Affordability has quickly overtaken climate change as the primary focus of energy policy. One reason may be that the climate policies adopted over the past decade are finally starting to bind, imposing added costs at a time of rising electricity demand and, in some parts of the country, higher power bills.
Last November, President Donald Trump launched the Genesis Mission through an executive order (EO) that outlines 26 National Science and Technology Challenges, ranging from autonomous scientific labs to fusion energy to artificial intelligence (AI)-driven grid operations. Embedded in that order is a directive to use prize competitions to get there. This is a smart policy because prizes are a growing but still underutilized tool at the Department of Energy (DOE). Now the DOE needs to run with it.
In a recent ruling, the Supreme Court handed the oil and gas industry a significant procedural win in a decade-long legal fight over Louisiana's eroding coastline. The decision changes where some of the cases will be heard, but it does not resolve the larger legal and policy problems at the heart of the litigation.
As public health officials declared the end of a sewage contamination emergency in the Potomac River last month, scientists feared the waterway was still in distress. More than 240 million gallons of human waste had poured into the river from a broken sewer main. Researchers went out in early March to sample the water, trying...
Compared to every other country in the world, the US is bearing the biggest brunt of the economic losses inflicted by climate breakdown – and will likely continue to do so. That’s according to a recent study from Stanford University, in which scientists calculated the economic loss and damages caused by major fossil fuel emitters. Lead author Marshall...
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...
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...
Puerto Rico’s energy strategy is undergoing a quiet but meaningful shift, with liquefied natural gas (LNG) playing a more central role in stabilizing the island’s grid. The first year of operations for the U.S.-flagged LNG carrier American Energy, operated by Crowley, signals a step toward a more structured and reliable fuel supply model. Since launching...
ZymoChem, the San Leandro, California-based chemical biomanufacturer creating sustainable alternatives for everyday products, announced that its bio-based and biodegradable Super Absorbent Polymer (SAP), BAYSE, now matches or exceeds key performance metrics of conventional fossil-fuel based SAPs, according to company data.
Texas has long stood apart from national energy policy—its own grid, its own rules. In 2026, that independence has made it the top destination for AI-driven electricity demand. While Washington grapples with the pressures of building data centers, ensuring reliability, and controlling costs, Texas is tackling everything at once. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) market is solving for speed-to-power by surmounting transmission bottlenecks, phantom load growth, buying down residential rate increases, and more.
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