From Senate Holds to 7 GW NYPA Pipeline

Actionable insights on renewable policy shifts, battery supply-chain risks, hyperscale demand, and live RFP funding opportunities

Author

Swarnav Pujari
August 05, 2025

Hi there,

Policy risk was the week’s through line, but every threat carried a matching tailwind for builders who can move fast. A Senate hold on Treasury nominees throws the solar & wind tax credit calendar into limbo, yet that very uncertainty makes flexible project schedules and tax-equity workarounds more valuable. Meanwhile, New York locked in the nation’s first all-electric building code, guaranteeing a launchpad for heat-pump, induction, and DER startups.

At the grid scale, China-linked supply chains face a countdown clock: “foreign entity of concern” rules could strand $47 billion in U.S. battery storage beginning in 2026. Developers that pivot to domestic or non-lithium chemistries will win the purchase orders, and DOE’s new two-year NEPA clock slashes permitting risk for their FOAK plants.

Demand signals are flashing green. NYPA just doubled its renewables build to 7 GW, utilities from Kentucky to Michigan are scrambling to serve double-digit-GW data center loads, and Helion broke ground on fusion’s first customer-backed project for Microsoft. Add NASA/ISRO’s NISAR radar data—open, high-frequency, and ready for wildfire, infra-monitoring, and regen-ag apps—and founders have both the “why now” and the raw inputs to sprint.

Finally, this week’s RFP Bulletin spotlights California’s CALeVIP 2.0 fast charging funds and EPA’s brownfields job training grants—reminders that non-dilutive capital is still on the table for teams that can package hardware + execution speed.

🔦 Signals Worth Monitoring

🔨Headline: Senate Hold Threatens Solar & Wind Tax-Credit Timeline

What Happened: Senators Chuck Grassley (IA) and John Curtis (UT) are blocking three Treasury nominees to protest the Trump administration’s plan to tighten the “begun construction” rules that determine PTC/ITC eligibility, potentially accelerating the phase-out of renewable credits.

Why Founders Should Care: The standoff could delay or soften Treasury guidance, buying time for projects racing to safe harbor—but the uncertainty will keep tax equity partners cautious and increase the value of flexible project schedules.

🔨Headline: New York Finalizes First in Nation All-Electric Building Code

What Happened: The State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council approved a rule that bans fossil-fuel hookups in most new buildings under seven stories starting Dec 31, 2025, with larger structures following in 2029.

Why Founders Should Care: Heat-pump, induction cooking, and grid services startups now have a guaranteed launch market in NY, while developers must design around grid capacity constraints and limited exemptions.

🔨Headline: FEOC Sourcing Rules Put $47B of U.S. Battery Storage at Risk

What Happened: Greenline Insights projects that the One Big Beautiful Bill’s “foreign entity of concern” restrictions will strip tax credit eligibility from storage projects relying on Chinese-linked components beginning in 2026. Texas is expected to be the most impacted.

Why Founders Should Care: Storage developers need contingency supply chains or non-lithium chemistries; upstream founders can seize demand for domestically or ally-sourced cells, cathodes, and refined minerals.

🔨Headline: NY Power Authority Doubles Renewables Build to 7 GW

What Happened: NYPA’s draft strategic plan adds 3.8 GW of solar, wind, and storage, targeting 7 GW total capacity—enough to power ~7M homes—and is open for public comment through Sept 12.

Why Founders Should Care: A publicly backed pipeline of union-built projects offers demand certainty for EPCs, storage vendors, and workforce-training platforms amid federal policy volatility.

🔨Headline: NASA & ISRO Launch $1.5B NISAR Radar Satellite

What Happened: The dual-band synthetic aperture radar mission lifted off on July 30, delivering centimeter-level surface change data every 12 days.

Why Founders Should Care: High-frequency, open radar imagery enables new products in wildfire risk, infrastructure monitoring, and regenerative agriculture verification—start looking to build with this data now.

🔨Headline: Helion Breaks Ground on First Commercial Fusion Plant for Microsoft

What Happened: Fusion startup Helion started building its 50 MW “Orion” reactor in Malaga, WA, aiming to deliver electricity to Microsoft data centers by 2028, pending permits.

Why Founders Should Care: The model—customer backed finance plus phased tech risk—shows how deep tech energy startups can secure offtake before proving their product, a template for other frontier hardware plays.

🔨Headline: DOE Finalizes NEPA Overhaul to Cut Review Time to 2 Years

What Happened: An interim final rule replaces DOE’s prescriptive NEPA regs with guidance that caps EIS reviews at two years and broadens categorical exclusions for low-impact projects.

Why Founders Should Care: Faster federal permitting directly lowers development risk, especially for FOAK projects—from hydrogen to advanced nuclear—unlocking capital stacks that once stalled in regulatory limbo.

🔨Headline: Kentucky Deal Clears Path for 1.3 GW Gas Build, Shelves 400 MW Battery

What Happened: PPL’s Louisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilities reached a PSC settlement to add two 645 MW gas turbines aimed at future data-center load, delaying a planned 400 MW four-hour BESS.

Why Founders Should Care: Cheap, dispatchable gas is still winning procurement battles where reliability rules; storage founders must sharpen their economics, or target markets with stronger decarbonization mandates.

🔨Headline: AEP Sees 24 GW of New Load—18 GW from Data Centers—by 2030

What Happened: American Electric Power told investors it has signed commitments for 24 GW of new load, mostly data center demand in ERCOT and PJM, and will hike five-year cap-ex to roughly $70B to build generation and transmission.

Why Founders Should Care: Founders selling grid-side software, storage, or flexible generation now have a concrete demand signal: hyperscale AI loads are forcing regulated utilities to deploy capital at an unprecedented clip.

🔨Headline: DTE Negotiates 7 GW of Data-Center Load, Eyes Storage Builds by 2026

What Happened: Michigan-based DTE Energy is in “advanced discussions” with hyperscalers for 3 GW and early talks for another 4 GW of data-center demand, triggering plans to start battery-storage construction next year.

Why Founders Should Care: The Midwest is joining Texas and Virginia as a data center hotspot; storage developers and DER orchestration startups should expect fresh RFPs tied to rapid-build battery fleets.

📌 RFP Bulletin

See all of the RFP’s we’ve discovered in calendar format or table view.

CALeVIP 2.0 – Fast Charge California Project

EnergIIZE Commercial Vehicles – Drayage Set-Aside (rolling lane)

EnergIIZE Commercial Vehicles – Transit Set-Aside (rolling lane)

EPA FY-26 Brownfields Job Training Grants

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