Trump’s solar freeze is now so tough that at least one renewable energy developer has asked his administration to turn their permitting application into a data center and gas-fired power plant instead.Renew Development HoldCo – an LLC created by Clearway Energy Group – wrote the … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Hurricane Genevieve formed into the first major storm of the season, strengthening to Category 4 off Mexico’s Pacific Coast on Sunday but steering clear of any land for now • Hurricane Fausto, meanwhile, is weakening as it heads toward Hawaii • China evacuated … | 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.It isn’t exactly a new thought, but I’ve been struck recently by how many trends in America’s economic and environmental data are fundamentally about the … | Continue reading
This week’s conversation is with Emma Uridge, analyst with the Kansas Health Institute. Uridge spent copious hours analyzing state and local laws on data center development to best understand how policymakers are responding to the potential environmental public health impacts of … | Continue reading
1. Laramie County, Wyoming — Meta is fighting the fine it received in the Cheyenne data center water pollution controversy, and the conflict between the tech giant and the city’s small board of public utilities is continuing to spill out into the public. Meta this week appealed t … | Continue reading
The U.S. government for the first time approved a data center on federal lands. What the Trump administration is pitching as a demonstration of bureaucratic speed and ambition in the era of artificial intelligence, however, is turning into the same sort of mysterious backroom dea … | Continue reading
Physicists have spent decades trying to apply the laws of quantum mechanics to the physical world in the form of quantum computers, devices that promise to solve some of the hardest problems in biology, chemistry, and materials science at unfathomable speed. Many experts say this … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Tropical Storm Bertha washed out the majority of monitored sea turtle nests in the western part of the Florida Panhandle • Record rain in West Virginia swelled creeks that toppled bridges in the north central part of the state • In the Pacific, Tropical Depres … | Continue reading
Charm Industrial is a climate tech company that takes biomass and converts it into a heavy, carbon-rich oil that can be injected underground, transmuting and storing the greenhouse gas far from the atmosphere. They’re scaling up fast and recently announced a new $20 million debt … | 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:Shift Key is brought … | Continue reading
Is this how a new wave of inflation starts? The international crude oil benchmark leapt to $100 a barrel on Thursday, its highest level since May. The surge came after the Iran-backed Houthi group in Yemen attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea. Those strikes pinched one o … | Continue reading
Lime, the electric scooter and bike-sharing company that recently raised $174 million in its initial public offering, estimates that it replaced 38 million car trips across the globe last year. Even as it helped prevent substantial vehicle pollution, though, Lime racked up about … | Continue reading
When energy experts imagine the grid of the future, they often dream of millions of electric vehicles moonlighting as mobile power banks, using their hefty batteries to send electricity back to the grid when it needs a boost. But despite rapid EV adoption, this utopia has remaine … | Continue reading
Current conditions: A new heat dome is spreading temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit across the Central United States, from Texas north to the Dakotas • Tropical Storm Bertha made landfall over southern Louisiana with winds of up to 45 miles per hour • Tasmania is facing a … | Continue reading
Hydrogen fuel comes in myriad forms. There’s green hydrogen, which is extracted from water molecules using zero-carbon electricity. There’s blue hydrogen, derived from methane and scrubbed clean by carbon capture. And then there’s white hydrogen. Otherwise known as natural or geo … | Continue reading
More than 5,700 excess deaths were recorded in France during this summer’s record-breaking heat wave, the country’s health agency announced today. That makes the event — which ran, by the official reckoning, from June 17 to July 2 — the country’s deadliest heat wave in more than … | Continue reading
One of fusion energy’s newest startups, Inertia Enterprises, is betting that the fastest route to commercial fusion runs through one of the field’s oldest ideas. The company, which raised a $450 million Series A earlier this year, plans to build a power plant based on the laser-d … | Continue reading
Current conditions: After forming into Tropical Storm Bertha late Monday, the system is barreling toward the Florida Panhandle as it makes landfall as far west as Texas • In the Pacific, Hurricane Fausto has strength as it heads toward Hawaii but remains a Category 1 storm • Temp … | Continue reading
With companies now rapidly adding artificial intelligence into their products and using it across their workstreams, it stands to reason that all that extra energy use might show up in their climate accounting. But to any business that wants to get a sense of how big its AI-relat … | Continue reading
A decade ago, the Princeton economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson published a paper about a fact that they called “not nearly as widely known as it should be”: The U.S. economy has done better under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents. Blinder was not a completely … | Continue reading
Energy analysts at BloombergNEF predicted last year that U.S. data center electricity demand would reach 106 gigawatts within the next decade. In its latest outlook, released Tuesday, the group increased its forecast by 83%, to 194 gigawatts — enough to light up 150 million homes … | Continue reading
Energy analysts at BloombergNEF predicted last year that U.S. data center electricity demand would reach 106 gigawatts within the next decade. In its latest outlook, released Tuesday, the group increased its forecast by 83%, to 194 gigawatts — enough to light up 150 million homes … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Tropical Depression Two strengthened into Tropical Storm Bertha yesterday, recycling the name of the 1996 Atlantic hurricane season’s first major storm • Floods from the monsoon season killed at least four people in Vietnam and left as many missing • Lightning … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Tropical Depression Two strengthened into Tropical Storm Bertha yesterday, recycling the name of the 1996 Atlantic hurricane season’s first major storm • Floods from the monsoon season killed at least four people in Vietnam and left as many missing • Lightning … | Continue reading
The renewables market is in a state of flux. On the one hand, the tax credits that were a key pillar of wind and solar project financing have started to expire, while the race to be up and running in time to claim those that remain is on. At the same time the renewables industry … | Continue reading
Here we go again. The United States will impose new 50% tariffs on a slew of imports from Canada, the White House announced on Monday afternoon. The trade levies — which will hit more than 500 categories of goods, from anoraks, beer, and curtains, to yarn, wool, and whey protein … | Continue reading
In seven years of owning an electric car, I’ve done practically no maintenance. My 2019 Tesla Model 3 has gotten a new set of tires and windshield wipers, but because an EV doesn’t require oil changes or many of the other occasional chores that come with gas cars, that’s about it … | Continue reading
The New York Times recently profiled former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and his increasing engagement on climate change. Many of the online comments accused him of hypocrisy. Why, they asked, did he only become concerned about climate change after leaving Congress?It’s an u … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Tropical Depression Two is set to strengthen into Tropical Storm Bertha as the system widens over the Gulf Coast from Texas to Tampa Bay, Florida • Temperatures will top 112 degrees Fahrenheit in Khartoum, the capital of war-ravaged Sudan • Canadian wildfire s … | Continue reading
When I woke up this morning in Chicago, the Air Quality Index was in the 300s, and I could barely see the top of the skyscraper across the street. The weather app on my phone featured a little image of a man wearing a World War I-style full-face gas mask. That’s fun, I thought. I … | Continue reading
Protestors interrupted one of the final sessions of PNW Climate Week — a conference that brings together climate leaders across Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia — objecting to Microsoft’s rising carbon emissions from data centers and partnerships with oil and gas companie … | Continue reading
Heat kills more Americans than any other extreme weather event in the United States. But wildfire smoke — while not strictly “weather” — appears to kill even more. Current excess death estimates put American heat mortality at about 10,000 people per year, or possibly as high as 1 … | Continue reading
When National Grid, the natural gas utility that serves New York City and Long Island, proposed a one-year rate freeze last month, Governor Kathy Hochul celebrated it as a victory for affordability. “I’m pleased to announce National Grid and the Department of Public Service found … | Continue reading
Current conditions: The World Cup’s final match between Argentina and Spain is set to take place Sunday in New Jersey, where the thick orange haze of Canadian wildfire smoke is still hovering • Temperatures are soaring to 110 degrees Fahrenheit in Ethiopia’s northeast Afar provin … | Continue reading
An important part of a bipartisan permitting reform deal may be falling into place.Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico introduced a bill on Thursday that would make it easier for new power plants to hook up to electricity markets across the country.The legislation, which applie … | Continue reading
I became a runner in the spring of 2020. My run streak was my sourdough starter. Those were the Wild West days of respiratory spray warnings, when I’d get dirty looks from strangers even if I passed them while wearing my Under Armour running mask. But I wasn’t about to let a dead … | Continue reading
If you live anywhere near the Great Lakes or Mid-Atlantic (or certain parts of the Mountain West), odds are it’s smoky where you live. Wildfires raging in western Ontario are sending smoke cascading south and east across the U.S., prompting widespread air quality alerts affecting … | Continue reading
If you live anywhere near the Great Lakes or Mid-Atlantic (or certain parts of the Mountain West), odds are it’s smoky where you live. Wildfires raging in western Ontario are sending smoke cascading south and east across the U.S., prompting widespread air quality alerts affecting … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Wildfire smoke tinted the skies orange across the Northeastern United States, rendering the air on New York’s Long Island thick and hazy all afternoon • London is a balmy 83 degrees Fahrenheit today, but new research shows that the number of days topping 86 de … | Continue reading
The European Union is on the verge of making major changes to its carbon market, including integrating carbon removals into the scheme for the first time. The bloc’s highest governing body, the European Commission, is expected to publish a proposal on Friday to reform the EU Emis … | Continue reading
We know a little bit more about New York’s AI data center moratorium than we did yesterday. Here’s what stands out to me:Governor Kathy Hochul says this won’t become a ban. “I’m not expecting the need for a ban. I want [the AI companies] to work with us,” she told Bloomberg’s “Od … | Continue reading
New York Governor Kathy Hochul tried to pick out a middle way with her data center moratorium, carefully charting a course between the demands of industry, advocacy groups, and voters who are increasingly suspicious of the data center and artificial intelligence industries. Did s … | Continue reading
Before wildfire smoke turns the skies to a jaundiced yellow-gray, it might look almost pretty. Midday light grows diffuse, taking on a crepuscular golden hue. Shadows soften and stretch long. The sunsets are particularly incredible: radiant, neon red.But as with oleander and pois … | Continue reading
Just last month, a heat wave killed an estimated 2,700 people in France. Think about that for a second: 2,700 people. That’s equivalent to the mortality of two Hurricane Katrinas or 10 Hurricane Sandys. In France, where there were roughly 970 murders in 2024, the heat wave killed … | Continue reading
Current conditions: Canadian wildfires smoke has returned to the Northeast United States, worsening air quality across the region • Catastrophic 1-in-1,000-year floods devastated Missouri’s Black River region, right as intense rainfall is headed for Texas • Temperatures in Beijin … | Continue reading
For more than 30 years, a heterodox group of scientists have proposed injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight away from Earth, thereby cooling the atmosphere and reversing climate change.But actual research into the idea has remained taboo, or at leas … | 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 Wednesda … | Continue reading