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Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and the rest only have so much political capital to spend.
When Donald Trump first became a serious Presidential candidate in 2015, many big tech leaders sounded the alarm. When the U.S. threatened to exit the Paris Agreement for the first time, companies including Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook (now Meta) took out full page ads in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal urging Trump to stay in. He didn’t — and Elon Musk, in particular, was incensed.
But by the time specific climate legislation — namely the Inflation Reduction Act — was up for debate in 2022, these companies had largely clammed up. When Trump exited Paris once more, the response was markedly muted.
Now that the IRA’s tax credits face clear and present threats, this same story is playing out again. As the Senate makes its changes to the House’s proposed budget bill, tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon are keeping quiet, at least publicly, about their lobbying efforts. Most did not respond to my request for an interview or a statement clarifying their position, except to say they had “nothing to share on this topic,” as Microsoft did.
That’s not to say they have no opinion about the fate of clean energy tax credits. Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon have all voluntarily set ambitious net-zero emissions targets that they’re struggling to meet, largely due to booming data center electricity demand. They’re some of the biggest buyers of solar and wind energy, and are investing heavily in nuclear and geothermal. All of these energy sources are a whole lot more accessible with tax credits than without.
There’s little doubt the tech companies would prefer an abundant supply of cheap, clean energy. Exactly how much they’re willing to fight for it is the real question.
The answer may come down to priorities. “It’s hard to overstate how much this race for AI has just completely changed the business models and the way that these big tech companies are thinking about investment,” Jeff Navin, co-founder of the climate-focused government affairs firm Boundary Stone Partners, told me. “While they’re obviously going to be impacted by the price of energy, I think they’re even more interested and concerned about how quickly they can get energy built so that they can build these data centers.”
The tech industry has shown much more reluctance to stand up to Trump, period, this time around. As the president has moved from a political outsider to the central figure in the Republican party, hyperscalers have increasingly curried his favor as they advocate against actions that could pose an existential risk to their business — think tighter regulations on the tech sector or AI, or tariffs on key supplies made in Asia.
As Navin put it to me, “When you have a president who has very strong opinions on wind turbines and randomly throws companies’ names in tweets in the middle of the night, do you really want to stick your neck out and take on something that the president views as unpopular if you’ve got other business in front of him that could be more impactful for your bottom line?”
It is undeniably true that the AI-driven data center boom is pushing these companies to look for new sources of clean power. Last week Meta signed a major nuclear deal with Constellation Energy. Microsoft is also partnering with Constellation to reopen Three Mile Island, while Google and Amazon have both announced investments in companies developing small modular reactors. Meta, Google, and Microsoft are also investing in next-generation geothermal energy startups. (On Wednesday morning, Pennsylvania’s Talen Energy announced an expanded power purchase agreement with Amazon, for nearly 2 gigawatts of nuclear power through 2042.)
But while the companies are eager to tout these partnerships, Navin suspects most of their energy lobbying is now being directed towards efforts such as permitting reform and building out transmission infrastructure. Publicly available lobbying records confirm that these are indeed focus areas, as they’re critical to bringing data centers online quickly, regardless of how they’re powered and whether that power is subsidized. “They’re not going to stop construction on an energy project that has access to electricity just because that electricity is marginally more expensive,” Navin told me. “There’s just too much at stake.”
Tech companies have lobbied on numerous budget, tax, sustainability, and clean energy issues thus far this year. Amazon’s lobbying report is the only one to specifically call out efforts on “renewable energy tax credits,” while Meta cites “renewable energy policy” and Microsoft name-drops the IRA. But there’s no hard and fast standard for how companies describe the issues they’re lobbying on or what they’re looking to achieve. And perhaps most importantly, the reports don’t disclose how much money they allot to each issue, which would illuminate their priorities.
Lobbying can also happen indirectly, via industry groups such as the Clean Energy Buyers Association and the Data Center Coalition. Both have been vocal advocates for preserving the tax credits. The Wall Street Journal recently detailed a lobbying push by the latter — which counts Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google among its most prominent members — that involved meetings with about 30 Republican senators and a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
DCC didn’t respond to my request for an interview. But CEBA CEO Rich Powell told me, “If we take away these incentives right now, just as we’re getting the rust off the gears and getting back into growth mode for the electricity economy, we’re really concerned about price spikes.”
The leader of another industry group, Advanced Energy United, shared Powell’s concern that passing the bill would mean higher electricity prices. Taking away clean energy incentives would ”fundamentally undercut the financing structure for — let’s be frank — the vast majority of projects in the interconnection queue today,” Harry Godfrey, the managing director of AEU, told me.
Being part of an industry association is by no means a guarantee of political alignment on every issue. Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon are also members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — by far the largest lobbying group in the U.S. — which has a long history of opposing climate action and the IRA itself. Apple even left the Chamber in 2009 due to its climate policy stances.
But Powell and Godfrey implied that the tech giants' views are — or at least ought to be — in alignment with theirs. “Many of our members are lobbying independently. Many of them are lobbying alongside us. And then many of them are supporting CEBA to go and lobby on this,” Powell told me, though he wouldn’t reveal what actions any specific hyperscalers were taking.
Godfrey said that AEU’s positions are “certainly reflective of what large energy consumers, notably tech companies, have been working to pursue across a variety of technologies and with applicability to a couple of different types of credits.”
And yet hyperscalers may have already spent a good deal of their political capital fighting for a niche provision in the House’s version of the budget bill, which bans state-level AI regulation for a decade. That would make the AI boom infinitely easier for tech companies, who don’t want to deal with a patchwork of varying regulations, or really most regulations at all.
On top of everything else, big tech in particular is dealing with government-led anti-trust lawsuits, both at home and abroad. Google recently lost two major cases to the Department of Justice, related to its search and advertising business. A final decision is pending regarding the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Meta, regarding the company’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. Not to be outdone, Amazon will also be fighting an antitrust case brought by the FTC next year.
As these companies work to convince the public, politicians, and the courts that they’re not monopolistic rule-breakers, and that AI is a benevolent technology that the U.S. must develop before China, they certainly seem to be relinquishing the clean energy mantle they once sought to carry, at least rhetorically. We’ll know more once all these data centers come online. But if the present is any indication, speed, not green electrons, is the North Star.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect Amazon’s power purchase agreement with Talen Energy.
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Artificial intelligence wants the energy and has the money, and climate tech companies need buyers.
Their founders wanted to make transmission lines, powertrains, and electrical switches more efficient. Or maybe they wanted to unlock the potential of geothermal energy or low-carbon cement. Wherever they began, a bevy of deep tech climate startups, clean energy producers, and sustainable materials companies have found their way to the same destination: Building and powering data centers in the most energy efficient way possible.
“They might not have started out as data center companies, but they’ve been pulled — because of this huge market movement towards data centers — into being that,” Lee Larson, an investor at the venture firm Piva Capital, told me.
With power demand from artificial intelligence on track to grow as much as 30x from 2024 to 2035, and the Trump administration seeking to fast track data center buildout, there’s a wealth of opportunity — and literal cash — for startups that can help hyperscalers meet their clean energy targets while cramming as many high-powered computing chips into a data center as physically possible.
“I think the proportion of pitches that we see that reflects some kind of data center messaging has gone from maybe one out of 20 to one out of five,” Matthew Nordan, co-founder and general partner at Azolla Ventures told me. “It’s a lot.”
Perhaps the most obvious data center pitch is for companies offering clean, firm power or energy storage. In Azolla Ventures’ portfolio, that includes the geothermal exploration and development company Zanskar and the underground pumped hydro storage company Quidnet. While neither has announced any data center tie ups to date, both are having conversations with all the usual suspects — a group that includes Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta. “Virtually any reasonably mature, ready to deploy clean, firm power technology company is talking to the same people,” Nordan told me.
Some big deals have already made headlines, especially in the nuclear and geothermal sectors. There’s Microsoft’s plan to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant and Google’s deal with the small modular reactor startup Kairos, plus Fervo’s partnership with Google and Sage Geosystems’ partnership with Meta on the geothermal side. But fusion companies also see data centers as a viable option. Google already has an offtake agreement with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, while Microsoft has a deal with Helion Energy.
But it’s not just the big name cleantech companies that are turning into data center service providers. The AI boom also presents a major opportunity for deep tech startups working on electrical infrastructure. While companies in this sector might not scream “climate tech,” behind the curtain they’re driving significant gains in energy efficiency that data center operators are eager to tap into.
In Azolla’s portfolio, these include Scalvy, founded to build modular powertrain electronics for electric vehicles. The company’s small, distributed units connect directly to EV battery cells, converting DC power from the batteries into AC power for the motor. “The hyperscalers started coming to the company saying, can you do what you’ve done in reverse?” Nordan told me. “Can you take the AC coming in off the grid and then convert that to DC, and then interface with the load and energy storage systems?”
That proved easy, and now Scalvy’s small, building-block style approach allows data centers to control power flow on the server rack itself, as opposed to taking up valuable space with a separate power rack. While the details haven’t yet been announced, Nordan said the startup “has recently done their first agreement for data center power, and it’s with one of the large names that you would expect.”
Piva Capital has also invested in a number of under-the-radar companies in this arena — Veir, for instance, initially proposed to build “high-temperature superconducting transmission lines” that could carry electricity with near-zero resistance, and thus very low energy loss. But after seeing some early interest from data centers, the startup learned that hyperscalers were not only struggling to build transmission lines to their substations, but were also experiencing severe bottlenecks in their low-voltage distribution networks, responsible for getting power into and around data centers.
“We realized we can apply essentially the same superconducting technology that we’re targeting for transmission and distribution applications and build a low-voltage set of products for data centers, specifically, that can allow you to shrink the size and weight of conductors and bus bars [which distribute power within data centers] by 10 times,” Veir’s CEO Tim Heidel told me. With this newly refined focus, the company raised an oversubscribed $75 million Series B round in January, which included participation from Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund.
Piva is also an investor in Menlo Micro, a spinout from General Electric that uses a proprietary metal alloy to make high-performance electrical switches that are smaller, faster, and more energy efficient than the industry standard. The startup has already commercialized its tech for use in high-speed radio frequency devices, as well as for testing the performance of semiconductors.
Ultimately, the company is aiming to integrate its switches into a wide range of high-performance electrical equipment, data center power systems very much included. In this context, the startup’s switches could be embedded directly into semiconductor packages or circuit boards rather than installed on racks, leading to more compact and energy efficient data center power management. The switches’ small size and low resistance would also generate less heat than what’s used today, further increasing overall energy efficiency.
Menlo Micro’s CEO Russ Garcia told me that five years down the line, he expects a third of the company’s revenue to come from power applications such as data centers, growing to two-thirds in 10 years’ time.
Even sustainable materials companies are getting pulled in, Nordan told me. The primary example there is Sublime Systems, which inked a purchase agreement with Microsoft for up to 622,500 metric tons of low-carbon cement. The deal gives Microsoft the right to use the cement if and when it's useful, but more importantly, it entitles the tech giant to the cement's environmental attributes — that is, the carbon savings associated with producing it. The idea is that the tech giant can catalyze market demand without the emissions impact of shipping the cement to its data center sites.
Amazon has also invested in a number of companies in this sector, including Brimstone and CarbonCure, which are working to decarbonize cement and concrete, as well as Electra, which is working on green steel. The hyperscaler is also trialing products from Paebbl, which produces a carbon-negative mineral powder that can partially replace cement, on the construction of an Amazon Web Services data center in Europe.
While the current administration may not be exerting pressure on hyperscalers to reduce their emissions, Nordan told me that the tech giants are thinking about the long term. “If the tide turns and there will be real or effective costs to emissions in these data centers, they want to do everything they can to bankroll emissions reductions now. And that manifests itself in low-carbon cement, in green steel, in all sorts of technologies.”
At least some of the aforementioned investments — especially those that increase efficiency while decreasing the size of data center components — won’t necessarily lead to emissions reductions, however. Much as when the Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released its cheaper and more efficient AI model, the idea of Jevon’s Paradox looms large here. This is the theory that making products more efficient and cost-effective will lead to an overall increase in consumption that more than offsets the efficiency gains.
Heidel, for one, told me that Veir’s potential customers don’t see energy efficiency in itself as the startup’s main draw. “It’s actually the space savings, the real estate savings, the ability to lay out data centers and configure them in new ways,” he told me. Mainly what Heidel is focusing on with his customers-to-be is, “how much smaller can you make the building, or how many additional AI pods or servers could you fit into the same footprint, or how much higher of a server density could you achieve using our solution?”
Of course, one day Veir may fulfill its original dream of creating superior transmission infrastructure, just as Scalvy could circle back to its initial focus on EV drivetrains and Menlo Micro could wriggle its way into a whole host of electronic devices.
As Heidel told me, he sees this data center buildout as just the first push in what will be an ongoing effort to meet the world’s growing electricity demand. “If we can figure out how to serve all of this demand at the speed at which data centers are growing, and do so cost effectively, and do so in a low-carbon way, then we can take those learnings and apply them to all of the other industries that are coming in the future that'll also be facing enormous electricity demand,” he explained.
But for the time being, as Larson of Piva Capital told me, investors are simply trying to get their portfolio companies “to skate where the puck is going.” And that’s more than okay for Heidel. As he put it, there’s “so much enthusiasm for data centers today that we are having trouble just keeping up with all the interest in that market.”
On FERC’s ‘disastrous misstep,’ the World Court’s climate ruling, and 127 SMRs
Current conditions: West African countries including Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry, Senegal and The Gambia are facing flash flooding from heavy rainfall • The southwestern corner of New Mexico is suffering “exceptional” drought, the highest possible level in the U.S. Drought Monitor. • Already roasting in excessive heat, Des Moines, Iowa, is bracing for thunderstorms.
The Department of Energy canceled a nearly $5 billion loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express, a transmission project designed to move wind power from Kansas to the industrial upper Midwest. After more than a decade of development, the power line won bipartisan support and secured $4.9 billion in federal financing late last year to fund the first phase of the project, running from Ford County in Kansas to Callaway County in Missouri.
As Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin explained, the project eventually drew the ire of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who recently stepped up his attacks in the hopes that a more friendly administration could help scrap the project. The transmission line’s developer, Invenergy, told Heatmap in a statement that “a privately financed Grain Belt Express transmission superhighway will advance President Trump’s agenda of American energy and technology dominance.”
The microreactor startup Oklo inked a deal with Liberty Energy, the fracking giant where Secretary of Energy Chris Wright served as chief executive before entering government. Liberty was already an early investor in Oklo, and Wright served on the nuclear company’s board. But the new deal is a strategic partnership with a plan to deploy Liberty’s gas equipment alongside Oklo’s reactors, mirroring similar pairings that other small modular reactor developers have promoted.
Oklo is among 127 small modular reactor designs currently under development worldwide, according to a new tally from the Nuclear Energy Agency at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the 38-member club of rich countries. Of those designs, 51 are in pre-licensing or licensing processes, and 85 are in active discussion between SMR developers and site owners. Just seven are either operating or under construction.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved fast-track interconnection processes proposed by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator and the Southwest Power Pool. The new processes will allow power plants to sidestep the standard reviews for a grid hookup. Gas-fired power plants are “likely to be the main beneficiary of the fast-track processes, with standalone batteries also potentially being included,” Utility Dive reported. The American Clean Power Association, the biggest renewable energy lobby, called the decision “a dangerous misstep.”
Southern California’s landmark rule to spur the electrification of certain boilers and water heaters survived a major court challenge. A federal court last week upheld the first-in-the-nation regulation that applies to light-industrial and commercial boilers, steam generators, process heaters, residential pool heaters and tankless water heaters. The ruling, which only applies to the 17 million people in large parts of Los Angeles and its surrounding suburbs, could “help reenergize efforts around the country to replace fossil-fuel-burning equipment with electric heat pumps and other clean technologies,” Canary Media’s Maria Gallucci wrote.
Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reported earlier this week on an effort in Newton, Massachusetts to beat back new gas pipelines block by block. But overall, the fight for electrification has recently faced repeated setbacks. In 2023, a federal court struck down the northern California city of Berkeley’s pioneering ban on new gas hookups, which was replicated in cities across the country. Last year, gas utilities staged something of a coup at the quasi-governmental organization that writes the building codes used in nearly every state.
Children stand outside a church destroyed in a cyclone in Vanuatu.Mario Tama/Getty Images
In a historic decision on Wednesday morning, the International Court of Justice ruled that countries must act on climate change. While non-binding, the verdict from the United Nations’ high court was dubbed “the biggest climate case in history,” as it established the first international legal precedent of a nation state’s responsibility to curb planet-heating emissions.
The tiny South Pacific island republic of Vanuatu called the ruling a “milestone in the fight for climate justice” and vowed to “take the ICJ ruling back to the United Nations General Assembly, and pursue a resolution that will support implementation of this decision,” said Vanuatuan climate minister Ralph Regenvanu. He anticipated opposition from Washington. “Even as fossil fuel expansion continues under the U.S.’s influence, along with the loss of climate finance and technology transfer, and the lack of climate ambition following the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement,” he said, “major polluters — past and present — cannot continue to act with impunity and treat developing countries as sacrifice zones to further feed corporate greed.”
Researchers at Japan’s Shinshu University have demonstrated for the first time that a new eco-friendly plastic made from microbes safely decomposes in deep ocean conditions
“This research addresses one of the most critical limitations of current bioplastics—their lack of biodegradability in marine environments,” said Professor Seiichi Taguchi at the Shinshu’s Institute for Aqua Regeneration. “The study provides a pathway for safer alternatives to conventional plastics and supports the transition to a circular bioeconomy.”
NextEra CEO John Ketchum projected serenity during the company’s earnings call Wednesday.
The business of renewable energy development in the United States is the business of NextEra. The company’s renewable division is one of the country’s largest and most sophisticated, with almost 30 gigawatts in its project backlog — including 3.2 gigawatts added in the past three months.
NextEra’s financial results and outlook for the future can be a guide to how the sector is thinking — or wants people to think it’s thinking — about the state of the development landscape. Now especially, that landscape looks confusing and contradictory, with power demand increasing sharply alongside hostility to wind and solar development.
The way NextEra sees it, NextEra will come through fine. But many other — especially many other smaller — players may struggle.
“Bottom line, America needs more electricity, not less,” NextEra Chief Executive John Ketchum told analysts during the company’s earnings presentation Wednesday.
“America needs it now, not just in the future. We are firmly aligned with the administration’s goal to unleash American energy dominance. And to do so, we need all of the electrons we can get on the grid. There’s truly no time to wait.”
That alignment may be one way, however. From sunsetting tax credits to ordering enhanced reviews of wind and solar projects by federal regulators, the Trump administration has made it clear that it does not see wind and solar as part of its energy strategy.
The rhetoric coming from Washington hasn’t been particularly constructive, either, no matter how often renewable energy companies try to label their work as part and parcel of an “energy dominance” agenda. Just in the past few weeks, Trump has claimed that China has “very, very few” wind farms (in fact it has very, very many), and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright called wind and solar a “parasite on the grid.”
NextEra is not unaware of the tone and policy emanating from the administration. The company issued a new risk disclosure, first noticed by analysts at Jefferies, saying that its guidance on future performance assumes “no changes to governmental policies or incentives, including continued applicability of existing Internal Revenue Service tax credit safe harbor guidance,” i.e. that it can “commence construction” the way it always has, by following existing IRS guidance.
Although that would be awfully nice, it may not be the case for much longer. Soon after signing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, President Trump issued an executive order calling for “new and revised” tax guidance “to ensure that policies concerning the ‘beginning of construction’ are not circumvented, including by preventing the artificial acceleration or manipulation of eligibility and by restricting the use of broad safe harbors unless a substantial portion of a subject facility has been built.”
It doesn’t take a terribly close reading to intuit that Trump wants to narrow the window for renewables developers to claim tax credits even beyond what Congress has already done. According to conservative members of Congress who wanted the tax credits to phase out even sooner, the president was merely fulfilling a promise he’d made to win their vote.
Ketchum at least projected serenity about the safe harbor situation, telling analysts that the definition of construction has been understood “for well over a decade,” that it “is informed by longstanding Treasury Department guidance,” and that the OBBBA’s language “definition is consistent with the settled meeting.”
He also noted that NextEra had “made significant financial commitments over the last few years, including in the first half of 2025, to begin construction under these rules that were in effect at the time those commitments were made,” i.e. before the bill was signed.
“We believe that we’ve begun construction on a sufficient number of projects to cover our development expectations through 2029,” Ketchum continued, adding that the company has determined it will be eligible for tax credits based on “our belief as to what the statute provides based on our experience in this industry over the last couple of decades.”
If anything, Ketchum suggested, NextEra might be advantaged by the harsh deadlines for commencing construction (July 4, 2026) or being placed in service (the end of 2027) in the new law. “It comes down to who’s safe harbor, right?” Ketchum said. “We know we compete against a lot of really small developers who don’t have the balance sheet, the construction financing to do things around safe harbor.”
In this kind of environment, Ketchum said, size matters.
“If you’re in a market where you have folks drop out, right, because they didn’t plan ahead, they don’t have the ability to get construction financing, they don’t have the ability to safe harbor. It obviously creates bigger opportunities for us.”
NextEra could be left to pick up the pieces from smaller developers that don’t make it, Ketchum said. “If we do see some small developers kind of fall away, there’ll be more projects that could potentially hit the market and come up for sale.”