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A San Jose solar company announced plans Wednesday to cut 2,500 jobs, including about 200 in California, as part of an effort to restructure operations and reduce expenses.

California’s push for zero-emission vehicles is going agonizingly slowly – sort of like getting stuck behind those Prius drivers who refuse to step on the gas so they can stay in glide mode.

As the largest sector within the nation’s clean energy economy, energy efficiency accounts for about three out of every four American clean energy jobs. In total, these technologies support almost 1.9 million jobs across the country, and 889,050 of these workers spend the majority of their time supporting the energy efficiency portion of their business.2 Employers across the roughly 165,000 establishments that conduct energy efficiency work are optimistic about business growth, projecting a collective 13 percent employment growth rate over 2016—or an additional 245,000 jobs.

The average age of cars and light trucks hit 11.6 years old, according to IHS Markit. The firm, which collects vehicle-registration data, estimates 264 million light vehicles are in operation. Both figures are up modestly from 2015, and represent records.

Aecom has halted construction on Faraday Future’s Las Vegas electric car factory after the Chinese-backed firm reportedly missed several payments for the project.

First Solar Inc. intends to lay off more than one-quarter of its staff and to restructure operations to focus on newer solar modules, which will lead to at least $500 million in charges and push the company into the red this year.

What’s missing are consumers, however. Auto makers are suffering from a glut of U.S. sedan and coupe inventory amid strong demand for light-trucks. The coming addition of electric-vehicle capacity could worsen that oversupply if shoppers continue to prefer pickups and sport-utility vehicles to plug-in cars.

Faraday hasn’t paid $21 million due in September, with bills totaling an additional $25 million due for October and $12 million for November, according to Aecom, a multinational engineering firm. The Los Angeles company is the prime contractor for Faraday’s car factory under construction in North Las Vegas, which, if completed, is expected to turn out 150,000 cars annually.

“Tapping methane produced from decaying garbage in landfills to generate electricity was among California’s earliest experiments in renewable energy. But in order to comply with a new regional rule to cut another pollutant — the one that often leaves Southern California blanketed in a layer of smog — a Riverside County landfill has decided to shut down its generators and will simply flare the methane, sending tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

This was supposed to be solar’s moment. Residential panel installations in the U.S. grew 71 percent in 2015 as the falling cost of panels made the power they generate more competitive. In December, Congress unexpectedly extended a tax credit set to expire at the end of 2016. . . Yet instead of energizing the industry, the extension has hurt growth, as solar companies no longer rush to meet a deadline. After jumping more than 1,000 percent since 2010, panel installations are projected to grow by only 0.3 percent in 2017, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Germany already lays claim to the dubious distinction of having some of Europe’s highest electricity prices, but its households will be forking over even more next year as they shoulder the costs of the country’s renewables-at-any-price energy policy, better known as the energiewende.

Now, a half-dozen years into Gov. Jerry Brown’s futuristic vision of carbon-free transportation, California is encountering even more potholes along the electric highway — obstacles born from both practicalities and politics. Consumers, put off by high costs and concerned about limited range, just aren’t buying into the state’s ambitious aims. Hybrid electric and fully electric cars have been stuck at only 3 percent of new cars sold in the state. Undaunted, the state intends that by 2025, zero-emission cars will make up 15 percent of California’s new car fleet — a fivefold increase. . . California has lagged in expanding ownership much beyond wealthier coastal areas. Research shows that higher-income neighborhoods are buying these cars at 10 times the rate of lower-income areas — a gap that’s widening.

Wind-power producers are rushing to take advantage of a green energy tax credit extended by Congress—and, in a new twist, many are using it to renovate existing wind farms, not just build new ones. . . In rough numbers, a 100-megawatt project with modern turbines and strong winds might produce $10 million a year in tax credits, according to an analysis by Fitch, the credit rating firm. The current government credit is 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced, but it is adjusted for inflation and has jumped 53% since it began in 1992.

Electric carmaker Tesla Motors Inc. wants to build 4.6 million square feet of new space for its factory in Fremont — a move that would ramp up production to 500,000 cars per year and add more than 3,000 workers.

The Government of Ontario has announced it is to “immediately suspend” the second phase of its Large Renewable Procurement (LRP II) process and its Energy-from-Waste Standard Offer Program. . . “This decision will both maintain system reliability and save up to $3.8 billion in electricity system costs relative to the 2013 LTEP forecast. The typical residential electricity consumer would save an average of approximately $2.45 per month on their electricity bill, relative to previous forecasts.”