Energy briefs December 2025

Rather than converting farmland to solar facilities, we could build solar arrays and continue growing crops and raising livestock beneath the gentle shade of the panels. This approach is called “agrivoltaics,” and it could be one way to ease competition between the agriculture and solar energy sectors.

The demands of modernizing the energy grid have clashed with the wishes of those living near or under that infrastructure in this Richland neighborhood.

Framatome will upgrade the “central nervous system” of Energy Northwest’s Columbia Generating Station as part of a deal announced Dec. 4.

BPA is implementing a rolling 20-year portfolio of projects to improve the reliability, efficiency and capacity of the Federal Columbia River Power System.

Standing before Ice Harbor Dam, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright reaffirmed the Trump administration’s commitment to “energy abundance” on Dec. 4, pledging continued support for the operation of Ice Harbor and other dams that power the Pacific Northwest.

A nuclear energy future comes with the challenge of how to store the radioactive spent fuel used to create it.

Richland’s city council unanimously approved an option agreement with Atlas Agro for land for a data center at a Dec. 2 meeting. 

The question is not whether data centers are good or bad. The real question is whether we will utilize them as tools to build a prosperous future – or push away these opportunities that other states will happily capture.

INEF bring a systems approach to assist energy stakeholders with research and analytics to better understand and manage the interrelationship between emerging energy technologies and their impacts on current energy systems, the economy, natural resources and public policy.