importers and thousands of installers. Charitable organizations that run orphanages and schools now also provide loans for small solar solutions.

We’ve almost doubled our business every two to three years. It’s been very fast growth.

Waqas Moosa, CEO, Hadron Solar

The speed and scale of Pakistan’s solar incursion is, as many observers put it, the result of a perfect storm of factors, including a society already used to fending for itself on energy as a result of an unreliable power grid that was prone to brownouts; International Monetary Fund–driven austerity measures that, along with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, pushed up the price of conventional electricity; and a glut of cheap solar panels available from its industrious neighbour, China.

“Sometimes when the markets align and people decide that they want to go a certain route, things can happen,” says Muhammad Mustafa Amjad, program director at Renewables First, a Pakistan-based think tank.

A thriving new energy economy

Solar uptick is happening fast across significant parts of the Global South. Nations that face a similar set of circumstances, such as poor access to energy and suffocating electricity prices, are being enticed by the economics of increasingly affordable Chinese solar panels and free access to the sun.

A recent report by energy think tank Ember found evidence of a nascent solar boom in Africa. Imports from China rose 60% over 12 months, with 20 countries in Africa posting record panel imports, led by Nigeria, which imported 1,500 megawatts in the 12 months preceding June 2025. But that is dwarfed by the growth in Pakistan, which imported more solar panels than all of Africa during the same time period, despite having one-sixth of the population.

Over the span of four years, Pakistan bought US$4.1 billion worth of solar panels, according to Bloomberg. In 2024 alone, the nation doubled the gigawatts of panels it brought in. The statistics underscore a fundamental shift. The energy transition in this country is very much people-led, Amjad says. He co-founded Renewables First in 2021 as a way to help understand the energy transition from a Global South perspective. “A lot of policies are often dictated by the IMF and the World Bank, and they do not necessarily result in good things on the ground,” he says.

The availability of Chinese-made solar panels has been key to fast adoption. In 2024, the average price of a solar panel plummeted from 32 cents per watt to 17 cents, according to an analysis conducted by Renewables First. The solar-panel market turned into a lucrative money-making venture for traders, middle players and investors, which shifted economic activity from the struggling real estate sector to renewables, the think tank observed.

“We’ve almost doubled our business every two to three years; it’s been very fast growth,” Moosa says on a phone call from Lahore, where the company that he co-founded in 2014, Hadron Solar, has benefited from Pakistan’s solar surge. Some of the rapid growth has been spurred on by government incentives, such as tax breaks and more affordable financing loans for residential buyers.

The Pakistan Solar Association has between 400 and 500 members, Moosa says, which are mid- to large-sized companies that are typically in the import and distribution business. He estimates that there are tens of thousands of other people who are in the installation business.

Hadron mainly sells directly to users, whether they be residential, commercial or rural. More recently, it began selling component parts to smaller providers and installers, a sign of the pyramidal growth of solar, which started with those with the disposable income to install large units on their roofs and has now spread across a wider income strata. In villages or less affluent communities, you may find smaller kits on balconies.

A fundamental shift in the energy user – from a consumer to a “prosumer,” which is what the industry calls someone who buys higher-quality electronic products – has helped drive this explosive solar growth. A 2015 change to the national regulations allowed users to install small-scale renewable-energy systems such as solar and made it easier for people to generate their own energy without having to jump through bureaucratic hoops. As solar-panel prices plummeted around the world – by 42% in 2023 alone – the cost of grid electricity soared in Pakistan. Now, typical solar installations can break even in two to four years.

But it’s not just residential users who are turning to solar: the business and farming sectors are also making the shift. Agriculture accounts for one-quarter of Pakistan’s gross domestic product, and half of its labour force. It relies heavily on tube wells to irrigate predominantly dry land. Various initiatives from the federal and provincial governments aim to solarize swaths of the tube wells, spurred on by both a jump in diesel prices and spikes in electricity tariffs, making solar energy “not just an environmentally friendly option, but an economic necessity for many farmers,” researchers from Renewables First note.

“The Stone Age did not finish because we ran out of stone, the Iron Age did not finish because we ran out of iron, and the oil age is not going to finish because we ran out of oil or fossil fuels,” Moosa says. “It basically ends when the new technology is ready to take the throne. And today, renewables are in the right place.”

Lessons for the Global South

The sheer speed of change has meant that Pakistan has had to transition “on the go,” which is “a characteristic that is present in a lot of Global South countries,” Moosa notes.

Along the way, difficulties have cropped up. Chief among them is the tug-of-war between the centralized energy company and the decentralized push to democratize access to energy. The traditional dynamic of energy distribution in which there is one provider and multiple buyers has changed, as people gain the ability to generate their own. This is especially relevant in countries of the Global South that already grappled with energy insecurity, such as Nigeria, where large chunks of the country did not have access to reliable power.

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Rising energy rates have created a feedback loop in Pakistan: in recent years, thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest ballooning utility bills, leading some to turn to solar as an alternative, in turn destabilizing the already shaky finances of the central distributor. The impact is disproportionately felt by people who still cannot afford the upfront costs of solar panels, despite the various mechanisms available to lower the price.

Pakistan is also seeing the effects of the “duck curve,” the name given to the graph that shows the rise and fall of electricity supply and demand fuelled by solar energy. In the middle of the day, energy demand on the grid slumps because people turn to their own supply of solar, and then it soars in the afternoon and evening as that supply drops.

While the solar boom in Pakistan is happening both off- and on-grid – meaning that some users have been selling power back to the central system – the sheer number of people turning to solar and then needing to jump on the grid when the sun sets has presented a whole set of problems that strains the grid’s capacity.

“Obviously there is a problem,” Moosa says. “I think the battery is going to play a very big role, and where the battery falls – either ahead of the meter or behind the meter – is going to have a big impact on how the grid of the future is going to look.” Meaning, will the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) continue to incentivize consumers to sell their power to the central grid, and store it in community battery packs, or will it alienate them and push them to buy personal battery packs, or off-grid battery solutions?

Currently, NEPRA is revising its net metering system and has proposed reducing the rate at which it buys power back from consumers. “We anticipate that a lot of consumers will start choosing to go for batteries,” Moosa says, which could have profound implications for the relevance and sustainability of the central grid.

“I think that is where Pakistan is going to add value,” Moosa says, for the rest of the world, “because we’ve already reached the point where we have to make decisions.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights.

The post Pakistan’s solar boom is China-powered but people-led appeared first on Corporate Knights.

This story was originally published by Canary Media. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

A novel solar power project just went online in California’s Central Valley, with panels that span across canals in the vast agricultural region.

The post Novel project in California has solar panels stretching across water canals appeared first on Corporate Knights.

This story was originally published by Canary Media. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

Hundreds of business people, policy analysts and conservative advocates filled a downtown Cleveland conference hall last week for the National Conservative Energy Summit. One major theme: the need for both the federal and local governments to remove increasingly high hurdles to building renewable energy.

The post U.S. conservatives push to remove government barriers to renewables appeared first on Corporate Knights.