I have a new column this week on OnlySky. It’s about the rapid rollout of solar power as a rare bright spot in a world feeling the consequences of climate change.
Renewables are being deployed at a massive and accelerating scale, and they’re poised to become the planet’s dominant energy source in the very near future. But if they’re not going to compete with human beings for living space or farmland, we’re going to need lots of places to put them. This column reviews some of the newer and more creative ideas where they can be placed with relatively little impact – from big-box store rooftops, to parking lot canopies, to capped landfills and brownfields, to solar panels designed to cover canals or float on the surface of reservoirs.
Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is members-only, so consider signing up! Members of OnlySky also get special benefits, like a subscriber newsletter:
In the summer of 2026, Europe broiled in a record-shattering heatwave that brought triple-digit temperatures to a swath of countries from France and the United Kingdom to Germany and Poland. At least ten thousand people have died from the heat, and devastating wildfires raged across wine country in France and Spain. Parching drought across the continent has sent river levels plunging to record lows, revealing shipwrecks submerged for decades.
In hospitals, the heat is so intense that nurses are passing out and scanning machines are failing—especially since many European hospitals don’t have air conditioning, never having needed it before.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, wildfires raging in Canada shrouded major cities in a haze of smoke. Parts of Texas were slammed by the second 1,000-year storm in two years, causing massive floods. The American West is, yet again, having an awful fire season.
But as vast as the scale of the crisis is, we shouldn’t lose hope, because humanity is finally rising to the challenge. Renewables are being deployed at a breakneck pace, and still accelerating.