What does a journalist, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of two books do after three decades writing for respected publications like the Wall Street Journal and Texas Monthly?

If you’re Russell Gold, you leave your career as an energy reporter to join a company manufacturing solar technology and building an integrated domestic supply chain for solar and batteries.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when Woodward and Bernstein’s “All the President’s Men” was required reading for aspiring journalists, fellow ink-stained wretches of the Fourth Estate might have said Gold was leaving for the “dark side” of public relations. He says he simply is seeking a new direction in life.

“I was looking for a change of scenery. Like many people getting into their early 50s, I wondered what other challenges there might be,” Gold said.

He has found his challenge: helping build an American supply chain that creates jobs and an abundance of energy. “In this day and age, it’s a great challenge and one I eagerly signed up for,” he said.

In May, Gold joined T1 Energy as executive vice president of strategic communications. The company lauded him as a “respected leader and prominent voice” in the solar industry.

“The challenge of our time is to build a domestic, affordable and renewable energy system, and T1 is at the forefront of that effort,” Gold said at the time.

Previously known as Freyr Battery, the company rebranded itself as T1 Energy in February and relocated to Austin, Texas. The company last year acquired the U.S. assets of a Chinese company, Trina Solar, which included a 5-GW solar panel manufacturing facility near Dallas. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) mentioned T1’s Dallas factory while celebrating the state’s 12th Gold Shovel Award for achievement in job creation and capital investment.

Gold said the facility, G1 Dallas, employs 1,000 people. T1 plans to start construction on another facility in Rockdale, east of Austin. The $850 million G2 Austin factory is expected to be one of the largest solar manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and will create 1,800 new direct advanced manufacturing jobs, T1 says.

“It’s jobs, but it’s also advanced manufacturing,” Gold said, referring to G1 Dallas. “If you go to the factory, you’ll see a mix of people and robots and AI working together to drive down the cost of panels.”

According to English think tank Ember, the cost of solar power combined with batteries dropped 22% in 2024 alone, and 43% since 2019. That’s no surprise to Gold.

“The cost of solar is always coming down,” he said. “Right now, there’s no question that solar is among the most cost-competitive energy source available at scale.”

T1 CEO Daniel Barcelo says more than 80% of new electric capacity in the U.S. in 2024 came from solar and battery technology. The company has stayed ahead of the curve, weaning itself off Chinese products when it saw they would be cut off from U.S. tax credits.

Gold said T1’s “mantra really is our mission:” building domestic solar and battery supply chains to invigorate America with scalable, reliable and low-cost energy.

“We feel it’s really important for jobs and energy security that those solar panels be made from a supply chain in the U.S.,” Gold said. “We want to provide a lot of energy. We want it to be affordable, and we want to make sure that no one around the world can cut off our supply chain.”

Asked how a supply chain is built, Gold said there are four steps to making solar panels. Start with polysilicon, which T1 sources out of Michigan. The polysilicon is turned into wafers and wafers are turned into cells. Cells are made into solar panels. Gold said cells will be made at G2 and the company is “actively” investigating how to produce wafers in the U.S.

Glass, glue, weather-stripping, other petroleum products and aluminum all go into the final product: solar panels.

“So, we’re looking for and building suppliers into a supply chain that’s all domestic and not imported,” Gold said.

T1 may have completed that task. It said Aug. 15 it has reached an agreement with glass maker Corning to source wafers beginning in the second half of 2026. The deal expands on an existing supply contract for solar-grade polysilicon and establishes a domestic solar supply chain connecting polysilicon, wafers, cells and panels.

The wafers will be used at G2 Austin when it is up and running. The cells will be assembled in G1 Dallas, the companies said.

“We’re really a poster child that it’s difficult, but it can be done. We just need to put in the work,” Gold said. “It’s exciting to be part of a broader trend toward creating an emerging solar industry.”

Gold graduated from Columbia University in 1991 with a degree in history and soon landed a job as a suburban correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He transitioned into investigative journalism with a focus on energy, first for the San Antonio Express-News and then for the Wall Street Journal. Gold joined Texas Monthly in 2021, just in time to cover the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri after it almost brought the ERCOT grid to its knees.

His coverage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Pacific Gas and Electric’s Camp Fire has earned him numerous awards and honors, including the Gerald Loeb Award for business and financial journalism twice. Gold’s books include “The Boom,” a history of fracking, and “Superpower,” about Grid United CEO Michael Skelly’s quest to build an HVDC line to ship wind energy to urban centers. (See Book on Tx Developer Transmits Climate Hope.)

Now, he’s part of the story, helping explain the importance of solar energy in helping meet the growing demand from AI and data centers.

“For the next six or seven years, we’re going to need an abundance of energy, whether it’s coming from new gas or new nuclear or new geothermal or predominantly coming from two sources: solar and any existing gas projects,” Gold said. “But let’s not fool ourselves. If we want our economy to grow and remain affordable and we want to avoid 1970s energy prices, we will need solar over the next few years.”

The budget reconciliation bill that passed Congress in July sunsets the clean energy sector’s production and investment tax credits and poses a significant threat to wind and solar power development, industry observers said. The bill boosts thermal projects, but a backlog for gas turbines extends into next decade. (See Senate Passes Trump’s Big Bill that Slashes Clean Energy Tax Credits.)

According to pv magazine, nearly $8 billion in U.S clean energy investment and 16 large-scale factories were canceled during the first three months of 2025. Gold noted that the production manufacturing credit was left untouched, saying, “That’s our primary tax credit.”

“I think it remains to be seen what impact that will have on solar growth in the United States, for a number of factors,” he said. “First of all, the production tax credit isn’t going away immediately. Demand for energy is insatiable, and we need to keep growing … to have an abundance of energy. So, we feel very strongly that solar and storage are absolutely critical parts of our energy growth and will continue to be.”

The industry did get a small boost when the U.S. Treasury Department released new rules on new wind and solar construction qualifying for tax credits. While the rules removed a 5% safe harbor provision, they were not as stringent as originally feared. (See IRS Guidance on Wind and Solar Credits Not as Bad as Feared.)

Gold said that based on T1’s initial review of the Treasury rules, “We believe there will be a good pipeline of demand for our modules. We’ve already seen, and are continuing to seek, strong demand in ’25 and ’26.”

“This is an incredibly challenging opportunity, but also incredibly important one to build an American solar champion,” he said. “That’s what we’re really trying to do.”

Domestic solar, he added, “will create jobs and affordable energy.”