For years, political leaders, climate advocates, and major institutions have promised that wind, solar, and batteries would power a smooth transition away from fossil fuels. These promises were tied to sweeping goals such as keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
Now the evidence is piling up that these plans are falling short. From blue state energy crises to global climate scorecards, the picture is sobering. Utilities are clinging to coal and natural gas, global targets are slipping out of reach, and federal policy support for renewables is being cut back. At the same time, a new idea called climate realism is challenging the old narrative and asking whether the current strategy was ever realistic.
Blue States Hit the Wall: Massachusetts, California, and New Jersey
The contrast between climate rhetoric and energy reality is stark in progressive states that tried to lead the renewable transition.
In New England, the grid operator recently warned that the region could face power shortages as early as this winter and stressed the need for dependable energy production. The message was blunt. Solar and wind will not deliver sufficient, constant, reliable power when people need it most.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey is at the center of this storm. As attorney general, she pushed hard against new fossil fuel infrastructure. She filed an amicus brief in 2016 that helped block natural gas pipelines financed by ratepayers, leaning on an “expert study” that claimed New England did not need new gas infrastructure and examined the effects of different energy choices on climate and costs. That study was funded by a three hundred thousand dollar grant from the Barr Foundation, backed by climate activist Amos Barr Hostetter Jr.
Healey later bragged about using that study to block two natural gas pipelines and said in 2022 that it was “absolute” necessity to oppose new gas build out. As governor, she created an Office of Energy Transformation staffed by the same experts to support her Energy Affordability, Independence and Innovation Act.
Now that the grid is under strain, this history looks very different. Videos of Healey taking credit for blocking pipelines resurfaced just as she tried to deny responsibility for the shortage risks. Some fellow Democrats in the Massachusetts House tried to soften the state’s strict 2030 climate mandate by turning it into an aspirational goal, but party leaders blocked the vote after what one outlet called an “avalanche of opposition from climate groups.”
Similar pressures are building elsewhere. In New Jersey, former Representative Mikie Sherrill won the governor’s race while promising to address high power costs, even though she had backed the energy transition agenda in Congress. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom is stepping back from some aggressive climate policies as he eyes a 2028 presidential run from a state with the highest electricity rates in the country. He recently signed a law returning billions of dollars to stressed ratepayers and slowed some of the climate regulations he once accelerated, while arguing that subsidy reductions in President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” are partly to blame, even though those cuts have not fully taken effect.
These stories show a repeated pattern. Leaders who embraced aggressive renewable policies now face backlash as prices rise and reliability suffers, and they often shift blame toward the Trump administration.
The Global Scorecard: All Systems “Flashing Red”
The problems are not limited to a few U.S. states. Globally, a landmark assessment called the State of Climate Action 2025 shows that the world is failing across the board.
The report tracks 45 key indicators related to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius under the Paris Agreement. None of them are on track for 2030. The breakdown is striking:
- 6 indicators are classified as “off track.”
- 29 are “well off track.”
- 5 are heading in the wrong direction.
- 5 cannot be evaluated because of missing data.
Clea Schumer, a research associate at the World Resources Institute and co lead author of the report, warns that “all systems are flashing red.” She explains that “a decade of delay has dangerously narrowed the path to 1.5°C” and that steady progress is no longer enough. Each year of delay widens the gap and makes the climb steeper.
Even areas once considered climate success stories are losing momentum. Electric vehicles made up 22 percent of global car sales in 2024, up from 4.4 percent in 2020, but the report now labels EV adoption as “off track” because growth has slowed in major markets such as Europe and the United States. Transport remains the only sector that produces more emissions than it did in 1990.
The numbers also show how far current efforts fall short of what is needed:
- Coal use must decline more than ten times faster than current rates, which is equivalent to retiring nearly 360 coal fired power plants every year while blocking all new projects.
- Deforestation must fall nine times faster. Today the world is losing forest at a rate comparable to 22 football pitches every minute.
- Rapid transit infrastructure needs to grow fivefold.
- Climate finance must rise by almost 920 billion euros every year, roughly two thirds of current fossil fuel subsidies.
Private climate finance reached about 1.2 trillion euros in 2023, up from around 750 billion in 2022, yet public finance for fossil fuels has averaged about 70 billion euros per year since 2014 and totaled more than 1.4 trillion euros in 2023.
Sophie Boehm, a senior research associate at WRI and co lead author, says “we are not just falling behind, we are effectively flunking the most critical subjects.” She notes that the world has “barely moved the needle on phasing out coal or halting deforestation, while public finance still props up fossil fuels.”
Kelly Levin of the Bezos Earth Fund points out that “clean energy investment is now outpacing fossil fuels and new technologies are taking off,” but she adds that “the challenge is to scale these successes and reverse the setbacks.”
Bill Hare of Climate Analytics drives home the urgency. “Keeping warming to 1.5°C now hinges on one thing: speed,” he says. “The science is unequivocal: the world is not moving fast enough.”
Ani Dasgupta, president of WRI, warns that ten years after the Paris Agreement, the world stands at a crossroads. Societies can either lock in systems that escalate climate catastrophes or accelerate a shift toward a more sustainable future. Right now, the data show the world edging toward the first path. <h4>Utilities and the Great Backslide: Coal, Gas, and Data Centers</h4>
The energy sector is where many climate plans succeed or fail, and a detailed look at utility companies in the United States shows serious backsliding.
In 2024, the planet warmed to about 1.55 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, already beyond the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degree threshold that many scientists see as dangerous. That same year, major U.S. utility companies largely failed to ramp down fossil fuel use.
The Sierra Club report The Dirty Truth About Utility Climate Pledges analyzed the long term plans of 75 utilities. It gave the industry an average score of 15 out of 100, the lowest in the report’s five year history. The scoring looked at whether utilities will:
- Retire all coal plants by 2030.
- Stop building new gas plants.
- Invest in enough clean energy to replace fossil fuels by 2035.
On all three measures, utilities fell short. Collectively, the 75 companies plan to retire only 29 percent of coal generation by 2030. Meanwhile, 61 of them intend to build a combined 118 gigawatts of new gas capacity by 2035.
Out of 65 utilities that have climate pledges, only three earned an A rating. Many talk about clean energy while planning future coal and gas infrastructure. The report calls this a mix of backsliding and greenwashing.
So why are utilities doing this when wind and solar are often cheaper? Emma Pabst from the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign offers a blunt explanation. “A lot of utilities are stuck in old, outdated, and dirty habits,” she says, even though “the data shows across the board that clean is more affordable.” She argues that many companies use “load growth” as an excuse to go backward instead of treating rising demand as a chance to build more clean energy.
The pressure from data centers is a major part of this story. This edition of The Dirty Truth is the first to factor in new clean energy plans to handle rising electricity demand, because data centers have become such a large load. Many utilities choose to meet that demand with gas.
Northern Indiana Public Service Company is a prime example. NIPSCO once earned an A rating in every earlier report, but its score fell 23 points in a single year to 57 out of 100. The reason is that NIPSCO expects much higher load growth than before, yet its renewable plans would cover only 31 percent of its existing fossil generation and projected demand. The company plans to close its remaining coal plants by 2030, but it also plans 400 megawatts of new fossil fuel construction at the Schahfer site by 2035 and over 3,500 megawatts of new gas infrastructure to power potential hyperscale data centers.
Evergy, which serves 1.7 million people in Kansas and Missouri, scored just 9 out of 100. It plans to retire only one third of its coal generation by 2030 while adding more than 5,500 megawatts of new gas capacity by 2035. The emissions from that gas, if built, would equal the annual pollution of 2.5 million cars. Evergy once talked about an 85 percent emissions cut by 2030 but has since removed that pledge and proposed fewer clean energy projects than in the previous year.
All of this comes as the federal government has eliminated 22 billion dollars of funding for clean energy projects in a single year. Senior analyst Noah Ver Beek says that “we saw really great climate progress during the previous administration” with the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, along with tougher pollution rules. He now sees those policies “get rolled back piece by piece” and warns that there are also “crackdowns on the amount of clean energy that can get built on public lands” through permitting rules.
The costs will fall on regular people. A separate study, Assessing Impacts of the 2025 Reconciliation Bill on US Energy Costs, Jobs, Health, and Emissions, finds that staying with gas and coal will drive up electricity bills by about 120 dollars per year for the average household by 2030 and 230 dollars by 2035.
Yet Ver Beek insists that the technology is already available. “We do not need to wait for some new technology,” he says. “Wind, solar, and storage combined can get us to 80 percent clean energy or beyond.” <h4>The Trump Administration, Policy Whiplash, and Climate Fatigue</h4>
The current political environment adds another layer of difficulty. U.S. climate and energy policy swings sharply whenever power changes hands, and the Trump administration has taken an openly skeptical stance toward renewable energy subsidies and regulations.
In the past, Washington poured massive sums into clean energy. The Inflation Reduction Act alone is described as a 1.2 trillion dollar subsidy package meant to cut future U.S. emissions and build domestic clean technology industries. Yet this approach has stirred global trade fights more than it has inspired other countries to cut emissions. Many foreign governments complained about the law’s impact on trade instead of praising it as climate leadership.
Under the Trump administration, climate and clean energy spending are being clawed back. Clean energy funding has been cut by 22 billion dollars in one year. Federal rules that once supported renewables or limited pollution are being weakened. At the same time, fossil fuel projects are treated more favorably.
This creates policy whiplash. Every few years, the United States joins or exits the Paris Agreement and shifts from lavish spending on clean energy to reversing or shrinking those programs. Varun Sivaram, director of the Climate Realism Initiative, notes that “only administrations and lawmakers on one side of the aisle have prioritized climate” and that their policies are “promptly reversed when political power switches hands.” He argues that this lack of political staying power is “an indictment of the policy approach presented to U.S. voters, not a valid excuse” for persistent failure.
In response, many Democratic officials have tried to blame Trump policies for high energy costs and failing climate progress. But critics point out that many of the bad bets on renewables, such as blocking gas pipelines in New England or depending too heavily on intermittent power, were made before Trump’s changes and are now being exposed by rising demand and grid stress.
What Is Climate Realism?
As these failures become clearer, Sivaram and others are promoting a new doctrine called climate realism. It calls itself both realist and realistic.
On one level, climate realism is realist because it assumes that every country will act based on its own interests. It argues that the United States should do the same and stop pretending it speaks for the whole world. On another level, it is realistic because it rejects several widely held assumptions about climate policy.
Climate realism challenges four major fallacies.
First, it says that the world’s climate targets are not achievable. The Paris goal of limiting warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and staying near 1.5 degrees is almost certain to be breached because global emissions continue to rise. The idea of net zero emissions by 2050 is called “utterly implausible.” According to Sivaram, the world is likely on track to warm by 3 degrees Celsius or more this century.
Second, it argues that reducing U.S. domestic emissions will not make much difference to global climate outcomes. Between 2025 and 2100, the United States is expected to account for around 5 percent of future cumulative emissions, while China and other emerging economies such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa will make up more than 85 percent. The doctrine flatly states that “U.S. domestic emissions will be largely irrelevant to global climate change.”
Third, climate realism warns that climate change is not a modest or manageable risk. Sivaram points out that central economic estimates, such as the Congressional Budget Office’s projection of a 6 percent loss in U.S. GDP by 2100, may be misleading. He argues that tail risks such as seven foot sea level rise, entire cities wiped off the map, and far more intense storms are “too plausible to be ignored” and could threaten the survival of American society as we know it.
Fourth, the doctrine rejects the belief that the clean energy transition is automatically a win win for U.S. interests and the climate. The United States is currently the world’s largest oil and gas producer and one of its largest exporters, which brings security, prosperity, and geopolitical leverage. At the same time, China has built a dominant position in solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and electric vehicles. If the world transitions to clean energy under present conditions, climate realism warns that U.S. power could decline while China’s influence grows.
To respond, climate realism proposes three pillars.
One pillar is to prepare for a world that overshoots climate targets, planning for at least 3 degrees of warming. This means building resilience at home, anticipating mass internal and external migration, investing heavily in disaster response, and fixing U.S. public finances so that the country can afford these efforts.
A second pillar is to invest in globally competitive clean technology industries where the United States has an edge, such as advanced nuclear, next generation geothermal, and solid state batteries. Sivaram notes that most U.S. clean energy industrial policy has focused on local job creation rather than global competitiveness. For example, of the 30 billion dollars that the Biden administration spent on battery manufacturing grants and credits, more than 90 percent went to conventional lithium ion projects in a field that China already dominates. Climate realism argues that this is misguided and that the United States should develop future technologies that can be exported worldwide.
A third pillar is to lead global efforts to avoid truly catastrophic climate outcomes, even if the world misses its official targets. This may involve controversial steps such as researching and testing geoengineering approaches like injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight. Climate realism admits that this is “highly speculative and untested” but says it may be the most feasible option if the world fails to cut emissions in time.
The doctrine also calls for more forceful international tools such as tariffs, climate clubs that penalize high emitting countries, and a concept of climate deterrence that treats foreign emissions that damage the United States as a kind of hostile act. Sivaram argues that “every tool” in the diplomatic and economic arsenal and even military power should be considered to push major emitters to reduce emissions.
Why Renewable Plans Are Faltering
Taken together, the reports and articles you provided suggest several overlapping reasons why renewable energy plans are faltering.
- Technical limits and reliability problems. Wind and solar cannot yet provide constant, dependable power in many regions. When New England’s grid operator warns of power shortages and says that solar and wind will not deliver enough reliable power, it shows that the system still depends on firm sources such as gas.
- Soaring demand from data centers and digital infrastructure. Utilities are dealing with high load growth and often choose gas to meet it. NIPSCO’s plans for over 3,500 megawatts of new gas infrastructure for data centers are an example of how new digital loads can lock in fossil fuel use for decades.
- Weak and inconsistent policy signals. Climate policy swings from one administration to the next. The United States spends 1.2 trillion dollars on subsidies under one government, then cuts 22 billion dollars in clean funding and rolls back rules under another. This whiplash makes it hard for companies to plan large renewable investments.
- Financial inertia toward fossil fuels. Public finance still provides about 70 billion euros per year for fossil fuels and has poured over 1.4 trillion euros into them since 2014, even as private climate finance grows. Climate finance for clean solutions needs to rise by nearly 920 billion euros annually to hit targets, yet that is not happening.
- Global emissions patterns that overwhelm U.S. efforts. Even if U.S. utilities and states met their pledges, future climate outcomes depend mostly on emissions from China and other emerging economies that will account for over 85 percent of future cumulative emissions. This makes domestic cuts politically harder to sustain.
- Overpromising and underdelivering. Utilities, states, and global institutions have set aggressive goals without building the infrastructure or political support needed to reach them. The Sierra Club’s finding that 75 major utilities average only 15 out of 100 on their climate plans, while many still expand coal and gas, is a clear sign of this gap between rhetoric and reality.
Voices across the political and scientific spectrum agree on one thing. The current path is not working.
Climate researchers emphasize speed and scale. Clea Schumer says there is “no time left for hesitation or half measures.” Bill Hare says the world is not moving fast enough and that only rapid, sustained cuts can keep 1.5 degrees within reach.
Policy analysts like Varun Sivaram argue that the problem is deeper than a lack of will. He believes the targets themselves are out of reach and that U.S. policymakers must abandon fantasy and focus on realistic strategies that protect American interests while still lowering global emissions through innovation and strategic pressure on other countries.
Grassroots advocates and analysts from groups like the Sierra Club point to utilities’ failure to follow through on their own pledges and warn that customers will pay the price in higher bills and dirtier air. Yet they also insist that existing technologies can already get the United States to 80 percent clean electricity.
Meanwhile, progressive governors in states like California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts are trying to balance voter anger over high electricity prices and reliability fears with pressure from climate activists not to give up or soften their mandates. <h4>Conclusion: Between Ambition and Reality</h4>
The idea that a rapid shift to wind, solar, and batteries would neatly replace fossil fuels and keep warming to 1.5 degrees was powerful and appealing. The evidence now shows that this vision is not being realized.
Global indicators are off track or moving in the wrong direction. Utilities are investing in more gas and keeping coal longer than promised. Public money still heavily supports fossil fuels. Political cycles erase climate policy gains every few years. And a growing number of experts believe the world is heading toward around 3 degrees of warming rather than the goals set in Paris.
Some see the answer in redoubling efforts to expand renewables and tighten regulations, even in the face of political and financial pushback. Others argue for climate realism, calling for a shift toward resilience, advanced clean technologies, and more hard headed strategies abroad.
Either way, the gap between climate ambition and energy reality can no longer be ignored. The debate now is not whether the current plan is faltering. It is how to design a new approach that can survive political change, meet rising energy demands, and confront the risks of a hotter, more unstable world.
