TT#15 – Data Center Emissions
Before Big Tech gets much farther along in their heedless pursuit of gas-powered data centers, we ought to have a proper public debate about whether having AI is worth throwing the climate under the bus.
Before Big Tech gets much farther along in their heedless pursuit of gas-powered data centers, we ought to have a proper public debate about whether having AI is worth throwing the climate under the bus.
Batteries are being deployed at a record pace all over the world, helping to soak up wind and solar generation instead of curtailing it, while helping to stabilize the grid and push fossil fuels off it. But the boom is really just beginning.
The bulk of renewable energy and storage capacity added to the grid thus far has been from large, utility-scale systems. But the potential for smaller distributed energy resources (DERs) is enormous, and some regions of the world are figuring out how to unlock it.
Most media organizations are still failing to make the critical link between climate change and the wildfires, record heat, and other climate disasters we are witnessing, but a few are getting it right. And new research offers further guidance on effective climate messaging.
As data centers continue to be built across the US and elsewhere, popular resistance to them is mounting in reaction to rising grid power costs and resource demands. Accordingly, regulators and legislators are finally beginning to respond.
The summer of 2026 is bringing the most compelling argument yet for the energy transition: Intolerable, deadly, damaging heat.
A selection of new tools and databases offer excellent free resources for energy transition researchers, modelers, and advocates.
Climate and energy transition campaigners are softening their language and avoiding confrontation when they should be increasing their ambition and vigorously delivering messages that are proven to work.
While the Trump administration has embroiled itself in multiple military conflicts in pursuit of an “energy dominance” based on the fuels that are getting rapidly phased out, China is seizing the opportunity to dominate in the energy transition solutions that are displacing them.
Four recent reports detail how the energy transition is continuing to accelerate, with wind and solar utterly dominating new generation capacity, electrification expanding, and fossil fuels getting phased out.
There’s a new wave of chatter and press coverage about carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. But not because it’s now a real climate solution.
Global oil inventories are approaching critically low levels, while oil prices remain remarkably modest. So what gives? We examine the data in search of a clue to what happens next.
One of the most illuminating ways of understanding what needs to be done is to think about how individual countries can navigate their own “mid-transitions.”
We review the arguments for and against the idea that the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz will accelerate the global energy transition.
What this new site is all about, and why I’m doing it.