Energy and Climate

The House passed a bill meant to protect consumers from higher electricity rates caused by data centers in one of its final votes before the midterms. The bill passed under a procedure that fast-tracks noncontroversial legislation and requires a two-thirds majority vote.

Communications service providers are pursuing improvements to their sustainability metrics, with some aiming for net-zero carbon emission targets. Beyond carbon emissions, reducing electricity consumption will have a lasting impact on operators, consumers, and society at large.

President Donald Trump heralded a historic expansion of the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, bringing more than 200 additional utilities, data center developers, cooperatives, and states into this growing national commitment. The goal is clear: ensure the growth of data centers powering America’s AI dominance will not raise electricity bills for American households and businesses.

Electricity demand is becoming the clearest measure of the AI industry's extraordinary expansion and a test of how long that pace can last. The huge amount of energy required for AI is raising questions about whether the industry's push toward ever-larger models is producing benefits that justify these growing resource demands. In recent interviews, top sustainability executives at tech companies didn't directly answer if they would reconsider growth in the face of environmental concerns. The potential for AI to improve people's lives and c

Sen Ed Markey (D-MA), member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and co-chair of the Senate Environmental Justice Caucus, released a discussion draft of legislation that would create a national framework to prevent increased energy costs, pollution, and adverse health harms related to the rapid buildout of data centers and associated fossil fuel infrastructure. The Protecting Communities from Data Center Impacts Act would:

The Federal Communications Commission has approved plans by a start-up company to test a satellite that would use a 60-foot mirror to reflect sunlight back to Earth after dark, as part of a project the company says would power solar farms, provide light for rescue workers, and illuminate city streets. In a license issued on July 9, the FCC gave the green light for Reflect Orbital of Hawthorne (CA) to launch its Eärendil-1 satellite into low Earth orbit.

Virginia has approved what appears to be the nation’s first tax on data center electricity use. A legislative deal, which ends months of budget negotiations, imposes a new charge on the power used by data centers in the Commonwealth as of July 1.

In late September 2024, Hurricane Helene made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast and drove more than 400 miles inland, into the southern Appalachians, mountain country that does not expect hurricanes. The storm devastated valleys and hollows. Roads were washed out, and in many places the power stayed off for weeks. In Henderson County, North Carolina, local internet provider Morris Broadband went dark. For 80 hours, or more than three days, its network was down.

Forty mayors from around the world have signed onto a pact to try to shape how urban data centers are built and operated. It’s their vision for how urban data center development can be done sustainably—and not at the expense of their cities’ natural resources, energy prices or climate targets. C40 Cities, an alliance of nearly 100 cities seeking to impact climate change, launched it during London Climate Action Week.

If you hang out in any even vaguely AI-skeptical parts of the Internet, you’ve probably stumbled on plenty of memes and posts premised on data centers’ insatiable thirst for water to power evaporative cooling.