Energy Utilities

US Power Demand to Hit New Records in 2026 and 2027 as AI Data Centers Drive Electricity Consumption - GreentechLead

Electricity consumption in the United States is set to reach new record highs in both 2026 and 2027 as the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, cryptocurrency operations, and widespread electrification continue to fuel unprecedented demand for power, according to the latest forecast from the U.S. Energy ...

Data center backlash signals a fight over AI power

New Technology Could Improve Energy Efficiency In AI Data Centers - Eurasia Review

However, Ohm’s law — the ... and AI’s ever-increasing computing demands only make those equations more complex. There are plans to increase the voltage on the DC distribution bus from 12 to 48 volts, which leads to 16 times less ohmic power loss and significantly reduces a data center’s thermal stress and energy consumption...

Collusion By Code: What DOJ’s Algorithmic Pricing Enforcement Means For The Energy Sector - Antitrust, EU Competition - United States

We believe there is no longer any ... criminal antitrust doctrine to algorithmic and AI-driven conduct with the same rigor it has applied to traditional cartel behavior. Energy markets present a particularly acute set of risks: concentrated market structures, repeated competitor interactions ...

Google and XTX back German fusion start-up as nuclear bets proliferate

Proxima Fusion valued at €2.4bn in €400mn funding round as AI boom spurs the race for energy’s holy grail

Data centers’ energy demand threatens Trump’s “Made in America” plan - Ars Technica

US manufacturers in many Rust Belt ... growing energy demand from data centers strains the largest power grid operator in the United States. The resulting squeeze on profit margins for steelmakers and brick factories could further undermine President Donald Trump’s “Made in America” plan to revive US manufacturing, and it comes as Trump has simultaneously championed the tech companies behind the AI data center ...

AI data centres are driving up power bills at America’s Rust Belt factories

Capacity charges have soared across the PJM grid, and manufacturers from Ohio to Pennsylvania are paying for the AI boom.

AI data centers are making electricity more expensive for US factories

US factories are facing higher electricity bills as AI data centers increase demand for power across the grid. Manufacturers like Belden Brick report sharp cost increases, driven partly by rising capacity charges in key industrial regions. Industry groups warn higher energy costs could hurt ...

AI Data Centers Are Set To Electrify This $13 Billion Family’s 76-Year-Old Company

The Richards family is one of America's richest clans, thanks to its electrical manufacturing company Southwire. Here's why the AI craze should boost that fortune.

The Rise of the Agentic Economy: Beyond Prompt-and-Response AI

The Agentic Economy shifts focus toward AI Agents and Embodied AI. To sustain this growth, specialized energy infrastructure like SMRs is becoming a critical investment priority.

AI did not just demand more electricity — it demanded water. By 2025, U.S. data centres, increasingly expanded for AI workloads, were consuming nearly one trillion litres of water a year, much of it used in cooling systems that shed heat by evaporating water into the air.

The International Energy Agency’s 2025 Energy and AI report said data centres accounted for about 1.5 percent of global electricity consumption in 2024, or 415 terawatt-hours.

Rising Heat and Data Centers: Environmental Concerns Spark AI Industry Debate, ETTelecom

As temperatures soar, communities near data centers face increasing strain on power grids and air quality, igniting intense debates about the environmental impact of the AI industry. Can data centers balance energy demand and community wellbeing?

US heatwave raises alarms over AI data centre energy demands | Energy News | Al Jazeera

US heatwave exposes critical strain on power grids from growing energy demands of AI data centres.

Bloom Energy Lands $25 Billion Brookfield Commitment for AI Data Center Fuel Cells

A single modern AI training campus can require more than a gigawatt of power. New utility connections, however, now require navigating interconnection queues that stretch five to seven years in many U.S. markets. The U.S. Department of Energy projects that U.S. data center electricity consumption ...

How AI Data Centers Are Testing the Limits of Power Grids - Artiverse

The International Energy Agency estimates they will use 3 to 4 percent of global electricity this decade. That’s a big slice for just one industry. AI data centers bring a new challenge. Their computing loads can jump suddenly. This rapid change in power demand stresses electric grids. It’s not like traditional steady consumption...

The AI data center power crunch: electricity, not chips, is the real bottleneck — Silicon Report

Nineteen tracked AI campuses now carry gigawatt-plus capacity, and more than a third of that build sits in Texas — evidence that grid queues, not GPU su...

Battery start-ups see ‘crazy’ demand to smooth power surges in data centres

Rapid growth of clusters of processors for AI training drives need for energy storage

Agri-SAGE: Simulation-Grounded Multi-Agent LLM for Context-Aware Agricultural Advisory Generation

arXiv:2607.00454v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agricultural advisory systems face a fundamental tension: static agronomic guidelines offer consistent, evidence-based recommendations, yet remain blind to in-season variability and dynamic uncertainties. Recent advisory systems powered by LLMs are liable for a different risk of generating recommendations that are agronomically credible but physiologically unconvincing. Agri-SAGE is a closed-loop framework designed to resolve the above two limitations by integrating retrieval-grounded multi-agent LLM reasoning with APSIM-based biophysical simulation, to generate and validate agronomic advisories. To assess this framework, we evaluate three reasoning approaches, namely Plan-and-Solve, Tree of Thoughts, and Reflexion, over a 10-year retrospective analysis. All three significantly outperform static PoP (Package-of-Practice) baselines, with Tree of Thoughts achieving impressive peak yields. At the same time, Reflexion achieves comparable agronomic outcomes at substantially lower computational cost by leveraging cross-seasonal episodic memory.

Teaching AI to run with the turbines

Artificial intelligence may have captured the public imagination through chatbots and image generators, but some of its most consequential use cases are unfolding far from consumer-facing tools. In industries where physical infrastructure, operational continuity, and safety are paramount, AI is becoming a core operating layer. With its sprawling industrial systems and constant stream of operational…

The ‘Five Alarm’ Risks Facing the Power Grid This Summer

High temperatures, new AI data centers and drought conditions pose challenges to the electricity system.

Valar Atomics Powers Nvidia Blackwell Chip With Ward 250 Reactor | Let's Data Science

The reactor reached criticality on June 18, 2026, and by the demo had ramped to roughly 100 kilowatts of thermal output, converted to electricity via a thermal-electric generator, according to Bloomberg, Tom's Hardware, and the American Nuclear Society. Valar and Nvidia also announced a joint feasibility study for a 30-megawatt water-free AI computing facility using closed-loop cooling. It marks the first time a US advanced reactor has supplied power to run an AI chip...

The future of AI may need less electricity than we think - WP Intelligence

Tomorrow’s data centers may look very different from today’s, as innovations help to offset AI electricity demand.

The AI backlash has begun, by Pierre Rimbert (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, July 2026)

The US public are resisting the construction of the vast data centres AI needs to achieve exponential growth. This is only the most visible sign of mounting opposition to the technology.

1001 Banks Invest $30 Million to Deploy Predictive AI in GCC Ports, Energy, and Aviation

GCC- and London-based sovereign AI startup 1001 has successfully raised $30 million in a Series A funding round led by the US venture capital firm Lux Capital. The round also saw participation from prominent investors including PIF-backed Sanabil Investments, Hanabi, 9Yards, General Catalyst, ...

Building AI Infrastructure Responsibly: ER Steel on the Evolving Demands of Data Center Expansion

Nearly 100 gigawatts of new data center capacity could come online by 2030. ER Steel argues the real bottleneck is not compute but construction coordination, grid access, and long-term operational planning.

Data Center Power Coalition Launches to Tackle AI Bottleneck

As utilities struggle to keep pace with demand, a new industry coalition aims to create a common playbook for powering next-generation data centers.

Schneider Electric buys industrial AI company Cognite for $3.1bn

Upon completion of the deal, the French energy services giant will combine Cognite with its own industrial software business, Aveva. Read more: Schneider Electric buys industrial AI company Cognite for $3.1bn

NJ lawmakers send legislation scaling back data center tax credits to governor

New Jersey lawmakers approved a package of bills targeting data center electricity prices and tax credits, which are now headed to Governor Mikie Sherrill.

5 Under-the-Radar Stocks Fueling the AI Revolution | OilPrice.com

The company controls more than ... renewable energy. And crucially, much of that capacity was secured before regulators began tightening restrictions on new large-scale data center development. Bitzero listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker AIBZ on June 9, 2026, just one week ...

Google Says AI Is Outrunning Grid Decarbonization

Faruqui said utilities and regulators ... demand-response claims. “Utilities, regulators and governments need to consider multiple scenarios when evaluating the economics of adding hyperscalers to the grid. Not just base them on the assertion of these new customers.” ... Shane Snider is Senior News Writer at Data Center Knowledge, covering AI infrastructure, hyperscale data centers, cloud platforms, and the power and energy systems driving modern compute ...

AI Data Center Power Demand to Surge 461% by 2035 as Energy Consumption Reaches 3,500 TWh: ABI Research - InfotechLead

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping data center infrastructure, with energy demand, cooling requirements, and power availability emerging

US Supreme Court ruling may have energy market, AI ripple effects

The US Supreme Court has endorsed the president’s authority to fire independent agency commissioners, which could have a long-term destabilizing effect on electricity customers, including data centers fueling America’s AI boom.

AI Interconnect Delays Spur $1.75B National Grid-Joulent Deal

His reporting focuses on the ... energy procurement, and next-generation data center architectures. He has won recent Azbee awards for news series and government reporting. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Snider covers how hyperscalers, utilities, chipmakers, and infrastructure providers are responding to the rapid rise of AI workloads and global compute demand...

How Do Utilities Determine Which AI Data Centers Get Grid Access?

His reporting focuses on the ... energy procurement, and next-generation data center architectures. He has won recent Azbee awards for news series and government reporting. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Snider covers how hyperscalers, utilities, chipmakers, and infrastructure providers are responding to the rapid rise of AI workloads and global compute demand...

Vertiv Increases Manufacturing Capacity with New Facility in Malaysia, to Support Growing Demand for AI and Digital Infrastructure Across Asia

COLUMBUS, Ohio, July 1, 2026 ... for AI and high-density computing infrastructure across Asia, including Southeast Asia, North Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. ... Vertiv opens new Malaysia facility to strengthen regional manufacturing, supply chain resilience, and support deployment capabilities for critical digital infrastructure. Strategically located in one of Southeast Asia's fastest-growing industrial markets, the ...

Why is crucial tech vulnerable to the heat?

Energy grids and train services are among the vital services that are vulnerable to very hot weather.

Decision-support strategies for photovoltaic self-consumption under declining electricity prices and limited remuneration of surplus generation

arXiv:2606.30359v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The success of distributed photovoltaics may be undermining its own future. As solar penetration increases, electricity prices decline during periods of peak generation, reducing the value of surplus photovoltaic production. This raises a critical question: can citizen-led energy systems remain economically viable in electricity markets dominated by renewable generation? Rather than exploring technically optimal but institutionally unrealistic solutions, we examine the options available under current regulatory and market conditions. Using high-resolution consumption data from a rural community sharing a PV facility among 24 users, we identify pathways for long-term sustainability. The study makes two contributions. First, it shows that effective internal coordination can mobilize participation and investment as successfully as external subsidies. Second, it compares static, dynamic, and hybrid energy-sharing models, with and without storage, providing a flexible framework that balances efficiency, fairness, and governance. Results show that collective self-consumption reduces required PV capacity, lowers investment costs, and increases annual savings compared with individually operated systems. Alternative allocation schemes further improve benefit distribution and local electricity use, although gains depend on trade-offs between efficiency, fairness, and governance complexity. Under current electricity prices and remuneration schemes, battery storage provides limited additional economic value and becomes attractive only under specific market conditions. Overall, the long-term viability of citizen-led photovoltaic initiatives depends less on technological sophistication than on collective coordination and adaptive governance.

Shaking off the rust: Pennsylvania’s data center rise

AWS’ data center next to a nuclear plant in Salem Township. – Talen | Cumulus Though some might disagree, Pennsylvania claims to be the birthplace of artificial intelligence. AI research at Carnegie Mellon University dates back to the mid-1960s and what some say was the foundation of the world’s first AI research hub. Despite the […]

The Energy Behind Intelligence: Linking AI Ambitions and Energy Security

AI and Energy Security require coordinated electricity planning, grid modernisation, and firm power to support India's expanding AI ecosystem.

Vinod Khosla: AI’s energy crisis has a fix — and it doesn’t need the grid

The founder of Khosla Ventures says we're looking in the wrong place as AI data centers wait in a seven-year interconnection queue.

AI Data Centers Hit Energy Transition Wall as Grids Stall 2500 GW

The WEF Energy Transition Index 2026 shows readiness falling for the first time in a decade just as AI infrastructure demands trillions in firm power. Boards must now price queue position, co-located generation and sovereign capital access as first-order risks.

South Korea to Speed Nuclear Push to Meet Surging Power Demand

The South Korean government will consider ways to cut atomic power construction times as it looks to ramp up energy supply to meet the demands of artificial intelligence.

Grid Woes Push UK Clean Power Goal Back Five Years, Report Shows

The UK will probably miss its clean electricity target by five years because of capacity constraints on its grid and could struggle to deliver on promises to cut household energy bills, according to consultant LCP Delta.

AI fuels record $200bn M&A boom in US power sector

Companies in dealmaking blitz as they seek to build the energy infrastructure for data centres

1.5GW data center campus proposed in Devon, UK

The company behind a massive planned power cable to the UK is pivoting to plans for a large data center campus in Devon. Announced this week, Xlinks has proposed a large AI data and energy storage development at Alverdiscott, Devon. – Xlinks The campus comprises two separate planning proposals submitted to Torridge District Council: a […]

Data centers are ready to negotiate flexibility for speed | Construction Dive

Hyperscalers want their data centers online and utilities want to provide interconnections, but experts say both are still looking for common operating guidelines.

The United States accelerates in data centers: AI turns energy into the new bottleneck | Cloud News

The industry must better articulate its value, share infrastructure costs, and demonstrate flexible, efficient operations. Energy flexibility will be a major topic in the coming years. Not all AI workloads are equally urgent. Some loads can be shifted over time or between regions. If data centers learn to reduce consumption ...

Major Space Weather Risks Identified via Coupled Physics-Engineering-Economic Modeling

arXiv:2412.18032v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Space weather poses an important but under-quantified threat to society. While severe geomagnetic storms are recognized as potential global catastrophes, their socio-economic impacts remain poorly quantified. We present a novel physics-engineering-economic framework that links geophysical drivers to power grid geoelectric fields, transformer vulnerability, and macroeconomic consequences. Using the United States as an example, we estimate daily U.S. economic losses for a 250-year geomagnetic storm from transformer thermal heating of 2.04 billion USD (95 percent confidence interval: 1.86 to 2.22 billion USD), disrupting power for approximately 5.7 million people and 150,000 businesses. These estimates are conservative lower bounds, reflecting only transformer thermal heating effects and excluding voltage collapse, cascading failures, and restoration costs. The true societal risk is likely substantially higher. Nonetheless, the contribution is in providing the first nationwide end-to-end coupling from space physics to potential macroeconomic loss, with quantified uncertainties. Our results demonstrate that coupled socio-economic modeling of space weather is both feasible and essential, and the framework is scalable and transferable, offering a template for assessing space weather risk to critical infrastructure in other countries.

Engineer accused of insider trading tied to Microsoft's reboot of Three Mile Island nuclear plant

The SEC alleges a former Constellation employee made $1.4 million trading options before the announcement of the nuclear plant restart deal.

From charging EVs and drones to powering data centres: London-based Gaussion raises €24.5 million

Gaussion, a London-based DeepTech company pioneering energy intelligence technology for battery packs, today announces the close of a €24.5 million ($28 million) funding round – bringing total funding to over €38 million ($44 million). The round was co-led by BGF and AlbionVC, with follow-on participation from mobility specialist fund Autotech Ventures, UCL Technology Fund, DN […]

AI power demand: Utilities cashing in on data center expansion (AEP:NASDAQ) | Seeking Alpha

AI data centers are driving surging power demand. Discover utilities, power producers, and ETFs positioned to benefit from long-term electricity supply...

‘We’re up against forces that have all the money in the world’: Erin Brockovich on her battle against AI datacentres

In 1993, she squeezed a $333m settlement from a Californian energy company in a scandal over contaminated water. Three decades later, she has a new target in her sights – and it’s global When Erin Brockovich woke to find 30 emails from people from the same town, she realised something was going on. People email Brockovich all the time because of what happened in 1993, when she was instrumental in suing Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) on behalf of residents of the town of Hinkley, California, whose groundwater had been contaminated. The case resulted in a settlement of $333m – then the largest ever payout for a direct-action lawsuit. When she was immortalised by Julia Roberts in the 2000 film Erin Brockovich, she became the hero we didn’t know we needed, a modern day Joan of Arc. She had won against PG&E with no formal legal training. The emails she received a few weeks ago were about datacentres. In April, she put a callout on her website asking for anyone with concerns about one near them to get in touch. Within a month, 3,862 people had replied. Tech companies have needed datacentres to power their technology “for ever”, she says, but the new ones being built to power AI? “This feels like Hinkley on steroids.” Continue reading...

Energy providers are flying blind thanks to unpredictable AI data center demands | IT Pro

Research from Capgemini has found that uncertainty, speed constraints, and rising system complexity are leaving firms struggling to predict future consumption

AI Energy Consumption Is Raising Household Bills: Efficiency Gains Cannot Reverse It

U.S. data centers consumed 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, representing 4.4% of national grid consumption, according to the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as cited in Belfer Center research. That share is projected to reach 6.7% to 12% by 2028 as AI infrastructure ...

These 7 Stocks Will Solve AI’s Most Important Bottleneck

Artificial intelligence has no shortage of obstacles. The industry is scrambling to secure enough electricity to power new data centers, enough land to build them, and enough high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to keep next-generation chips fed with data. Yet another constraint is emerging that could ...

Nuclear Energy Stocks For AI Data Center Power Demand - Simply Wall St News

Nuclear energy stocks sit at the crossroads of two powerful forces right now: steady demand for reliable baseload power and growing interest in lower carbon energy sources. With global data pointing to resilient consumption, ongoing fiscal support in major economies, and persistent focus on ...

Sunrise builds integrated energy platform as AI data center demand rises

Sino-American Silicon (SAS) Products' Sunrise is expanding its integrated smart energy business as artificial intelligence (AI) and data center demand for high-performance computing drives higher electricity demand worldwide. The company said its combined offering could help global firms secure ...

How Do Tool-Augmented LLM Agents Perform on Real-World Energy Analytics Tasks?

arXiv:2606.26346v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agentic benchmarks have emerged across general-purpose and domain-specific settings, including finance, coding, law, and drug discovery, yet energy-domain evaluations remain largely limited to static knowledge recall. This is a critical gap for a sector that requires live data retrieval, specialized regulatory and market knowledge, and multi-step qu

US electricity generation growth after 15-year plateau signals AI-driven demand shift

After 15 flat years, US electricity generation is growing again. The inflection point is closely tied to rising demand from data centers and AI compute infrastructure. This has direct implications for energy markets, infrastructure investment, and the cost of AI deployment.

How materially could AI shift the economics of new oil developments By Investing.com

The improvements could lift the ... development timelines, and increasing production. Project breakeven prices could also decline by about 15%. The biggest efficiency gains are expected before construction begins, as AI accelerates seismic processing, reservoir modeling, ...

The $7 Trillion AI Boom Is Turning Into The Energy Trade of the Century | OilPrice.com

As a result, on May 5th, Bitzero ... data-center industry that is desperate for cheap electricity. This Canadian cryptominer-turned-energy-provider for AI has already secured more than a gigawatt of low-cost power across Norway, Finland, and the United States, as the money moves into the assets that AI can’t run without. Amazon alone projects $200 billion in 2026 capital spending, ...

AI Data Centers Fuel Boom for Gas Turbine Industry | StartupHub.ai

The AI data center boom is driving demand for gas turbines, with companies like GE Vernova seeing significant growth as tech giants build massive power-hungry f

AI’s Energy Crunch Has Investors Searching for Next IPO Winners

The artificial intelligence boom has a power problem, and Wall Street is betting billions on companies that promise to solve it — even if some of the technology hasn’t been fully developed yet.

People under 30 are most concerned about the environmental impact of data centers | Opinion

The anti-AI backlash among younger people points to what research has consistently shown: Younger generations are very worried about climate change.

Can AI Solve the Sustainability Challenge It Helps Create? The Corporate ESG Strategy | IBTimes UK

AI supports firms in optimising energy, monitoring supply chains, and managing ESG demands, even as its own footprint raises sustainability challenges.

China's five-year energy plan backs AI integration, green power for data centers

China's 15th Five-Year Plan aims to expand the 'AI Plus' initiative by integrating computing infrastructure with energy planning to support data center electricity demand.

AI Data Center Water Use Is Not Solved: Nvidia's Cooling Fix Stops at the Walls

AI data center water use remains unsolved despite Nvidia’s June 2026 DSX closed-loop cooling breakthrough, which cuts on-site water consumption to near zero but leaves fossil fuel power plant water demand — roughly 54% of AI’s total projected water footprint through 2050 — entirely ...

Too cheap to meter? A stochastic analysis of projected future fusion costs

arXiv:2606.26536v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In recent years, technological developments and activities by private actors have led a reemerged discussion of the potential of nuclear fusion to meet growing global energy demands. So far, however, fusion technologies remain at comparatively low development levels and their deployment in commercial power plants is probably still decades away. Regardless, over the last decades, many cost studies have been conducted that estimate the future cost of potential fusion power plants. But to date, there is no systematic and harmonized assessment of these projections. Therefore, this study conducts a stochastic analysis of future fusion power plant costs for three distint technology lines, magnetic confinement, inertial confinement, and magneto-inertial confinement fusion, including cost assessments of different technology maturity levels. These levels are further assessed to determine projected learning rates for future fusion costs. For mature technologies, mean LCOE are determined at 114.6, 110.3, and 143.9 USD per MWh for MCF, ICF, and MIF devices, respectively. This implies learning rates of more than 30%. We find that these projected values are rather optimistic when compared to other literature or comparable technologies like fission. We therefore urge policymakers to caution when potential fusion developers refer to the potential economic competitiveness of fusion power plants.

AI and Climate Change 2026: Energy Footprint vs. Climate Solutions | explainx.ai Blog | explainx.ai

The IEA's 2024 Electricity report ... consumption could reach 1,000 TWh per year by 2026, roughly double 2022 levels. AI workloads are the primary driver of that growth. ... This does not mean AI is single-handedly ruining the climate. The global electricity mix is getting cleaner, and large tech companies are the world's largest buyers of renewable energy. But it does mean that AI infrastructure is now a material factor in global energy demand — too large ...

The AI build-out is driving prices higher for consumers

The race to build up the infrastructure behind artificial intelligence is creating a new source of inflation.

Bitcoin Miners Emerge As Grid Flexibility Tool Amid AI Power Surge, Bloomberg Reports

The rapid expansion of AI infrastructure is placing unprecedented strain on regional power grids, leading to longer interconnection queues and rising electricity prices. Bitcoin miners, which have historically been criticized for their energy consumption, are now being recognized for the grid services they can provide. By participating in demand ...

Capgemini: Utilities Cannot Predict the Energy Demand of AI | Energy Digital

New research from Capgemini reveals ... forecast the energy demand created by the rapid expansion of AI-driven data centres. The report found that 77% of utilities are struggling to predict this demand. Electricity consumption from AI training and inferencing is set to rise ...

New Report Finds Out How Much Water AI Really Uses | IBTimes

Researchers say there is no single number that accurately represents AI's water consumption because it varies based on several factors.

AI Infrastructure Expansion: Energy, Investment & Local Impact

This gap in legislation has led ... growing demand for advanced cooling technologies, such as liquid cooling, which can reduce noise levels but significantly increase the cost of construction. As the industry matures, the focus is shifting toward a more integrated approach that considers infrastructure as a vital public utility. Experts suggest that the future of AI will depend on the ability of governments and private sectors to coordinate on energy grids, water ...

DOJ, Mississippi recast xAI pollution suit as fight over citizen enforcement

The Trump administration and Mississippi are attempting to shift the focus of an NAACP lawsuit against xAI from Clean Air Act violations to a broader legal battle over federalism and citizen standing in court.

Machine learning is revolutionizing weather forecasting -- the next step is a change in how we work

arXiv:2606.25076v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Following the success of machine learning in producing weather predictions with competitive skill compared to complex traditional systems, this article shifts attention from forecast output to the working practices that make prediction systems possible. We argue that machine learning and recent digital technologies will reshape the forecasting value chain: how models are coded and developed, how observations and Earth-system data are exploited, how data and computing are managed, how systems are verified, and how information is created, evaluated and turned into services. We discuss six non-exhaustive areas in which agentic software engineering, open and compressed data, shared verification workflows, interactive computing and generative methods may make modelling, evaluation and service creation faster, more interactive and more widely accessible. These changes will require weather and climate centres to adapt their infrastructures, data stewardship, trust and quality-assurance frameworks, skills and service delivery while maintaining scientific understanding, operational reliability, human expertise and their public-service role.

AI could unlock US$600 billion a year in climate and sustainability value by 2028

A report by Boston Consulting Group and Temasek says artificial intelligence is expanding climate investing beyond venture capital, creating opportunities across growth equity, buyouts and infrastructure capital.

States push back against rising AI-driven electricity infrastructure costs | TechRadar

Today, for the first time, it's ... serious infrastructure proposition. But I don’t think the real story here is about space – it’s about AI, and how it’s altering our global trajectory. Over the last few years, we've seen an extraordinary increase in demand for compute capacity. AI training clusters are growing larger, power requirements are rising, and in many regions the availability of energy, land, and ...

Restoring Incentive Compatibility in Two-Stage Energy Markets with Prosumers

arXiv:2606.25910v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: A central challenge in modern energy market design is the formulation of a strategy-proof imbalance settlement layer that secures both the economic efficiency of the institution and the stability of the power grid. Public data reveals that the day-ahead market is strategically biased below actual consumer demand. Such empirical observations are explained by active prosumers which provide implementable incentives for demand under-reporting. Active prosumers buy energy in the day-ahead market and sell energy in the real-time market for balancing real-time energy deviations. By under-reporting their demand for the day ahead they inflate real-time imbalances and, under uniform pricing, they dispatch their generation assets more profitably. We model the two-stage institution under linear preferences and benchmark it against its associated competitive equilibria. We show that although consumers' incentives for demand under-reporting vanish when the day-ahead market scales, prosumers' incentives remain lower bounded by a positive gain which depends only on the real-time market generation stack and their shares over it. To restore incentive compatibility under the existing informational constraints, we design a leave-one-out contrastive scoring rule-based penalty that is implemented by the day-ahead market operator, incentivizes prosumers to report their demand truthfully and ensures small charges when participating honestly. We illustrate these results with numerical simulations on synthetic data and evaluate our mechanism on real-market data by first rationalizing demand reports as subjective equilibria of the induced game. Our mechanism demonstrates strong incentive alignment while retaining a low cost for honest participation.

Carbon Farming: An Expository, Inter-Disciplinary Survey

arXiv:2603.20674v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Carbon farming is the collection of agricultural best practices specifically designed to maximize the capture and long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide in soils and plant biomass, while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cultivation practices. Carbon farming can be viewed as a promising pathway to simultaneously address climate change mitigation, soil degradation, and farmer welfare. For example, if the entire agricultural cropland in India practices carbon farming, this will spectacularly offset about 50% of emissions from the country's annual transport-sector emissions. However, practical deployment of carbon farming is constrained by scientific challenges, inherent complexity, and fragmented understanding across disciplines. This inter-disciplinary, expository survey offers the first unified treatment of carbon farming for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers. The survey integrates insights from agronomy, soil science, climate science, measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV), economics, carbon markets, and policy design. We begin by establishing the conceptual foundations of soil organic carbon dynamics and agricultural carbon sequestration, and compare carbon farming with the paradigms of sustainable, regenerative, and organic agriculture. We then present a comprehensive landscape analysis of carbon-farming best practices, including both generic and crop-specific interventions, and systematically examine their co-benefits and trade-offs. The paper offers a rigorous review of MRV frameworks, emerging digital MRV technologies, and the carbon-credit project life cycle, followed by a structured analysis of voluntary and compliance carbon markets...

The AI Race Will Be Won Or Lost On Power Infrastructure | ZeroHedge

As power demand grows, the metrics used to evaluate grid infrastructure need to change also. The key question today is whether new resources help grid operate more reliably as load growth accelerates

Why AI Spending Is Favoring Industrials & Utilities | ETF Trends

State Street's Matt Bartolini says industrials and utilities are collecting the first dollars of AI spending while tech valuations stretch.

AI could cut LNG production costs by $80bn a year by 2050 | LNG / LPG | gasworld

The rapid expansion of AI-driven data centres and a wave of industrial reshoring are driving a surge in global electricity demand. Technologies need to scale quickly and securely without impacting the grid or raising costs. Emerging fuel-cell-based systems can be deployed faster and produce high-concentration CO₂ streams that reduce the cost, complexity and energy consumption ...

Why the AI Boom Could Trigger the Biggest Energy Trade in Decades | OilPrice.com

In Finland, Bitzero has secured a massive one-gigawatt development campus in Kokemäki tied directly into low-cost Nordic power infrastructure. The site gives the company room to scale both Bitcoin mining and AI compute operations over time as demand for energized capacity continues accelerating ...

Europe's AI infrastructure: the cost gap that policy cannot paper over

The EU currently hosts roughly 5% of the world's AI compute capacity. The US holds close to 75%. McKinsey projects European data center demand will grow from 10 GW of IT load in 2024 to 35 GW by 2030 — a tripling driven almost entirely by AI. The infrastructure to close that gap does not ...

How AI Could Help Address the Energy Challenge it is Creating

AI, while often cited as a major driver of today's energy demands, could also be seen as an answer to this challenge if used correctly. That was the message from speakers at Schneider Electric's Climate Action Week in London last week, where executives from Schneider Electric, Dell Technologies, Stack Infrastructure ...

ICF Warns Grid Deliverability May Limit AI-Era Power Growth

His reporting focuses on the ... energy procurement, and next-generation data center architectures. He has won recent Azbee awards for news series and government reporting. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Snider covers how hyperscalers, utilities, chipmakers, and infrastructure providers are responding to the rapid rise of AI workloads and global compute demand...

AI demand, nuclear strategy, and grid innovation reshape the global energy sector

Taken together, this week's ... reflect an energy sector in active transition, where AI demand is providing both the economic justification and the urgency for upgrading infrastructure that, in many cases, was built for a different era of power consumption....

AI Data Center Growth Prompts New Capacity Advisory for US Largest Power Grid - Bloomberg

The largest US power grid is creating a new emergency warning as surging data-center demand pushes electricity supplies toward shortages beyond periods of extreme weather.

AI data centers are supercharging a new battery market - WP Intelligence

Flow battery technology could end the dominance of lithium-ion and slash the electricity used by AI computing

US House subcommittee advances bill to shield consumers from AI energy costs

A US House subcommittee on Wednesday advanced bipartisan legislation aimed at shielding American consumers from electricity rate hikes attributable to artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Residents rally against “monster” 300MW AI data center planned in Scotland

More than 800 objections have been filed to plans for a 300MW AI data center in Scotland. Renewable energy firm Apatura wants to build the data center at the Glenbervie Business Centre in Larbert, three miles (4.8km) from Plean, and submitted a planning application for a two-building facility earlier this month. However, residents in the […]

HONEYWELL AND MIT FIND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES CAN HELP INCREASE ENERGY SUPPLY, REDUCE ENERGY PRODUCTION COST BY TENS OF BILLIONS ANNUALLY | Morningstar

The report addresses three focus ... managing demand, and diversifying energy resources and feedstocks. "Meeting the world's growing energy needs will require both investment in new technologies to broaden feedstock options and more efficient use of today's energy infrastructure," said Ken West, President and CEO of Honeywell Process Technology. "Honeywell is helping customers apply AI, automation, ...

The New Energy War: Why The AI Grid Is The New Battleground

Russia can't bomb the West, so it's hacking it. How AI data centers and Texas's ERCOT grid became the next cyberwarfare battleground.

Europe’s extreme heat is shutting down power plants

Europe is in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave, and the grid is being pushed to its limits as people turn to fans and air-conditioning to try to stay cool. Some power plants won’t be online to help handle the load. On June 23, France saw its hottest day since record-keeping began in 1947.…

SoftBank head disputes Musk’s orbital data centre claims

Masayoshi Son told shareholders that energy only makes up a fraction of the overall costs needed to build and deploy data centres. Read more: SoftBank head disputes Musk’s orbital data centre claims

CATL's Jun on Sodium-Ion Batteries and AI Technology

CATL says it is focusing on deploying sodium-ion batteries this year to meet demand for AI-related energy storage. CATL Chief Manufacturing Officer Ni Jun discusses the battery maker's outlook, as well as the prospect of harnessing computing power from idle electric vehicles. He speaks on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Dalian. (Source: Bloomberg)

Taiwan raises power demand forecast on AI, chip industry growth | News | Eco-Business | Asia Pacific

The government expects electricity consumption to rise 2.5 per cent annually through 2035 and plans nearly 26 GW of new thermal capacity to meet demand.

Your Home Could Help Solve AI’s Growing Power Demand

Tesla, Sunrun and Renew Home plan to tap solar panels, batteries, thermostats and other devices installed in millions of homes to meet the energy demands of artificial intelligence.

CoreWeave partners with Conapto to expand AI cloud capacity in Sweden powered by renewable energy

The Essential Cloud for AI today announced a co-location agreement with Conapto, a provider of scalable, secure, and sustainable data centers. The arrangement encompasses two campuses in Stockholm, with initial capacity already online at Stockholm 4 South. Both campuses will be powered by renewable energy sources. The Stockholm deployment will provide AI innovators with access […]

How Many Barrels of Oil Do AI Data Centers Consume on a Daily Basis? | OilPrice.com

AI companies are now scrambling for the same thing oil companies have fought wars over: secure access to energy. JLL estimates global data-center capacity will nearly double by 2030, requiring almost 100 gigawatts of new supply and as much as $3 trillion in combined infrastructure and GPU spending. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects global data-center electricity demand ...

Microsoft (MSFT) And Chevron Build A Huge Power Backing For AI Data Centers

Chevron and Microsoft announced a large co-located natural gas power plant and data center project in the US, focused on supporting AI infrastructure. The project is designed to secure dedicated energy capacity for Microsoft's growing AI data center workloads.

The AI race will be won or lost on power infrastructure | Utility Dive

It is a story about whether the infrastructure beneath the digital economy is prepared for what is coming. If it isn’t, the next major constraint in AI may not be compute at all, but the power systems meant to support it. That may be where the AI race is ultimately won or lost. Texas, facing 438 GW queue, approves initial large-load interconnection process By Robert Walton • June 22, 2026...

The Bottleneck Behind the AI Boom Has Quietly Shifted From Chips to Power

Trane Technologies makes the HVAC and thermal management systems that keep large commercial buildings — and increasingly, data centers — at operating temperature. Its Q1 2026 results put the AI infrastructure connection in plain sight: Americas Commercial HVAC bookings hit an all-time high, ...

UN Chief Says AI Firms Must Reveal Environmental Costs - International United Nations Watch

UN urges AI firms to disclose environmental costs, as AI data centers strain water, power and land with major climate and resource impacts.

Vattenfall partners with Project Enki and ABB to integrate data centers with offshore wind farms across Europe

Swedish energy giant Vattenfall has signed a deal with Project Enki, a European AI data center startup, and electrical services provider ABB to explore the development of offshore data centers directly connected to offshore wind farms. – Vattenfall According to the companies, the concept seeks to power data center infrastructure with renewable power. If realized, […]

Schneider Electric: AI Data Centres Drive Grid Investment | Data Centre Magazine

The expansion of hyperscale data centre facilities and AI workloads is placing new pressures on global electricity grids. During the Climate Innovation Forum at London Climate Action Week 2026, industry leaders discussed how the energy consumption of these digital infrastructure assets can ...

Eco Wave Power gets NVIDIA AI blog spotlight | WAVE Stock News

Eco Wave Power Turns Waves Into Watts With NVIDIA AI Infrastructure and Digital Twins ... The next era of AI will not be defined by compute alone. Its growth will be determined by energy. As accelerated computing scales across AI factories, agentic AI, industrial AI, edge computing and physical AI - including robotics and autonomous systems - global electricity demand ...

EdgeMode plans 300MW natural gas-powered data center campus in Toledo, Spain

Data center firm EdgeMode is looking to expand its footprint in Spain. The company is looking to develop the 300MW Malpica AI project in the town of Mora, in the province of Toledo. – Ayuntamiento de Mora EdgeMode will be working with hydrogen fuel cell developer Bloom Energy to develop a campus geared toward artificial […]

Marathon, BP, other gas stations accused of AI-powered scheme to hike gas prices in US

A lawsuit filed Monday accuses major gas station chains of using an AI-powered tool to artificially inflate gasoline prices in California to increase profit margins.

US data centers’ electricity use could double by 2030, DOE lab says - E&E News by POLITICO

The findings are the first major estimate from the lab on data centers’ future power use during the second Trump administration. “Although successive generations of computing hardware improve in energy efficiency,” the report says, “the scale and growth of computational demand more than offset these efficiency gains, leading to continued increases in absolute electricity consumption...

Chevron moves into power production with Microsoft AI deal

Company signs 20-year agreement to develop data centre in heart of US oil country that could include gas-fired plant

Data centers are a proxy

New polling shows that data centers have become a physical symbol of wider AI anxiety, with nearly half of respondents supporting a temporary construction ban.

Powering Up: How the Energy Sector is Scaling AI and Cyber Resilience in 2026

However, unlocking full value remains a challenge. Legacy infrastructure, data readiness gaps and governance complexity continue to slow progress, reinforcing the importance of strong data foundations and responsible AI frameworks. Anish De, Global Head – Energy, Natural Resources and Chemicals ...

Gas Stations Accused of Using AI to Boost California Prices

A group of California consumers claimed in a lawsuit that gas station owners including Walmart Inc., Marathon Petroleum Corp., BP Plc and 7-Eleven Inc. are using artificial intelligence to illegally manipulate pump prices in the state that already has the highest rates in the US.

Texas lassoes massive Microsoft datacenter - and 20 years of gas turbine emissions

The air turns brown when bit barns come to town … deep in the heart of Texas

The AI power challenge isn't generation. It's grid responsiveness - pv magazine USA

These are impressive projections, but viewing AI’s grid impact as primarily a capacity or demand issue is missing a critical part of the picture. It discounts just how much opportunity there is for the energy industry to meet the challenges facing the country’s power infrastructure, as most ...

AI’s biggest bottleneck is no longer chips — it is electricity

The remarks reflect a broader shift ... advanced chips. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang agrees that power will become one of AI's defining challenges, although he is far more cautious about moving large-scale computing into orbit. Huang described space-based AI computing as "the dream," but warned that today's technology is not yet ready. He noted that modern AI server racks are dominated by cooling systems rather than computing hardware, highlighting ...

Why The Next Phase Of The AI Race May Be Decided By Electricity And Power Infrastructure

As AI data centers expand across the United States, electricity demand is becoming a critical challenge. The next phase of the AI boom could reshape power grids, energy investment and the broader

Intellectia

Surging Power Demand: The International Energy Agency forecasts that data centers' power consumption will double to 945 TWh by 2030, prompting companies like GE Vernova to ramp up investments to meet AI data center needs, despite many utilities facing capital constraints.

NextEra Energy (NEE) Stock Could Be 7.4% Undervalued on AI Power Demand Narrative - Simply Wall St News

NextEra Energy (NEE) is back in focus after recent trading left the stock at $86.75, with returns mixed across different time frames. This has investors reassessing how its utilities and clean energy operations fit into portfolios. See our latest analysis for NextEra Energy.

The AI Arms Race Isn’t About Technology – It’s About Electricity

The bottleneck has shifted from chips to power, and one under-the-radar stock just signed a 15-year, $2.6 billion AI lease that proves the trade is real. The market hasn’t priced it yet.

Why More Data Centers Might Mean Cheaper Electricity | American Enterprise Institute - AEI

Economics is full of counterintuitive insights. Rent control can make housing less affordable. Business failures can strengthen an economy. And, yes, higher demand can sometimes lower prices. That's a possibility worth remembering in the ongoing debates over data centers and electricity bills.

China’s AI power crisis: Green energy goals hit major hurdles

Ensuring reliable electricity for ... infrastructure and power supply networks. China’s AI power crisis: Green energy goals hit major hurdles · A key part of that effort is an ambitious plan to channel more green electricity directly into the rapidly growing data centre industry. Authorities aim for renewables to supply four-fifths of the sector's total power consumption by 2030, a ...

Data centers get a faster path to power, but there's a cost - TheStreet

Speeding up grid connections solves one problem for AI infrastructure. It may create a new one for everyone else's electric bill.

Gas stations accused of algorithmic collusion to raise prices in California

Marathon Petroleum, 7-Eleven, Walmart, Albertsons and other gas stations accepted Kalibrate's invitation to collude to artificially jack up gasoline prices in California through an AI-powered tool.

China's push for green power use in AI projects faces hurdles, experts say | Reuters

China's ​drive to ramp up renewable power for its fast-expanding AI data centre sector is running into ‌hurdles, as industry experts warn that forecasting peak demand remains difficult and grid operators are wary of taking on added risk.

How AI fits in the energy development workflow | Utility Dive

Power consumption is projected to hit record levels again in 2026. And the infrastructure to meet that demand is still years behind. Development teams feel this acutely. Pipelines that used to carry 20 active sites now need to hold 80 to hit the same conversion rate. Project timelines have compressed while headcount hasn't grown to match. Other industries have responded to this kind of pressure by turning to AI. The energy ...

Chevron to Fuel Massive Microsoft Data Center in Texas With Natural Gas in 20-Year AI Power Deal | IBTimes

Chevron has announced a landmark agreement with technology titan Microsoft to supply natural gas-fired electricity to a massive artificial intelligence data center campus in West Texas.

Chinese Grid Operators Resist Plans To Boost Renewables To Power AI | ZeroHedge

"... (data centers) cannot really adjust power consumption load much..."

Companies With Data Centers That May Use More Energy Than Cities

But underlying much of the expected demand surge is the AI data center boom. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, data centers – which house servers that power AI and other computing technology – are the most energy intensive buildings in the country, using as much as 50 times more ...

Your Energy Bill Has an AI Problem and Solar May Be Part of the Answer | The AI Journal

While public debate has largely focused on productivity, employment and innovation, the infrastructure powering AI systems is creating significant and sustained pressure on energy networks worldwide. According to the International Energy Agency, global electricity consumption from data centres ...

Thirsty and power hungry: Australia is in the middle of a datacentre boom – but are they good for the economy?

They’re a key part of the digital and AI economy but they come at a high environmental cost and offer few operational jobs Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast On Mamre Road, in Sydney’s outer western suburbs, there are plans to build a “hyperscale” datacentre that will be one of the biggest in the world. If approved, the 52-hectare site will include six four-storey buildings that stretch 40 metres high, alongside 936 cooling units and 852 diesel backup power generators. Continue reading...

BESS Is becoming the bridge between AI data centers and the grid

For the data center industry, the power conversation has become brutally simple: demand is ready, but the grid is not. AI has changed the scale, speed, and volatility of data center power requirements. Developers are racing to secure capacity, utilities are working through interconnection backlogs, and operators are trying to protect power-dense facilities from outages, […]

German electricity grid equipment maker SGB-SMIT in early IPO talks

Company’s valuation could top €4bn as investors focus on AI and data centre boom

Have Data Centers Raised Your Electric Bill? Causal Evidence from the United States

arXiv:2606.19777v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We estimate that data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modestly in the United States from 2015 to 2024 using an instrumental variables approach. Despite prevailing sentiment, the finding is consistent with economic reasoning: existing large power system fixed costs, economies of scale in transmission and distribution, and de

Verne breaks ground on data center in Mäntsälä, Finland

Verne has broken ground on a new data center in Finland. The company this week announced construction had started on the first 70MW of its data center campus in the Kapuli area of Mäntsälä. – Verne “This is an important step for Verne in Finland,” said Kim Gunnelius, managing director, Finland at Verne. “Mäntsälä brings […]

Australia should 'set the terms' early for data-center boom, minister says

Australia should set clear rules for a rapidly growing data-center sector to capture the benefits of AI while limiting strain on the energy system, Assistant Minister Andrew Charlton said.

Equinix pilots hydrogen power generators in Dublin data centre

'If this pilot delivers what we expect, it adds real momentum to Ireland’s decarbonisation story,' said Equinix's Irish head Peter Lantry. Read more: Equinix pilots hydrogen power generators in Dublin data centre

Optimizing Lithium Production Decisions under Geological, Demand, and Pricing Uncertainties: A POMDP Framework for Multi-Objective Decision Making

arXiv:2606.18598v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Decision making in lithium production is challenging, whether from an investor's perspective or a strategic production standpoint. Determining which mines to open and when to open them involves not only geological and price uncertainties, but also complexities around the choice of extraction method, from direct lithium extraction to hard rock mining. Prior work explored models of this problem and different methods to optimize mining decisions; these models did not account for uncertainty in pricing, uncertainty in demand, or different mining technologies to extract lithium. Incorporating different pricing models and extraction technology into these models enables more robust strategies for determining not only when and where to open a mine, but also which method of production to pursue. We frame the problem as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) and solve using belief state planning methods to get optimal decision making. In our study, we show that POMDP solvers outperform human inspired heuristics by dynamically adapting to shifting lithium price regimes (static, linear, exponential, and stochastic) through belief state planning and explicit uncertainty management. By optimally sequencing exploration, production, and technology choice, the framework achieves higher demand fulfillment and more balanced economic environmental outcomes over the projects lifetime in all different pricing and deposit scenarios.

Criteria for the economic viability of fusion power plants

arXiv:2604.07367v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Commercial fusion energy requires frameworks to assess both the scientific and economic viability of a wide variety of fusion concepts. Inspired by the Lawson criterion's ability to universally describe fusion energy gain, a generalized framework is developed to determine the economic gain of fusion power plants. The model exploits temporal equilibrium, and engineering and cost parameters normalized to the energy capture surface. The derived criteria for economic gain are therefore independent of the power plant's absolute power, impartial to the particulars of its fusion technology, and can be applied to any fusion confinement concept. The derivation of the economic gain factor, $Q_{econ}$, results in nonlinear equations with ten controlling normalized design parameters ranging from fusion power density and surface component lifetime to energy fluence, price of energy, and component efficiency and cost. These ten controlling parameters are varied over a wide range to provide high-level insights in design, finance and operational tradeoffs that improve the prospects for economically viable fusion energy.

Analysing drivers and interdependencies in European electricity markets using XAI

arXiv:2606.19118v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Electricity markets are inherently complex systems characterised by strong nonlinearities, high-dimensional interactions, and increasing interdependence across regions. While deep neural networks (DNNs) have demonstrated strong predictive capabilities for electricity prices, their lack of interpretability limits their usefulness for understanding the underlying drivers of price formation. This paper addresses this gap by combining DNN models with explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) techniques to analyse the determinants of electricity prices across 39 European bidding zones. We employ SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) to quantify feature contributions and apply and extend SSHAP, an aggregation framework to improve interpretability in high-dimensional settings. The analysis identifies that renewable energy sources, particularly solar, play a disproportionately important role in price formation despite their lower share in total power generation. Gas prices remain a dominant and consistent driver across electricity markets, while interconnections significantly shape price dynamics, highlighting the strong interdependence of European electricity systems. In addition, a synthetic EU-wide electricity market is constructed to explore the counterfactual scenario of a fully integrated market with a single price.

US Acts to Speed Up Power Grid Hook-Ups for AI Data Centers

US regulators have taken their biggest step yet to speed the connection of data centers to the country’s grids while simultaneously attempting to slow surging utility bills that have angered Americans.

Seeking to boost AI data centers, NTIA preparing report on regulatory obstacles

The NTIA is preparing a report on regulatory hurdles and infrastructure bottlenecks affecting the construction of data centers needed for AI development.

Firstcolo breaks ground on data center in Rosbach vor der Höhe, Germany

Data center operator Firstcolo has begun construction of a new 24MW data center in the town of Rosbach vor der Höhe in the state of Hesse, central Germany. Named FRA7, the facility north of Frankfurt am Main will cover an area of 124,360 sq ft (11,555 sqm) and is intended to support cloud, AI, and […]

Energy Is A Trillion-Dollar Problem for the AI Boom

/PRNewswire/ -- If you've been following in the AI boom, you probably are aware of the same names everyone else is. NVIDIA for the chips. Microsoft, Google and...

SoftBank and OpenAI Launch AI-Powered Cybersecurity Service to Protect Japan's Critical Infrastructure

SoftBank and OpenAI have introduced a new AI-powered service in Tokyo to protect Japan's critical infrastructure from cyber threats, initially targeting around 100 firms.

Only half of US datacenter capacity planned for 2026 is actually under construction

Another fun example of AI hype and reality colliding

Investors shift strategies in AI infrastructure financing as $50B funding gap looms

Bitcoin miners face a $50B funding gap in AI infrastructure as investors embrace crypto-native protocols and REIT-style models to finance the buildout.

Fast-tracked power plants drive AI boom with limited scrutiny

When these facilities connect to local infrastructure, even partially, the costs of road maintenance, water supply upgrades, and emergency services often land on local and state taxpayers rather than on the companies generating billions in AI revenue. Current projections suggest US data center electricity usage could reach 12% of total US power consumption by 2028. Data centers are already responsible for over 4% of US electricity use. The broader energy ...

Ofgem considers power curtailment rules for data centers during grid stress – report

The UK’s energy regulator, Ofgem, is considering whether data centers should be required to cut power consumption during periods of system stress. – Getty Images According to reporting from Bloomberg, the potential move is part of a broader overhaul of the UK’s grid connection process. The new policy would require mandatory curtailment as a backstop […]

Consumer Reports: Did the AI boom raise your electric bill?

A hidden cost of artificial intelligence is leading to higher bills and putting a strain on everyday people.

AI Factories Demand Grid Flexibility for Sustainable Growth

New power flexibility solutions address escalating energy demands from AI data centers, crucial for global business infrastructure and supply chain resilience. ... The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is fundamentally reshaping global business operations, from supply chain logistics to customer engagement in omnichannel retail. However, this growth places unprecedented demands on existing electricity grids, presenting a critical challenge ...

US Looks to Expand Nuclear Power as AI Drives Up Energy Demand

Ho K. Nieh, chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Committee, said that the NRC has taken 'major steps' to reform its framework for licensing nuclear plants and how it conducts regulatory checks as the Trump administration looks to increase the amount of nuclear energy projects in the United States. Nieh said that despite reforms the NRC remains a 'strong regulator' and could not yet reveal which regu

AI Data Centers Become City-Scale Infrastructure, Prompting New Industry Playbook | Engineering News-Record

Weus identifies another challenge: the operational complexity of managing generation and storage assets historically owned and operated by utilities. "It's not so simple to just buy some gas and batteries, and then you're going to be good to be off-grid," she says. KEYWORDS: AI ASHRAE Data Centers energy infrastructure ...

Mapping the causal structure of price formation in Texas's transitioning electricity market

arXiv:2604.14257v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Renewable deployment and rising demand from electrification and large digital loads are transforming electricity markets. However, how these developments reshape electricity price dynamics remains poorly understood, leaving system planners, capacity investors, and market participants reliant on assumptions from a thermal-dominated era that may no longer hold. We use causal discovery to study the evolution of wholesale electricity prices in Texas, which is undergoing rapid transformation. Our findings overturn the view of Texas as a gas-price-driven market, demonstrating that wind generation has become the dominant causal driver of day-ahead prices, with effects more than three times greater than those of natural gas. Yet wind's price-suppressing effect is weakening during peak periods, and wind growth redistributes congestion costs to distant load centres. Furthermore, rising load in South and West Texas alters system prices and regional differentials. Uncovering the evolving spatiotemporal nature of causal drivers, our analysis reveals that the pace, geographic siting, and relative scale of new generation and large loads will be decisive for future electricity price risks, infrastructure needs, and investments.

Federated Fair Trade Energy: Speculative Fabulation for a Planet with Limits

arXiv:2606.17322v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: What happens to permacomputing when electricity grids shift to decentralised green energy, and local communities and municipalities have increased governance over this vital public service? Electricity and computational networks are more than just separate systems that plug together. Shifts to renewable energy generation in the grid are impacting computational systems, and computational demands on electrical power are impacting the electricity grid; one infrastructure limits the other. Permacomputing research tends to focus on 'off-grid' or 'behind-the-meter' energy. This sacrifices some of the social justice benefits that the public electricity grid, managed and regulated for universal service, was designed to provide. Our paper uses empirically-grounded 'speculative fabulation' to identify research opportunities in permacomputing that open up when energy systems are federated across communities. The speculative fabulation takes the form of an interview between the energy manager of a future energy island in the North Sea and a permacomputing podcaster. This allows us to conceive of computing-grid integration in tractable social and ecological terms, and introduce a notion of 'fair trade energy'.

Energy Security, AI and Infrastructure: Key Takeaways from Bloomberg's Executive Briefing - Energy Workforce & Technology Council

Energy Workforce & Technology Council President Molly Determan recently joined Bloomberg's Energy Security Executive Briefing in Houston, where conversations ranged from tensions in the Middle East to the growing power demands driven by AI and data center development.

Justice Department aims to block lawsuit against xAI's polluting data centers - The Washington Post

The Justice Department has moved to stop litigation over x AI 's data center pollution in Mississippi, having also intervened in a separate lawsuit against Elon Musk's company in Colorado.

Two mayors, one $10 billion AI data center, and a growing divide in small-town Texas

What happens when a megaproject lands next door—but your town has no authority to stop or shape it?

Risk-Aware LLM Agents for Geospatial Data Retrieval: Design and Preliminary Adversarial Evaluation

arXiv:2606.15077v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present an LLM-driven framework for retrieving remote sensing data from cloud-based geospatial catalogues using natural language queries. The system converts user intent into structured API calls, enabling efficient access to satellite imagery and environmental datasets. The architecture integrates three agents: Guardrail for safety and policy enforcement, General-QA for intent interpretation, and Recommender-Analyst for schema-aware API call generation. This coordinated design ensures reliable, semantically aligned interaction with external data services. The modular framework is portable across platforms through API schema substitution and supports applications in environmental monitoring, disaster response, and climate analysis. It establishes a scalable interface between user intent and geospatial infrastructure, enabling streamlined and automated Earth observation workflows. Preliminary experiments under adversarial multi-turn settings show that prompt-level safety instructions improve robustness, although rare high-impact failures persist in API manipulation scenarios and highlight the need for adaptive, system-level defenses that balance safety, usability, and cost efficiency, which motivates the use of our intercept-level Guardrail agent.

AI's Private Power Rush: Why Investors Are Watching | Whalesbook

AI data centers are building private power plants to speed up growth. Learn why this 'off-grid' trend creates new regulatory and ESG risks for investors.

Insight: Fast-tracked power plants fuel AI boom, with little public scrutiny | Reuters

From the front window of her house, Breanne Kidd once watched the sun rise over farmland as she sipped coffee before toddlers arrived at her home daycare.

How the fight over US datacenters is scrambling this state’s politics: ‘We don’t want it’

Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s governor, squares off with state lawmakers over the facilities powering an AI boom A controversial haunted house near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, taps into its dark history every fall to scare tens of thousands of visitors. In 1968, a local news station documented appalling conditions for disabled people in the red-brick buildings on the banks of Schuylkill River. Residents were found naked and emaciated at what was then known as the Pennhurst state school and hospital. The institution shut its doors permanently in 1987 after a lawsuit over inhumane conditions. By 2010, a Halloween attraction stood in its place, and Pennhurst asylum’s previous owner suggested during its early years that he wanted to spook guests by repurposing the hospital’s surgical lights and medical cabinets to use as props. Continue reading...

Amazon owns up to using 2.5bn gallons of H2O in its bit barns last year

The West's biggest online shopping mall comes clean about its datacenter water usage.

AI efficiency gains come at a high energy cost

Technology is tackling complexities that have held back progress in cutting energy waste

AI holds the key to faster battery tech development

Opportunity to transform materials discovery could outweigh risks of high energy consumption

Gartner: AI Drives 26% Data Centre Power Surge to 565TWh | Data Centre Magazine

As AI server deployments accelerate, Gartner forecasts global data centre energy consumption will reach 565TWh this year, stressing global grid capacity

Data4 confirms €5bn plan for 700MW AI data center in northern France

Data4 has confirmed plans for a €5 billion ($5.8bn), 700MW, data center at a former steelworks in northern France The Brookfield-owned developer will build the campus, which it says will be its largest data center to date, in the city of Escaudain, in the Hauts-de-France region. Located at the Soufflantes industrial park, the data center […]

Battery Bidding under Price Uncertainty in Wholesale Electricity Markets

arXiv:2606.14050v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Grid-scale batteries increasingly influence outcomes in wholesale electricity markets, but their observed bid patterns remain difficult to interpret. In particular, bids that appear to reflect strategic withholding may instead arise from rational operations under price uncertainty and risk management. We develop an asset-level model of a price-taking battery that submits stepwise buy and sell bid curves in the day-ahead market under a finite set of price scenarios. The battery chooses quantity--price pairs to maximize a mean--CVaR objective subject to physical and market constraints. A direct formulation is a mixed-integer linear program, but we show that its integer decisions can be removed, yielding an exact linear programming reformulation suitable for empirical analysis. Our empirical results deliver three insights. First, withholding behavior can arise even without market power, because scarce stored energy and uncertain future prices increase the value of holding energy. Second, the effect of uncertainty depends on the state of charge: when stored energy is scarce, greater uncertainty raises sell bid prices, whereas when stored energy is abundant it can lower them. Third, risk management reshapes bid curves into layered structures that secure profitable execution across a broad set of scenarios while preserving some exposure to rare but valuable price spikes.

Elizabeth Warren Demands Answers From BlackRock, Blackstone, KKR Over Data Center Deals - Benzinga

Last week, Warren wrote on X, “AI data centers are doubling electricity demand,” arguing that the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure is increasing pressure on the U.S. power grid. She added, “Private equity executives see a cash grab.” · Warren claimed those firms are acquiring utility companies to benefit from rising energy ...

Consumer Reports experts: Data centers could impact power bills

Consumer Reports experts say growing energy demand from data centers could contribute to higher electricity costs, though other factors also affect rates.

Gartner: Data Centres Face 26% Energy Spike From AI Servers | AI Magazine

Electricity consumption will jump 26% by the end of 2026 for data centres as energy infrastructure struggles to support the global AI boom, says new report

More Power To You – And To The Datacenters

People are rightly freaking out about how their electric bills are on the rise at the same time as m ...

Global data center energy consumption rivals entire countries. Here’s what to know about what they mean for your electricity and climate as they boom in Tennessee.

Data centers have been around for decades, but according to experts, many of the facilities go beyond what has been traditionally seen in the U.S. — and can come with a steep cost.

Found this interesting resource on Data Centers in the US

A resource mapping data centers in the US, including information on tax incentives and industry positioning.

AI’s environmental paradox: Progress at a cost - Business Daily

Training a single large AI model can consume as much electricity as hundreds of households use in a year. Data centres, the backbone of AI, are expanding rapidly.

America just committed $1.2 trillion to fix its infrastructure. We’re still flying blind

A data center secretly drained 29 million gallons from a drought-stricken Georgia county. Digital twins could have caught it in real time.

Inside the race to rebuild America’s fuel supply chain for a ‘second nuclear age’

A ‘second nuclear age’ looms, but the industry faces a major uranium problem.

KKR, Kuwait Investment Authority, Nvidia, and Vistra launch Helix Digital Infrastructure

The platform has 10 billion US Dollars worth resources for the development of data centers and energy infrastructures for AI On 11 June, Thursday, Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) with NYSE-listed firms KKR, Nvidia and Vistra annouced the launch of Helix Digital Infrastructure (HDI), a platform with 10 billion US Dollars resources to invest in key […]

Data centers become flashpoint in debate over AI growth

Mounting resistance to the rapid expansion of data centers to power artificial intelligence is spreading into city halls and statehouses.

The Data-Center Panic Is Overblown - The Atlantic

America has needed more and better energy infrastructure since before data centers became an ongoing concern. “We’re putting pressure on a sector which itself has not prospered,” Mandel, the economist, said. But a lack of supply is not inevitable. Critics often seize on the fact that ...

UN Scientists Warn AI Could Become a Major Environmental Burden by 2030 - Prince EA | Filmmaker, Speaker, Creator UN Issues AI Warning After New Data Reveals Major Impact on the Planet and Its Resources

The report calls for governments to integrate AI infrastructure into energy planning, water management strategies, and land-use policies. It encourages companies to prioritize efficiency by design, improve transparency around environmental impacts, and consider resource consumption when developing products. Investors are urged to treat electricity demand, carbon emissions, water use, and land requirements ...

AI firms risk 1.3 bn people's water needs by 2030, bombshell UN report says urgent action needed | Hindustan Times

Data centers that power AI require huge amounts of water to cool servers and support their operations. Lead author Miriam Aczel said in an UNU-INWEH press release cited by TIME report, researchers were surprised that some energy options that look environmentally friendly from a carbon perspective can actually be worse for water resources. Aczel warned that focusing only on carbon emissions could create the false impression that renewable energy makes AI infrastructure ...

Powering the Machine: The AI Energy Buildout Is Just Beginning | by Joseph Orefice | Jun, 2026 | Medium

Data centers have already lapped ... times, and the acceleration is not slowing. Goldman Sachs projects data centers will consume 8–9% of all US electricity by 2030, up from roughly 3% today. The entire state of California uses about 280 TWh per year. The AI buildout will require energy on a scale that dwarfs every comparison most people reach for. The IEA’s base case: data center consumption roughly doubles ...

Manufacturers strike record $1B deals to boost AI capacity

Applied Digital locks in over $31B in AI infrastructure contracts as Bitcoin miners pivot to HPC, with industry-wide deals reaching $65B by late 2025.

J&V Energy moves into AI data center power infrastructure to tap Taiwan's AI electricity boom

J&V Energy Technology is deepening its push into green power trading, energy storage, and overseas markets, while moving to capture new opportunities in AI energy infrastructure as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and data centers drive sustained · Some subscribers prefer to save their ...

When AI Growth Meets Infrastructure Reality - News

This is what many in the industry now refer to as the AI Energy Wall. The term describes a growing mismatch between demand for AI capacity and the physical resources required to support it. Organizations are increasingly running into challenges such as: Growing power requirements from AI and high-density workloads · Cooling systems that were not designed for modern AI infrastructure...

Farmer donates land for a park, city sells it for data center development

A land donation intended for a public park was instead sold by the city for data center development, turning a $10 gift into $10 million.

Materealistic? How European energy system models exceed raw material reserves

arXiv:2606.12201v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Decarbonising energy systems reduces emissions and fossil fuel dependency, but expanding renewables increases demands for critical raw materials. Most energy system models, however, neglect material demands, putting the material feasibility of energy scenarios at question. We combine a systematic review of 59 highly decarbonised European energy system modelling studies with a quantitative ex-post assessment of material demands for 5 key technologies and 19 materials. We find that material demands exceed Europe's population-based shares of current global reserves for seven materials (Ga, In, Ir, Te; less pronounced for Ag, Se, V), in particular if multiple sectors of the energy system are considered. Competing non-energy demand further amplifies the scarcity, while technological innovation can either alleviate or intensify it. We conclude that energy efficiency, recycling, expanding reserves and technological innovation may only partly address the identified shortages and call for energy sufficiency measures to achieve sustainability in the energy-material nexus.

FirstEnergy wants AI data centers to foot the bill for new grid upgrades as energy demand surges

Rapid AI-driven data center growth is intensifying the dispute over who should pay for grid spending.

Did the AI boom raise your electric bill? | Consumer Reports

Electric bills are climbing across the country, jumping more than 20 percent in some states since last year.

The AI opportunity | AI growth zones

The UK’s AI infrastructure race is accelerating. As hyperscalers, governments, and energy providers compete to secure power, land, and connectivity, a new generation of AI Growth Zones is reshaping where – and how – the next wave of AI-ready data centers will be built. But as traditional FLAP-D markets face mounting pressure from grid constraints, […]

AI is set to consume up to 600 billion gallons of water by 2030 — rising energy consumption primarily to blame as data center power demands rise | Tom's Hardware

As GPU power demands almost double with every generation, most water usage will come where the power is generated.

The Weitzman Premium on the Social Cost of Carbon

arXiv:2502.01394v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Preference heterogeneity massively increases the social cost of carbon. We call this the Weitzman premium. Uncertainty about an exponential discount rate implies a hyperbolic discount rate, which in the near term is equal to the average discount rate but in the long term falls to the minimum discount rate. We generalise Weitzman's (2001, AER) gamma discounting to zero-inflation and two dimensions but find that the analytical solution is a poor approximation of the non-parametric heterogeneity. We calibrate the pure rate of time preference and the inverse of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution of 79,273 individuals from 76 countries and compute the corresponding social cost of carbon. Compared to the social cost of carbon for average time preferences, the average social cost of carbon is 6 times as large in the base calibration, and up to 200 times as large in sensitivity analyses.

Startup’s nuclear-inspired cooling system could make data centers more sustainable

A new cooling system inspired by nuclear technology could significantly improve the sustainability of data centers.

UN Report Warns AI's Rising Energy, Water Use Threatens Global Resources

A UN report highlights that AI could consume up to 3% of global electricity by 2030, doubling current usage and straining water supplies for cooling.

What AI and data centres can learn from the energy sector's scars - Digital Journal

Energy spent 60 years learning what happens when projects skip community engagement, and AI is now repeating the same mistakes

Accounting for AI Inference in Corporate GHG Inventories: A Four-Tier Methodology for Scope 3 Category 1 Reporting

arXiv:2606.10660v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI inference services -- API subscriptions, enterprise chat tools, and SaaS products with embedded AI features -- fall unambiguously within Scope 3 Category 1 under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which requires disclosure for fiscal years starting January 2024. Yet no standardised methodology exists for including them in corporate GHG inventories. Current practice either omits the category entirely or applies a generic economic input-output (EEIO) factor calibrated to the ICT sector as a whole, overestimating AI inference emissions by 10-40x relative to physically derived alternatives. We propose a four-tier framework that matches estimation precision to the data organisations can realistically obtain, progressing from direct token-based physical estimation -- using GPU energy benchmarks and regional grid carbon intensities -- down to a spend-based EEIO fallback for services where no usage data exists. Emission factors are derived from peer-reviewed GPU energy benchmarks (ML.ENERGY Leaderboard v3), confirmed grid carbon intensities (EPA eGRID 2023; Ember 2023), and published water use effectiveness data (Li et al., 2025). Applied to a 200-person European firm, the framework yields a total below 1 tCO2e, illustrating that the compliance challenge is methodological rather than magnitude-driven. We further document a water-carbon trade-off that current ESG tools do not surface: Sweden's hydro-dominated grid delivers the lowest carbon intensity in our dataset but the highest water footprint, with direct implications for data centre location strategy.

GM thinks EVs can help offset AI’s energy suck with vehicle-to-grid tech

General Motors is exploring how electric vehicle batteries can be used to support the grid and offset the high energy demands of AI data centers.