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Sparks

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Sparks

It’s Been a Big 24 Hours for AI Energy Announcements

We’re powering data centers every which way these days.

Sparks

The Mad Dash to Lock Down Biden’s Final Climate Dollars

Companies are racing to finish the paperwork on their Department of Energy loans.

Green
Sparks

Ditching the Paris Agreement Will Throw the U.S. Into COP Purgatory

This would be the second time the U.S. has exited the climate treaty — and it’ll happen faster than the first time.

Donald Trump and the Eiffel Tower.
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

As the annual United Nations climate change conference reaches the end of its scheduled programming, this could represent the last time for at least the next four years that the U.S. will bring a strong delegation with substantial negotiating power to the meetings. That’s because Donald Trump has once again promised to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, the international treaty adopted at the same climate conference in 2015, which unites nearly every nation on earth in an effort to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius.

Existentially, we know what this means: The loss of climate leadership and legitimacy in the eyes of other nations, as well as delayed progress on emissions reductions. But tangibly, there’s no precedent for exactly what this looks like when it comes to U.S. participation in future UN climate conferences, a.k.a. COPs, the official venue for negotiation and decision-making related to the agreement. That’s because when Trump withdrew the U.S. from Paris the first time, the agreement’s three year post-implementation waiting period and one-year withdrawal process meant that by the time we were officially out, it was November 2020 and Biden was days away from being declared the winner of that year’s presidential election. That year’s conference was delayed by a year due to the Covid pandemic, by which point Biden had fully recommitted the U.S. to the treaty.

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Sparks

Georgia Just Released Eye-Popping New Energy Demand Estimates

We’ll give you one guess as to what’s behind the huge spike.

A data center.
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

Georgia is going to need a lot more electricity than it once thought. Again.

In a filing last week with the state’s utility regulator, Georgia Power disclosed that its projected load growth for the next decade from “economic development projects” has gone up by over 12,000 megawatts, to 36,500 megawatts. Just for 2028 to 2029, the pipeline has more than tripled, from 6,000 megawatts to 19,990 megawatts, destined for so-called “large load” projects like new data centers and factories.

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