Climate

Microsoft powers AI ambitions with 400 MW solar purchase

Microsoft has added another 389 megawatts of renewable power to its portfolio as the tech giant scrambles to meet the power demands required to match its AI ambitions.  The additional renewable power spans three solar projects developed by EDP Renewables North America — two in southern Illinois and one outside Austin, Texas. Microsoft is buying […]

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Tracking the EV battery factory construction boom across North America

The onshoring of battery manufacturing for EVs started as a trickle during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then it turned into a tsunami. In 2019, just two battery factories were operating in the United States with another two under construction. Today there are about 34 battery factories either planned, under construction, or operational in the country. Former

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Microsoft signs massive carbon credit deal with reforestation startup Chestnut Carbon

Microsoft announced Thursday that it’s buying over 7 million tons of carbon credits from Chestnut Carbon. The 25-year deal would enable Chestnut Carbon to reforest 60,000 acres of land across Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, Axios reported. Recently, the tech company has struggled to rein in its carbon emissions as AI has driven a surge in

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Climate change ignited LA’s wildfire risk. These startups want to extinguish it

Climate change increased the likelihood of the recent Southern California wildfires by 35%, according to a new study published by World Weather Attribution, a decade-old international group of climate scientists and other experts.  The study comes as Los Angeles residents start to rebuild their lives in the wake of catastrophic fires that erupted earlier this

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Solar startup Niko is building Mexico’s first virtual power plant

When Edoardo Dellepiane and Raffaele Sertorio founded Niko Energy in 2023, they saw ample opportunity in Mexico’s underdeveloped solar market. Despite the fact that many parts of the country are bathed in sunlight, it has strikingly few solar installations. After more than a year of helping solar installers sell, plan, and finance panels for residential

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How DeepSeek’s efficient AI could stall the nuclear renaissance

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek stunned the world with the release of its R1 model, which appears to perform nearly as well as leading models from Google and OpenAI, despite the company’s claim that it used a relatively modest number of GPUs to train it. DeepSeek’s relative efficiency has experts and investors questioning whether AI really

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Lydian can make aviation fuel wherever there’s CO2 and electricity

Jet fuel is a modern wonder, allowing commercial airplanes to carry hundreds of passengers halfway around the world and military aircraft to regularly break the speed of sound. Yet jet fuel as we know it might be on the chopping block as the world strives to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. Commercial aviation is responsible for

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Stargate will use solar and batteries to power $100B AI venture

The massive $100 billion Stargate joint venture will reportedly be powered, at least in part, by solar and batteries. The renewable power installations will be built by SoftBank-backed SB Energy, according to a report from Bloomberg, though they’re unlikely to be the venture’s sole source of energy. Stargate is a partnership between OpenAI, Oracle, and

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Bedrock Energy wants geothermal to make data centers cooler and offices more comfortable

Oil and gas isn’t the only source of energy lurking under our feet. Drill deep enough and the Earth’s temperature stays consistent enough that it can be a source of heating and cooling for homes, offices, and data centers. But in many regions, geothermal wells today bottom out at around 500 feet, a limitation that

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Amperesand targets data centers as the next big customer for its solid-state transformers

With data centers expected to consume as much as 12% of electricity in the U.S. by 2028, it’s no surprise that tech companies are looking for power no matter the source, whether it be nuclear, renewables, or something else entirely. But solar produces a very different type of electric current from a nuclear plant, and

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