The data center buildout has hit a new inflection point. It has long been true that artificial intelligence is fueling climate change by driving up power demand; more recently, tech companies have started directly financing new natural gas plants in their quest for AI glory. Now … | Continue reading
I wrote this story from inside a cloud of smoke. Owing to some funky meteorology in the Seattle area this week — a pressure ridge paired with a thermal trough — the region’s usual westerly winds reversed, causing smoke from the fires burning in the eastern half of the state to po … | Continue reading
It has been five days since the Old Trail fire burned through northeast Spokane, one of three blazes to encroach on the periphery of Washington state’s second-largest city this week. Tens of thousands of residents remain under evacuation notices, with some still unsure of if thei … | Continue reading
This week’s conversation is with Colette Lamontagne, senior director for electric power at the sustainability finance advocacy group Ceres. Her team just released a shareholder engagement guide for the utility space around data center development. I’ve been wondering when the ESG … | Continue reading
1. Washtenaw County, Michigan — The Mitten State made itself the center of the data center backlash this week, as multiple AI skeptics won key Democratic congressional primaries. Yet the most significant election result wasn’t a primary vote, but rather a quiet referendum in a sm … | Continue reading
A national park site and Civil War conflict area in Virginia is now a battleground in the fight over data center development on federal real estate — and Congress is starting to get involved. On July 23, the Prince William Times reported that Trump’s National Park Service is “con … | Continue reading
Current conditions: The wildfires in Spokane, Washington, have burned nearly 11,000 acres and destroyed close to 900 structures in the past week • Tropical Depression Maymay is veering away from the Philippines after battering northern Luzon with 45-mile-per-hour winds • Temperat … | Continue reading
Almost exactly a month after President Donald Trump’s landmark tax law effectively eliminated a key incentive for solar developers to buy panels made in America, his administration is throwing a lifeline to manufacturers behind the nation’s fastest-growing and quickest-to-deploy … | Continue reading
This is an edition of Heatmap Daily, an evening review of the day’s news written by our executive editor. Sign up for it here.There goes another one. The German energy developer RWE has signed a $1.2 billion deal with the Trump administration to give up its claims to develop offs … | Continue reading
This is an edition of Heatmap Daily, an evening review of the day’s news written by our executive editor. Sign up for it here.There goes another one. The German energy developer RWE has signed a $1.2 billion deal with the Trump administration to give up its claims to develop offs … | Continue reading
July is typically the season of high electricity bills, and this year is no exception.Nationally, the average electricity bill spiked to $217, an all-time high, according to new data from Heatmap and MIT’s Electricity Price Hub. That’s up from $177 in June, and $215 last July. Me … | Continue reading
Ford’s electric moonshot, the mid-size pickup truck that would get it back into the EV race, finally has a name: Fathom.The Detroit giant announced the name of its long-anticipated, highly mysterious vehicle on Thursday, alongside its price and some of its specs. The Ford Fathom … | Continue reading
Current conditions: The heat dome in the American Southwest is worsening, with temperatures in Phoenix set to climb as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit • The wildfires in Greece have killed at least five people as thermometers in Athens near the triple digits • Sri Lanka’s sprawlin … | Continue reading
At this point, when you hear “venture capitalist,” you probably think of … software. Or artificial intelligence. Or cryptocurrency.The Engine Ventures, which spun out of MIT a few years ago, is different. It tries to fund what it calls “tough tech,” a somewhat nebulous category t … | Continue reading
This transcript has been automatically generated.Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.Robinson Meyer:Hello, it’s Thursday … | Continue reading
One of the Biden administration’s most interesting — and contentious — climate programs might get a second lease on life. Earlier this week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Trump administration could not end the $20 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program, … | Continue reading
Current conditions: South Korea’s heat wave has killed at least 16 people after the southeastern city of Yangsan recorded an all-time national temperature high of nearly 109 degrees Fahrenheit • Washington authorities arrested a man suspected of arson as the Pacific Northwest sta … | Continue reading
Here’s the good news on electric cars in America: Sales in the second quarter of 2026 rose by 14% compared to the first quarter, which itself was an improvement on the preceding quarter. And here’s the bad: Even those good-looking Q2 sales numbers this year represent a 20% decrea … | Continue reading
This is an edition of Heatmap Daily, an evening review of the day’s news written by our executive editor. Sign up for it here.The country's fastest-growing market for data centers is, for now, frozen. Governor Greg Abbott of Texas announced on Monday that the state’s grid authori … | Continue reading
Life is a constant process of dying — even for lakes. For Lake Kanasatka, a 350-acre body of water born when the glaciers raked their retreat into the bedrock of what is now New Hampshire, everything nearly came to an end in 2023.The first sign that something was wrong appeared i … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Dangerous degrees of wildfire smoke swept into the Pacific Northwest, leaving air quality in fire-struck Spokane, Washington, at very unhealthy levels through midweek • Yesterday’s thunderstorms across the Northeast grounded flights and delayed thousands of pa … | Continue reading
This is an edition of Heatmap Daily, an evening review of the day’s news written by our executive editor. Sign up for it here.Welcome to August — which, as the political commentator Josh Barro once observed, is the year’s “stupidest news month.” Because Congress goes on recess ar … | Continue reading
For the last few years, there’s been just one story dominating the economy, Silicon Valley, and much of the climate tech world too: artificial intelligence. It has consumed investor’s time and money, leaving relatively little for the rest of the startup ecosystem. But for compani … | Continue reading
Clearway says it is backing off its plans to build a data center and gas power plant on federal land, days after Heatmap revealed the energy developer’s proposal. Last week, I reported that Clearway asked the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management to swap a five year-ol … | Continue reading
Clearway says it is backing off its plans to build a data center and gas power plant on federal land, days after Heatmap revealed the energy developer’s proposal. Last week, I reported that Clearway asked the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management to swap a five year-ol … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Slow-moving storms are set to pour rain on the American Northeast, drenching New York City • Temperatures in Phoenix are to top 113 degrees Fahrenheit for the next two days before the heat dome starts to ease • Across China, 11 weather stations broke their Aug … | Continue reading
The Democratic Party’s climate and energy policy is at a difficult moment. Over the past year and a half, the Trump administration has attacked solar and wind energy, started an inflationary war, and repealed key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act. And about a year and a half f … | Continue reading
The Democratic Party’s climate and energy policy is at a difficult moment. Over the past year and a half, the Trump administration has attacked solar and wind energy, started an inflationary war, and repealed key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act. And about a year and a half f … | Continue reading
This is an edition of Heatmap Daily, an evening review of the day’s news written by our executive editor. Sign up for it here.We are now well into the quarterly earning season, and this week we got a bead on some of the energy and climate economy’s biggest stories. Here’s what st … | Continue reading
It’s 2022 all over again. A war has broken out involving (at least) one large oil-producing country, raising both prices and oil company profits.Chevron reported Friday a quarterly profit of $12.1 billion, its highest quarterly profit ever. ExxonMobil also announced a blowout qua … | Continue reading
The data center lobby is launching a big PR blitz on television and social media, racking up millions of views on evidently AI-generated content boasting economic impacts from new projects and hitting against criticism around energy and water use.In an interview with me Wednesday … | Continue reading
1. Richland Township, Louisiana - The Meta Hyperion project is suddenly now a central focus of activists and media coverage, just as it is seeking environmental permits for a key gas pipeline.A number of painful investigations about Hyperion published in the last week: a New York … | Continue reading
This week’s conversation is with Peter Gardett, CEO of the AI-powered energy market research firm Noreva. Before helming the price and deal research consultancy, Gardett built a strong repertoire as an energy expert spearheading analysis at S&P Global, IHS Markit, and Argus Media … | Continue reading
Current conditions: The unusual humidity thickening the Los Angeles air this week is the result of a warmer Pacific Ocean, a sign of climate change • Temperatures are topping triple digits Fahrenheit in the Spanish capital of Madrid • Severe storms are pummeling the central Unite … | Continue reading
America’s data center backlash is gaining steam.Anti-data-center protesters briefly interrupted President Trump’s speech at a General Motors facility in Michigan earlier this week. A day later, the country music legend Willie Nelson called on Americans to “fight against data cent … | Continue reading
Current conditions: The wildfires in France and Europe are slowing, but three firefighters have died and the looming heat wave could bring yet more disaster • New York and New Jersey are facing flash floods as a storm system makes its way across the Northeast United States • Days … | Continue reading
When the Fusion Industry Association surveyed the sector earlier this month, it found that the industry’s 56 active companies had collectively raised more than $14.2 billion over the past five years. But an ever-larger share of that money is ending up in the hands of one startup: … | Continue reading
This is an edition of Heatmap Daily, an evening review of the day’s news written by our executive editor. Sign up for it here.Good evening. Let’s start with the news. Meta and Microsoft released their most recent quarterly earnings this evening, and Wall Street was watching to fi … | Continue reading
Current conditions: France just ordered 4,000 more people to evacuate the wildfires that have now displaced a third of a million people across southwestern Europe • The heat dome in the southwestern United States is driving temperatures in Phoenix up to 113 degrees Fahrenheit by … | Continue reading
The world’s most important climate standard-setting group released a spate of updates on Wednesday about two controversial and hotly anticipated projects: its effort to revise guidance for measuring electricity emissions and its new partnership with a competing standards organiza … | Continue reading
There’s really one one good thing that could happen this year in Congress for clean energy: permitting reform. If lawmakers reached a bipartisan deal on the country’s permitting system, they could make it easier to build solar, wind, and transmission lines — as well as every othe … | Continue reading
There’s really one one good thing that could happen this year in Congress for clean energy: permitting reform. If lawmakers reached a bipartisan deal on the country’s permitting system, they could make it easier to build solar, wind, and transmission lines — as well as every othe … | Continue reading
Every few days, I think the data center backlash has reached its apex — surely it can’t become an even bigger issue in American politics. Then it surprises me again. On Monday evening, the reaction got as close to President Donald Trump as it’s ever come, when six protesters inte … | Continue reading
America’s largest electricity market, the 13-state PJM Interconnection, is being forced to rapidly redesign how it works in order to meet its own reliability goals while trying to meet new demand from data centers and electrification.The market has been in a multiyear rolling cri … | Continue reading
They were projecting Spaceballs onto the wall the first time I pulled into the Tesla Diner. To kill time while my car charged outside, I stepped into the retrofuturist Los Angeles luncheonette and spent six dollars on an oversized chocolate chip cookie. It came in a “Cyberbox,” a … | Continue reading
Current conditions: The wildfires in Spain and France are burning so hot they’re creating rare pyrocumulonimbus clouds • Hurricane Genevieve has strengthened into the first Category 5 storm of 2026 as the monster cyclone rampages across the open Pacific with no immediate destinat … | Continue reading
Enormous wildfires are still burning in France and Spain. “We're facing a completely unprecedented fire,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday, comparing the situation to World War II. The main fire in Gironde, a southwestern department along the Atlantic coast, have c … | Continue reading
Meteorologists had nothing polite to say about Tropical Storm Bertha. The “weak, disorganized, and lopsided” system made initial landfall in Louisiana last week as a “hot, sheared mess,” one that forecasters doubted would reach Texas with much oomph at all. Still, the Galveston C … | Continue reading