Bill McKibben: “We live on a planet where the cheapest way to make power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun.”

Solar and battery power are now the cheapest way to generate electricity, and the numbers are starting to show it in daily life, not just in theory. In Australia, so much midday solar floods the grid that some utilities offer free electricity during sunny afternoon hours. In California, clean energy regularly covers more than all of the state's demand during parts of the day, with batteries storing the extra solar power to use after sunset. That shift has helped California cut its natural gas use for electricity by 60% over two years.

This is happening even as federal support for clean energy, including parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, faces cuts. But the building boom hasn't slowed. Developers expect to add 86 gigawatts of new power capacity in 2026, the biggest single-year jump in two decades, with solar and battery storage making up nearly 80% of it. Natural gas, by comparison, accounts for a small fraction of new capacity. Notably, this isn't just a blue-state trend: more than two-thirds of the solar capacity installed in 2025 was built in states that voted for Trump, with Texas leading the country.

For homeowners, the takeaway is less about any single program and more about the bigger picture: solar and battery technology have gotten cheap enough that they're spreading regardless of which way political winds blow. That doesn't change what's available to you directly, but it does suggest the cost trends behind rooftop solar, home batteries, and electrification tools like heat pumps are moving in one direction.