The Energy Department may allow up to five companies to use its surplus plutonium — which it has historically been used in nuclear warheads — as fuel. The department has selected the firms for “advanced negotiations regarding the potential allocation of surplus plutonium materials,” a spokesperson for its nuclear energy office said Tuesday. The five...
O’Leary: Many mega-data center concerns in Utah based on ‘misinformation,’ ‘lies’
Millionaire investor Kevin O’Leary dismissed mounting opposition to his massive AI data center proposal in Utah as “ridiculous” and accused China of helping to fuel a smear campaign against his Stratos project. “I think a lot of those concerns are based on misinformation and just straight-out lies,” O’Leary said in an interview with NewsNation’s “The Hill” late Tuesday. The proposed development in the...
The hidden innovation behind Antora’s massive new heat battery
A giant energy-storage project in South Dakota will soon turn cheap wind energy into clean industrial steam for a neighboring biofuels facility. The startup Antora Energy said it recently began booting up a 5-gigawatt-hour thermal energy storage system at Poet’s ethanol-production plant near Big Stone City, close to the Minnesota border. With a fleet of more than 200 batteries, Antora’s project is expected to become...
ERCOT incentivises grid-forming BESS with US$25 million programme
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has initiated a programme to encourage battery energy storage systems (BESS) and other inverter-based resources to adopt grid-forming technology. Established 26 May, the Nodal Protocol Revision Request (NPRR) “establishes a one-time advanced grid support incentive programme to encourage inverter-based resources (IBRs) that would not otherwise be required to...
NextEra Will Buy Dominion Energy in Largest-Ever Electric Utility Deal
Florida-headquartered NextEra Energy, one of the largest U.S. power utilities, is set to buy Virginia-based Dominion Energy in an all-stock deal valued at about $67 billion. The companies announced the deal on May 18, one day after several outlets including POWER reported the energy groups were discussing an agreement to create a utility giant that would have assets...
Competitive transmission projects come online faster than incumbent projects in 4 regions: R Street
Previous studies showed that transmission competition can provide meaningful cost savings, but some questioned whether the additional effort of competitive solicitations was worth it, especially if they delay needed transmission, Kent Chandler, one of the report’s authors, said in an email. “Our analysis found no evidence that competitive solicitations have added time to the overall...
Agricultural Drones Cut 51M Tons CO2 and Saved 410M Tons Water
DJI Agriculture’s 2025 Agricultural Drone Industry Insight Report puts a number on something the precision agriculture sector has been claiming qualitatively for years: that drone-based crop application meaningfully reduces the environmental footprint of farming at scale. The cumulative figures through end of 2025 are specific enough to be useful to anyone building agricultural sustainability metrics into a...
Global Oil Price Rises After U.S. Strikes in Iran Cloud Peace Deal
Oil prices climbed on Tuesday after the United States said it had carried out strikes on missile launch sites in Iran, casting doubt on the prospects of a peace deal. The strike followed signals from Israel that it planned to intensify its campaign against the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran has said any agreement would...
Google Pledges Power, Ratepayer Protections in $15B Missouri Data Center Expansion
Google will invest $15 billion in Missouri infrastructure, including a new data center in New Florence, Montgomery County, in a project that pairs its expanding data center footprint with new generation commitments, a large-load cost-allocation framework, and Ameren Missouri rate structures designed to protect existing customers from infrastructure costs tied to large energy users. “When...
Canadian Wildfire Smoke Is Now a Grid Transmission Risk
Canada’s Wildfire Season Is Becoming a Transmission Problem, Not Just an Air Quality Problem When a wildfire burns near a transmission corridor, physical damage is the obvious risk. The less visible risk is what smoke and ash contamination do to high-voltage infrastructure across a much wider area. In Alberta and British Columbia, that contamination risk...








