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With shares set to start trading on the Nasdaq this morning, SpaceX is on track to become a $1.7 trillion behemoth after raising roughly $75 billion at its stock market debut. Elon Musk’s rocket business, which has also emerged as one of the world’s leading satellite internet providers, is aiming to launch its first extraterrestrial data center in 2028.
Musk’s business empire has spawned an entire ecosystem of companies looking to innovate on hardware and categories venture capitalists call “deep tech.” As Emily and Matthew Zeitlin wrote in a feature yesterday, Musk — once a don of the PayPal mafia — has now emerged at the helm of a new “climate tech mafia” that includes such startups as the next-generation transformer maker Heron Power and the fusion company Maritime Fusion.
Consumers’ Lake Michigan pumped storage hydroelectric plant. Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Michigan utility regulators should reject utility giant Consumers Energy’s proposed sale of 13 hydroelectric dams to a private equity buyer. In a 312-page ruling detailed by Bridge Michigan, an administrative law judge called the utility’s plan to sell the dams and buy back power at an inflated price “highly problematic” and “inconsistent with the public interest.”
The proposed deal is a sign of growing interest in hydropower, even as existing dams struggle through lengthy relicensing processes. Just last month, the investment firm Hull Street bought the North American hydro giant First Light. Last July, Google brokered the biggest hydropower deal in history, purchasing 3 gigawatts of power.
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General Motors has inked a deal with the sodium-ion battery startup Peak Energy to deploy the competitors to lithium power packs as energy storage systems. The automaker’s investment arm, GM Ventures, will back a partnership with Peak Energy (incidentally another Musk mafia company, co-founded by former Tesla director Landon Mossburg). The move highlights electric vehicle manufacturers’ shift toward grid storage as the battery-making capacity that came online has failed to find demand for all-electric cars. “We believe sodium-ion will be a defining chemistry for grid-scale energy storage systems in the years ahead,” Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery and sustainability at General Motors, said in a statement to InsideEVs.
The United Kingdom is preparing to build Europe’s largest direct air capture facility. Three companies — the developer Progressive Energy, and the carbon-capture specialists Airhive and Mission Zero Technologies — formed a joint venture to build a new plant in northeast England, Bloomberg reported. The venture, wittily named UnionDAC, would come online in 2030 and sequester 60,000 tons annually within two years.
In the U.S., meanwhile, the startup Twelve brought America’s first commercial e-fuels plant online, using direct air capture to suck CO2 out of the thin air. The company, according to Hydrogen Insight, already has offtake agreements with Alaska Airlines, while Microsoft will purchase the environmental attributes of the fuel to reduce its reported emissions from air travel.
New York is officially moving forward with its ambitious nuclear plans. On Thursday, the state Public Service Commission launched a bid to procure 5 gigawatts of nuclear power to serve as the “backbone of zero emissions electricity.” The process kicks off with “a full examination of ways to bring new advanced nuclear power online in a timely, cost-effective manner.” In a statement, Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat up for reelection this year, said advanced nuclear “is one of the best available options to provide both relief to consumers and strengthen the resilience of New York’s grid with round-the-clock emissions-free energy,” noting that the push is part of her “vision for an all-of-the-above energy strategy that includes renewables and other forms of energy to keep the lights on.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct details related Twelve’s commercial operations and the number of gigawatts of nuclear power New York is attempting to procure.
Gas and nuclear saw upticks, but solar saw a surge.Ember
Solar panels supplied a record 12.8% of the United States’ electricity last month, while coal fell to 12.2% in its fourth-lowest monthly share ever, according to a new analysis by the pro-renewables think tank Ember. It’s the first time in U.S. history that solar eclipsed coal for a whole month. Solar generated an all-time high of 45.5 terawatt-hours, exceeding its May 2025 output by 17% and surpassing last July’s previous record. This summer is on track to break yet more records. “U.S. solar power continues to set new records,” Nicolas Fulghum, a senior data analyst at Ember, said in a statement. “Overtaking coal for the first month on record shows just how far solar has come, from a niche contributor to the third-largest and fastest-growing source of power in the U.S. electricity system.”
The milestone comes as the U.S. prepares to produce more of its own solar panels. As I told you yesterday, America’s largest solar factory, South Korean giant Qcells’ plant in northern Georgia, is nearly at full capacity.
Texas has a reputation as a place where, if the land is yours, you can do what you want with it. That’s partly why the state has been such a hotbed for data center development. Well, the Republican leadership is pumping the brakes. In a letter to state regulators on Wednesday, Governor Greg Abbott recommended the legislature pass sweeping data center reforms. Among the policy changes The Texas Tribune highlighted:
The move comes in response to plummeting support among American voters for data center development. The latest poll from Heatmap Pro, which my colleague Robinson Meyer wrote up earlier this month, found that roughly three-quarters of U.S. voters now oppose data center development in their neighborhoods, including 55% who say they “strongly” oppose server farms.
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When the Department of Energy canceled the American Battery Technology Company’s nearly $58 million grant last October, it appeared to many as a sign that the Trump administration would go after virtually any firm awarded money by its predecessors, even if its business aligned with the White House’s policy priorities. But the Nevada-based battery and critical minerals startup said this week that the Energy Department had reinstated the grant, which was meant to support construction of the company’s first commercial lithium refinery. “Of the hundreds of DOE grants terminated last Fall very few have been able to successfully appeal the decisions and have their contracts reinstated,” American Battery Technology CEO Ryan Melsert said in a statement. “I am very proud of our team for relentlessly demonstrating the performance of these internally-developed critical mineral technologies and how crucial it is to implement and scale these commercial facilities to support the national security of the United States and enable its energy dominance.”
The Energy Department is also making moves on fusion. On Tuesday, the agency put out its roadmap for commercializing fusion energy, tapping more than 800 scientists to inform its analysis. “Fusion energy has entered a new era defined by extraordinary scientific progress and public-private momentum,” Darío Gil, the under Energy secretary for science, said in a statement. “With this roadmap, we now have the clarity, coordination, and sustained commitment needed to turn the promise of fusion into a reality for the American people.”
Holtec International was once the undertaker of the nuclear industry with a business split between manufacturing storage casks for spent fuel and decommissioning shuttered plants. But the company is nearly ready to turn a shuttered atomic power plant back online for the first time in U.S. history, with its Palisades nuclear station. It’s also considering rebuilding New York City’s defunct nuclear station, Indian Point. All the while, Holtec is racing to build its 300-megawatt pressurized water reactor. The first two units are set to debut at Palisades once the plant’s single older reactor is back online. Next it’s looking at building as many as four of the small modular reactors at Holtec’s half-demolished Oyster Creek nuclear station in southern New Jersey. If approved, the Asbury Park Press reported, the project would generate nearly 1.3 gigawatts of power.
I reached out to Patrick O’Brien, Holtec’s director of government affairs, who confirmed the story. “It’s a potential project post-Palisades SMRs,” he wrote in a text.
If you’re booking a flight right now, you might not yet be feeling the difference. But U.S. production of jet fuel has reached record highs as refiners scramble to respond to soaring prices following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. By the start of May, the four-week average estimate of fuel production surpassed 2 million barrels per day for the first time on record, according to new analysis by the Energy Information Administration. But with domestic inventories still relatively high, much of that increased production is being exported.
