Some critics have complained that Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency can’t protect us from the supposed environmental harms of data centers if they cut down on red tape to streamline building permits. That’s part of a broader narrative that data centers are bad for the environment, but it ignores their benefits.
Americans just lived through one chip shortage. They’re about to live through another, and this one could hit their wallets even harder. The culprit this time isn’t a pandemic disrupting factories; it’s an artificial intelligence (AI) boom devouring the world’s memory chip supply. If Washington isn’t careful, the policy response could make the problem worse, not better.
The Protecting Domestic Mining Act (H.R. 1501) just passed the House by a 218–201 vote, with seven Democrats crossing the aisle. The bill, which now heads to the Senate, makes mining and mineral processing eligible for expedited permitting under Title 41 of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (known as FAST-41) and blocks a Biden-era proposal that would have limited that eligibility to "critical" minerals.
The war with Iran has sent oil prices, and then gasoline prices, sharply higher. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude, the main U.S. oil benchmark, rose from the mid-$60s per barrel in late February to around $100 on March 19. U.S. gasoline prices have followed suit, with the average price increasing from a pre-war level of under $3.00 per gallon to over $3.70 by mid-March.
Hourly load in Electric Reliability Council of Texas territory averaged a record 74.5 GW the week of Aug. 22, the Energy Information Administration said in a Sept. 3 report, shortly after ERCOT reached a new peak demand record of 91 GW on July 22. “Sustained high temperatures have contributed to persistently high electricity demand in...
For years, China has been talking a big game about the Arctic. The country lies far from the Arctic Circle — more than 800 miles — but still, it has declared itself a “near-Arctic state.” It has teamed up with Russia on coast guard patrols in the Arctic Ocean and explored a flurry of resource and...
Casablanca is moving ahead with a major waste-to-energy project aimed at tackling two infrastructure pressures at once: rising municipal waste volumes and demand for dependable electricity generation. The planned facility, to be built northwest of the Mediouna landfill in the Casablanca-Settat region, is designed to process about 1.5 million tons of non-recyclable waste annually and...
President Trump signed an executive order Friday directing the Interior Department to assess whether gray wolves should lose their endangered-species protections as part of his administration’s efforts to address livestock depletion and bring down domestic beef prices. The president also ordered the Interior and Agriculture departments to allow ranchers to kill these animals, if necessary, to protect their herds. ...
The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) said the agency has closed a loan of as much as $1.9 billion to NextEra Energy to support the restart of the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa. The station is one of three U.S. nuclear power plants where work is being supported by the Office of Energy Dominance...
Artificial intelligence (AI) data centers are being built at an unprecedented pace. There are more than 12,000 active projects in the U.S. currently seeking grid interconnection representing 1,570 GW of generator capacity and 1,030 GW of energy storage. Analyst firm Omdia predicts that AI will drive more than 50% of installed power generation capacity over...
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