Heatmap this week published a short but telling analysis of local opposition to major infrastructure, finding that data centers now face more organized pushback than wind farms in its tracking database. The piece uses that shift to illustrate a broader change in the politics of development: the backlash once associated mainly with renewable energy is...
Author: Marc Oestreich
Britain’s Windfall Tax Gamble Could Backfire
Britain is preparing to raise windfall taxes on electricity generators unless they agree to long-term fixed-price contracts, in what amounts to one of the government’s most aggressive efforts yet to shield consumers from gas-driven power price spikes. The logic is politically seductive: if gas prices surge and legacy generators benefit from the market structure, the...
Ember’s “Global Electricity Review 2026” Is Out
Ember’s new Global Electricity Review 2026 points to a genuine shift in the global power mix. In 2025, renewables supplied 33.8% of global electricity, edging past coal’s 33% share for the first time in the modern power era. Even more striking, clean generation growth slightly exceeded the rise in global electricity demand, which meant fossil...
Populism’s War on Capacity
Over the past two decades, we have been trained either by politics, by media, or by endless crisis rhetoric, to think in fixed pies. When demand rises, we are told someone must be taking more than their share. The industries capable of expanding supply — engineers, industrialists, investors, technologists — are cast as villains before they break ground. In other eras, they won wars, electrified cities, doubled oil output, and built the networks on which modern abundance rests. Today, they are more likely to be hauled before a hearing than celebrated for production. The instinct to increase capacity has given way to the instinct to referee.



