NetZero Insider Weekly Intelligence Report: Resources

Welcome to NetZero Insider’s latest Resources Intelligence Report.

We lead off with offshore wind power, which President Trump has long targeted with rhetoric and threats. In a sharp escalation, his administration ordered a halt to work on the $7 billion Empire Wind 1 project, more than a year after it was fully permitted by the federal government.

Shortly before that, in a bit of ironic timing, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office issued a long-awaited study of offshore wind energy development that concluded there are negative and positive potential impacts from construction and operation of marine wind turbines. The GAO study also flagged some gaps in federal oversight of the development process.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration issued a much-anticipated report of its own last week: The 2025 Annual Energy Outlook. The always inexact practice of projecting energy trends over the next 25 years was rendered that much more imprecise by the 2024 presidential elections, which prompted sweeping changes in energy policy starting in January 2025. The outlook is based on policies that existed in December 2024, and it includes such projections as a 43,400% increase in electricity generated annually by offshore wind turbines in U.S. waters over the next 25 years.

Also in the May-Never-Happen Department, FERC upheld a preliminary permit allowing study and early stage planning for a pumped storage hydro facility in southeast Pennsylvania. This is the fourth such permit issued for the same conceptual plan since the 1990s, and nothing came of the previous three — two of which were issued to an entity with a principal in common with the newest permit holder.

NetZero Insider’s John Cropley wrote those four reports. From our curated collection of other media reports, we highlight some of the reading options.

Trump’s coal policy moves continue to make news:

The New York Times has a story on the difficulty of reversing coal’s long decline as the fuel of choice.

Politico’s Energywire reports on the Trump administration allowing dozens of coal-fired plants to delay emissions reductions.

Canary Media explains why coal will not avert the looming grid reliability crisis.

In photovoltaics, a mixed global narrative:

Tariffs are the least of the U.S. solar market’s worries, according to pv magazine, which also reports that first-quarter 2025 global corporate solar funding was down 41% from the same period in 2024.

The Independent, meanwhile, looks at how Pakistan quietly became the world’s largest solar importer, a surge that speaks to economic rather than environmental benefits.

We see a couple of potentially contradictory reports on the expensive process of extracting oil from shale:

Energywire reports that the latest data show shale drillers have idled U.S. rigs at the fastest pace in nearly two years.

CNBC covers comments by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who said shale oil will survive and thrive despite plunging crude oil prices.

We end where we began — wind power:

Fast Company reports that despite Trump’s attacks on wind turbines, demand is still strong, particularly from corporate buyers that want clean power.

Triple Pundit points out that while Trump can make things very difficult for offshore wind, he has much less reach on land, where as much as 14 TW of wind energy is technically recoverable in the United States.

All this and much more is gathered in this week’s Intelligence Report.

Jump To

Carbon Capture
Coal
Community Solar
Demand Response
Hydropower
Lng
Microgrids

Minerals
Natural Gas
Natural Gas, Lng
Nuclear
Offshore Wind
Oil
Oil, Gas

Onshore Wind
Renewable Energy
Renewable Natural Gas
Rooftop Solar
Solar
Solar, Wind
Storage

Wind

Carbon Capture

Ohio

Ohio bills aim to sideline local critics of carbon capture projects

Some landowners could be forced to let companies inject CO2 beneath their properties, and the state would get exclusive say over project permitting. Canary Media