Ryan Kennedy
Ryan Kennedy connects the expansion of solar and storage with the hard numbers on grid performance, project economics, and reliability, making his environment coverage unusually grounded in technical detail and market data. He is a senior editor at pv magazine USA, where he writes on solar power, energy storage, and the changing electric grid. He brings prior experience from residential solar installation and inverter manufacturing, which shows up in the way his reporting links technology choices to operational outcomes and financial results.
Solar capacity and utility-scale buildout
Kennedy regularly covers national solar deployment using federal and industry data, treating capacity additions as the starting point for explaining how the grid is changing. In his reporting on an 86 GW capacity surge in 2026, he highlights that solar and battery assets account for nearly four-fifths of planned new utility-scale power additions, breaking down contributions by state and resource. In a separate article on U.S. solar capacity nearing 300 GW, he translates cumulative capacity into household equivalents and installed system counts, giving readers a sense of scale in plain terms. Across this work he returns to categories such as applications and installations, commercial and industrial, and markets and policy, using them to frame both utility-scale buildout and behind-the-meter growth.
Climate variability and project performance
His piece on El Niño and solar irradiance shows a distinct interest in how climate phenomena translate into project performance and financing risk.
In that article, he explains how the 2026 “Godzilla” El Niño is expected to alter solar irradiance patterns and cloud coverage, and why those changes are large enough to move the economics of solar facilities worldwide. He describes regional irradiance gains and losses across India, eastern Australia, Africa, Central America, South America, and East Asia, treating them as forecast inputs for asset performance rather than abstract climate statistics. Kennedy also profiles tools from companies such as Solargis that use satellite data and refined radiation models to support project planning, routine performance monitoring, and electricity sales, underscoring the link between meteorology, modeling, and bankability.
This work distinguishes him from general environment reporters by tying climate variability to concrete decisions on financing, operations, and risk management for solar assets.
Grid resilience, microgrids and emerging demand
Kennedy devotes significant coverage to grid resilience, microgrids, and the rising power needs of data centers and AI infrastructure. In his article on a $60 billion global microgrid market through 2030, he focuses on how reliability concerns in the Americas drive microgrid deployment and investment, placing solar-plus-storage at the center of resilience strategies.
His reporting on Branch Energy’s $33 million raise for “grid-in-a-box” batteries looks closely at how modular battery systems are used to bypass years-long interconnection queues for data centers, connecting technology design to market bottlenecks and reliability goals.
Both pieces sit in technology and products, data center, commercial and industrial, and markets and policy verticals, showing his habit of following innovations from engineering concept to business application. He also extends this coverage into live programming as a moderator for pv magazine USA Week, which focuses on domestic manufacturing, distributed energy, and the role of solar-plus-storage in serving AI-driven power demand.
Project tracking and technology roundups
Alongside deep dives, Kennedy frequently produces project roundups that track individual utility-scale developments and local deployments. In his utility-scale project roundup covering Utah solar, Texas tech power, California microgrids and storage, and Massachusetts community solar, he compiles multiple projects into a single format that notes location, scale, and technology while situating each within broader grid and market trends.
These roundups reflect his role as a beat reporter who monitors deals, construction milestones, and commissioning activity, but they retain an emphasis on how each project contributes to capacity, reliability, or innovation rather than treating them as isolated announcements. More generally, his work in applications and installations and technology and products categories shows a consistent approach: he connects hardware and project structures to system-level questions such as grid adequacy, resilience, and clean energy integration.
Across these strands, Kennedy’s coverage is distinguished by its combination of technical solar and storage knowledge, data-driven analysis of capacity and irradiance, and attention to reliability and new power demand from sectors such as data centers. His environment beat is defined less by broad climate commentary and more by the operational realities of decarbonizing the grid, making him a reporter whose stories center on how specific technologies, projects, and markets move the energy transition forward.
4 more environment journalists.
Alan Halaly
Alan Halaly is a water reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal who treats the Colorado River as a working system, not a backdrop, making its governance, infrastructure and risks central to his beat. He covers how policy decisions and infrastructure projects shape the region’s water future, linking high-level choices on the Colorado River, dams, mining and data centers to everyday consequences under mounting heat and growth pressures. He reports deeply on new laws, lawsuits and regulatory shifts, focusing on on-the-ground impacts. His coverage spans Colorado River cuts, Hoover Dam operations, extreme weather, heat and parks, septic system rules, workplace and public health risks, lithium and gold mines, protected landscapes, data centers, AI infrastructure and public funding. Previously he reported for metropolitan dailies, digital outlets and public media, including the Miami Herald, WUFT, The Daily Beast and Miami New Times, with work recognized by Hearst, ONA and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Alejandra Borunda
Alejandra Borunda reports on how climate change affects human health for NPR. Her work treats global warming as a direct cause of physical and mental health risks. She covers extreme heat, including undercounted deaths, lost sleep and local efforts to track heat-related fatalities. She also reports on wildfire smoke, hurricanes, disease spread such as dengue fever, trauma, stress and unequal health impacts. Her stories examine how communities protect themselves and recover, as well as practical solutions involving climate-resilient crops, agriculture and diet. Before NPR, she wrote about climate science and environmental issues for National Geographic, including glacier retreat, shade and heat inequity, and shrinking ice-fishing seasons. A former climate scientist, she combines field reporting with scientific data to connect atmospheric research to everyday risks, choices and people’s lived experiences.
Alex Lubben
Alex Lubben is an environment reporter at The Times-Picayune/The Advocate who connects climate risk to policy, industry and community change. He covers Gulf warming, flood protection, coastal restoration, wetlands litigation, industrial projects such as SpaceX’s possible expansion, invasive species and local ecosystems. His reporting tracks how law, politics and corporate decisions shape levees, drainage, marshes and long-term resilience. He also examines climate relocation, housing and labor, showing how hurricanes, floods and wildfires displace vulnerable communities and expose gaps in government systems. He works on a small environment team and brings an investigative background to document work, data analysis, legal and policy research, and field reporting. His work has appeared in VICE News, The Center for Public Integrity, The Nation, Jewish Currents and NBC News.
Alex Wigglesworth
Alex Wigglesworth reports on how climate, land use and public policy shape California communities. She covers the Inland Empire and Mojave Desert for the Los Angeles Times and is part of its environment team. Her beat includes wildfires, megadrought, extreme weather, desert development, conservation, wildlife, industrial hazards, aging infrastructure and regulatory enforcement. She has covered Western Joshua trees, desert tortoises, beaver-led restoration, toxic lead pipes, air-quality concerns after industrial fires and the effects of nuclear war on food systems. Earlier, she was a general assignment reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com. She combines breaking news with detailed reporting grounded in scientific studies, modeling and expert interviews. Her work connects fires, drought and other hazards to climate change, while examining how agencies, companies and land-use decisions affect people and ecosystems.