Transition Finance Weekly - 9/12/2025
California Sprints to Legislative Deadline; Georgia Embraces Solar; Yes, Big Carbon Polluters Are Making Heatwaves Worse
Exploring the policy, politics, and economics of the clean energy transition
Each week here in Transition Finance Weekly, researchers and analysts from Pleiades Strategy summarize the top stories and trends related to the policy, politics, and economics of the clean energy transition in the states.
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1. California Lawmakers Reach Climate and Energy Agreement — All Eyes on the Deadline
If passed by Saturday’s close of session, the proposed package of bills would reauthorize cap-and-trade and move the region one step closer to a regional grid.
Cap-and-Invest: California lawmakers reached a deal to reauthorize the state’s cap-and-trade program through 2045, continuing a cornerstone program for the state’s climate leadership and importantly aligning it more tightly with the state’s carbon reduction goal. (Want to read the details yourself? See the reauthorization text and the companion spending bill).
Western Grid: The deal includes support for the creation of an expanded western energy market, which can help moderate electricity rates, meet carbon reduction goals, and improve system reliability.
Wildfire Fund: Utilities, facing liabilities from costly wildfire damages from their equipment failures, rely upon the state’s wildfire liability fund. This week’s proposal would plus-up the fund with $18 billion in new funds, split between ratepayers and shareholders.
Also on our radar: The package includes a bill to boost oil production, a proposal to begin building publicly financed transmission lines, and an effort to direct funding that lowers household electricity bills.
California Sen. Josh Becker and Jigar Shah on the electricity reforms for the Mercury News: “As the federal government turns its back on the clean energy transition, gutting decades of progress with the passage of the Trump ugly budget bill, California now stands alone at a critical crossroads. … The question is whether we will rise to meet this moment and set an example for the rest of the nation or let it pass us by.”
2. Immigration Raid on Georgia EV Facility Seriously Damages Clean Energy Manufacturing Partnerships
Federal detentions of Korean workers at Hyundai-LG plant have delayed construction of the LG facility — and destroyed trust between the US and South Korea, a major economic partner.
In a pre-dawn raid, federal agents descended on a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Georgia last week, detaining nearly 300 South Korean workers alongside more than 150 others for alleged immigration offenses. An attorney for multiple detained individuals said that their activities were allowed under their visas. At least 22 Korean facilities across the U.S. have paused construction or operations in protest.
The aggressive move by the Trump administration threatens to derail America’s relationship with South Korea, one of its closest strategic and economic allies. Korean authorities are furious, chartering flights to bring home their detained citizens and publicly questioning whether they should pull back on U.S. industrial investment, much of which is powering clean energy and EV technologies.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung: “As things stand now, our businesses will hesitate to make direct investments in the United States.”
3. Colorado Strengthens Statewide Building Codes
New energy codes take effect next year — a step forward, but with some compromises.
Colorado has finalized its updated statewide building codes, setting new energy efficiency baselines and incentivizing electrification in homes and commercial buildings. Starting in 2026, all local code updates will need to match or exceed a new state model emphasizing clean energy and electrification. That means more electric heat pumps, fewer gas hookups, and smarter design — especially for large homes, which will face more stringent requirements.
Still, there’s no outright ban on gas, and the state’s strategy relies on performance-based scoring and incentives. It’s a pragmatic, less polarizing approach, but one that still leaves the door open for fossil fuel use in new construction.
As Will Toor, head of the Colorado Energy Office notes: “The easiest and most cost effective way to do that is to build buildings right from the start, as opposed to having to come in later and do remodels.” We agree — and the new codes will help — but only up to a point.
4. Q3 Solar Report In: Solar & Storage Make up 82% of New U.S. Capacity in First Half of 2025
Donald Trump may be anti-renewables, but even red states know they’re good business.
New data from the Solar Energy Industries Association shows the U.S. solar deployment still has the largest share of new capacity this year, despite market friction imposed by Trump’s OBBBA and administration policies. The Solar Market Insight report forecasts 246 GW of new solar by 2030, about 4% lower than previously projected but still enough to nearly double current capacity.
Ironically, solar’s strongest gains are happening in states that voted for Trump: 77% of new solar capacity this year is being added in red states like Texas and Florida, whose big load growth and low-cost sunshine make solar the economically sound choice.
Case in point: the Georgia Public Service Commission just signed off on five projects amounting to more than 1 GW of new solar as part of the state’s CARES 2023 RFP, and Georgia Power is already soliciting bids for up to an additional 2 GW of capacity. That’s because utility-scale solar is objectively cheaper, more resilient, faster to deploy, immune to volatile fuel prices, and not subject to stranded-asset risk.
“Solar and storage are the backbone of America’s energy future, delivering the majority of new power to the grid at the lowest cost to families and businesses,” said SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper. She added that the administration is “deliberately stifling investment, which is raising energy costs for families and businesses, and jeopardizing the reliability of our electric grid.”
5. Ørsted Fights Back as Trump Tries to Kill Wind
With the $6.2 billion Revolution Wind project halted at 80% completion, Ørsted is suing.
The Trump administration’s campaign against offshore wind has hit headwinds of its own. After the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management stopped work on the nearly completed Revolution Wind farm off Rhode Island based on purported “national security concerns,” Ørsted, the world’s largest offshore wind developer, filed a lawsuit, calling the halt “unlawful” and “issued in bad faith.”
Revolution Wind was supposed to power 350,000 homes by next spring. Instead, the project is hemorrhaging cash, with $5 billion spent and $1 billion in penalties looming.
“Even under the most generous interpretation of what is happening here, if there were some issue that arose that suggested a threat, there would be a dialogue between the regulator and the proponent,” said Elizabeth Klein, who led the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management during the Biden administration. “There’s no actual justification to stop the project.”
SPOTLIGHT: Yes, Big Carbon Producers Are Making Heatwaves Worse
New research from Nature shows that climate change significantly increased the likelihood and intensity of 213 heatwaves between 2000 and 2023 — advancing the case for holding the world’s largest polluters accountable for their impact.
Each of the 180 major carbon producers substantially contributed to these events. Heatwaves from 2000-2009 were 20 times more likely, and from 2010-2019, 200 times more likely, due to global warming since 1850–1900. A quarter of these events would have been virtually impossible without climate change.
Carbon majors are responsible for half the increase in heatwave intensity, with their individual contributions enabling between 16 and 53 heatwaves that would have been impossible before industrialization.
