Energy costs are driving inflation and changing our energy choices.

From Marketplace, I'm Kimberly Adams. We get a new batch of data later this morning that will give

us some insight into how quickly prices for a variety of goods are rising.

Economists expect the May consumer price index will reveal prices have gone up for the third month in a row,

likely hitting 4.2 percent in the year-over-year measure.

One thing in particular analysts will be looking for in today's data, how much the rising

energy costs due to the war in the Middle East are rippling through the rest of the economy.

And speaking of energy, oil prices

spiked overnight after the U.S. launched military strikes on Iran in retaliation for the

downing of an American helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. As prices fluctuate, solar power

use in the U.S. is hitting new milestones. Marketplaces Nancy Marshall Ginsburg has more on that.

Solar is the leading source of the new power being added to the U.S. electricity grid, according to the

Solar Energy Industries Association, in a new report out today, the association says solar and energy

storage accounted for about 90 percent of new grid capacity in the first three months of this year.

An Associated Press analysis says that in May, for the first time, the U.S. got more of its power from solar than from coal, with 12.8% coming from solar and 12.2% from coal.

That's despite President Trump's efforts to boost coal,

the Solar Energy Industries Association says 74% of all solar capacity installed in the U.S. in the first

quarter of this year was in states won by President Trump in 2024. I'm Nancy Marshall

Gensler for Marketplace. We started our series on rural health care this week with a visit to a shuttered hospital in Thomasville, Alabama, a community of about 3,500 people an hour and a half north of Mobile.

We've been looking into how policy choices at the federal level can affect health care choices available at the community level.

But as we were talking to folks, there was one issue in particular that kept coming up.

It's our low reimbursement.

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