Come for the ping pong of Iran + AI news. Stay for Washington cherry blossoms 🌸

My latest Axios bylines:

• Google eyes natural gas as AI power demand surges

• AI boom drives clash over grid power vs. ‘island’ energy

• Get ready for $200 barrel oil if strait remains closed

• Data center boom rivals energy sector investments

Google eyes natural gas as AI power demand outpaces clean energy

Google is weighing greater use of natural gas to power its AI ambitions than previously known, according to a report released Wednesday.

Why it matters: Google has earned a reputation for prioritizing clean energy in the rush to build data centers, but new findings from a market intelligence firm suggest it may also lean more on a fossil fuel.

Driving the news: Google and Crusoe Energy are partnering to build a data center campus in North Texas called “Goodnight,” powered largely by a massive on-site natural gas plant alongside a wind farm, according to permits, satellite images and other documents reviewed by Cleanview, a market intelligence platform.

State of play: A Google representative confirmed to Michael Thomas, Cleanview’s founder and report author, that it is partnering with Crusoe on the Texas data center.

• But whether Google will buy power from the gas plant — and if so, how much — remains unresolved, according to the report.

A Google spokeswoman told Axios it doesn’t have a contract in place for the Texas gas plant and declined to comment on if or when it might.

• In an interview last week with Axios about its overall strategy, a top Google executive pointed to the various clean-energy projects it’s announced for its data center push, including geothermal, fusion, advanced nuclear reactors and batteries.

• “I do think our public projects provide a good roadmap into how we’re thinking about solving this challenge,” Michael Terrell, Google’s head of advanced energy, said in an interview last week on the sidelines of the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston.

• When asked about where natural gas fits into the company’s strategy, Terrell said: “We don’t have anything to say on that.”

The big picture: The AI race is accelerating, with climate goals slipping further down the priority list as Big Tech companies scramble to secure power, Thomas said.

• Microsoft just announced a gas-powered data center deal with Chevron, and Meta is planning seven natural gas plants for what would be the largest U.S. power facility.

The intrigue: Google leads the tech industry in deploying clean energy for its AI ambitions, which may invite sharper scrutiny of its new consideration of natural gas.

• “Many climate activists will see Google exploring natural gas as a sort of betrayal,” said Thomas, whose report is one of the most comprehensive reviews of the tech giant’s data center strategy to date.

• “There’s no doubt that it would be in tension with the company’s stated ‘moonshot’ goal of becoming carbon-free by 2030,” he added. “But it’s also true that Google is voluntarily investing more in clean energy technology than almost any other entity — public or private — in the world.”

Read the full story here.

Read the story here.

AI boom drives clash over grid power vs. going it alone

HOUSTON — A high-stakes fight is emerging as the AI boom accelerates: Should data centers plug into the grid, or operate as energy “islands”?

Why it matters: The debate is shaping power flows and multibillion-dollar investments, as data centers rival entire cities in their electricity demand.

Driving the news: Chevron said this week it’s working on a deal to build a natural gas plant dedicated to a Microsoft data center in Texas — one of many signs that on-site power is gaining traction.

• Roughly 30% of all planned data center power capacity is expected to be on site, according to a February report by Cleanview, a market intelligence firm — up from almost nothing a year earlier.

“A lot of people look at that 30% figure from our report and assume it will stop there,” said Michael Thomas, founder of Cleanview. “But the trend line suggests to me that it could keep rising.”

• “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it rise to 50% of planned capacity,” added Thomas.

How it works: Companies building AI infrastructure say avoiding the grid — at least initially — can bypass years-long waits to connect to the grid, provide more control and avoid straining the electric system with massive new demand.

Read the full story here.

Arboretum cherry blossoms

Come for the scoop, stay for my bylines and scroll to the end for some more photos from Houston!

My coverage during CERAWeek, the world’s most influential energy conference, in Houston last week:

• Instability rocks Houston energy summit

• Federal power regulator to big tech: Let’s talk

• AI boom is catapulting batteries into the mainstream

• Rare offshore wind reversal highlights shift under Trump

• Nvidia, EmeraldAI pair up with energy companies on “flexible” data centers

Exclusive: Wind projects pile up as Pentagon reviews stall

More than two dozen wind farms across the U.S. are being delayed as the Trump administration sits on military reviews that were once considered routine.

Why it matters: The delays are dragging down a race led by tech companies — and backed by President Trump — to build power-hungry data centers to lead the global AI race.

By the numbers: At least 30 onshore wind farms projects are affected by the Pentagon paperwork logjam, according to Jason Grumet, head of the American Clean Power Association.

• At roughly 200 to 300 megawatts each, that’s about 7.5 gigawatts of stalled capacity.

• Even accounting for the variability of wind, those farms could produce enough electricity to power several cities — or multiple large data centers.

The reviews are necessary to make sure the wind farms’ turbines won’t interfere with military radar or aviation systems.

Driving the news: The trade group is waiting to hear back on a letter it sent earlier this month to Assistant Secretary of War Dale Marks asking him to explain what is causing the delays.

What they’re saying: “It is quite astounding that in the midst of this discussion about making the permitting system and governing system more efficient, we just have direct obstruction,” Grumet told Axios in an interview.

• Grumet’s comments, on the sidelines of the CERAWeek conference last week, as part of an upcoming episode of the Shocked podcast, represent his first public comments on the matter.

How it works: The clearance processes are usually routine, and the Pentagon negotiates any fixes that need to be made.

• It’s the so-called “mitigation agreements” that are suddenly piling up unsigned in the last several months.

The big picture: Trump has long shown disdain for renewable energy, especially wind energy–and even more specifically, the offshore variety.

• He has moved to slow the renewable energy buildout in numerous ways, including revoking leases and stalling federal permits across the federal government.

• At the same time, virtually all energy developers — alongside the Trump administration — say they want a permitting overhaul to expedite such reviews.

Flashback: Even for his style, Trump has been remarkably transparent: “My goal is to not let any windmill be built,” he said at a White House meeting earlier this year. “They’re losers.”

The intrigue: In lawsuits over the president’s efforts to kneecap offshore wind projects, the administration has cited national security concerns.

• Grumet said the administration might be trying to reconcile its legal argument — which failed multiple times in court — by asserting new, and what Grumet describes as similarly unproven, national security concerns over land-based wind.

Between the lines: The administration’s position on wind energy is uneven though.

• Last week, the Interior Department announced a rare agreement with Totalenergies, a French energy company, to cancel its offshore wind leases totaling $1 billion and repurpose that money toward oil and gas projects.

• Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who oversaw wind power growth as North Dakota governor, told Axios at last week’s CERAWeek conference in Houston that onshore wind is more affordable and has fewer national security concerns.

• “North Dakota is not an attack vector,” Burgum said when asked to explain his shifting position. “Being literally in the center of North America is not a spot where we have to worry about drone attacks or submarine attacks coming.”

The other side: The Pentagon and the White House didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time.

What we’re watching: These delays — and the unusual deal struck last week with Totalenergies — are likely to become flashpoints in Washington’s protracted debate over permitting reform.

• Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the top Democrat on the Senate Energy Committee, accused Trump of causing high energy prices with the Iran war and criticized the Pentagon delays.

• “If he was serious about lowering energy costs, he should stop stalling permits and start supporting made-in-America clean energy solutions,” Heinrich said in a statement to Axios.

Reality check: The odds Congress will pass permitting reform this year is now 25%, down from 30% based on analysis updated Thursday by consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group.

What’s next: In its letter to the Pentagon, the renewable energy trade group hints it could sue under federal administrative law if it doesn’t hear back by April 8.

Share this story from Axios.

Podcast’ing in Houston

Sneak peak into what’s in store for our Shocked podcast!

Hosting in Houston

Axios hosted a dinner conversation to kick off CERAWeek on Sunday, March 22.

Going to CERAWeek in Houston? Let me know! amy.harder@axios.com. Scroll to the end for a nature / humanity photo contrast.

I did a takeover edition of our Axios Future of Energy newsletter going deep into Nvidia. Check it out below and at this link.

Bonus: AI power demand cracks resistance to nuclear power

• The AI boom is pushing one of America’s most venerable environmental groups to cautiously support nuclear power after decades of resistance.

• Why it matters: The Natural Resources Defense Council’s position is both a sign of the urgent power demands that AI is creating and a larger shift underway among environmentalists to embrace an energy source many once rallied against.

Nvidia’s race to outpace physics

Nvidia’s chips are improving at such a staggering pace that it defies any historical comparison.

Why it matters: Without these gains — which are drawing increased attention as AI transforms society — physics would slam the brakes on the data center boom.

Driving the news: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said yesterday he expects the company to reap “at least” $1 trillion in revenue for its newest chips through 2027.

• It posted record sales and earnings last month, fueled by skyrocketing orders from Big Tech data center companies.

By the numbers: Nvidia has historically dominated the market, but its cumulative share has dropped from 100% in the first quarter of 2022 to 65% in the fourth quarter of last year, according to the research and consultancy firm SemiAnalysis (see below chart).

The big picture: The AI boom runs on electricity — and Nvidia’s chips determine how far that power goes.

• Chips — flat, stamp-sized squares — are the beating heart of data centers.

• Each new generation delivers dramatic gains in performance per chip — even as total AI energy demand keeps surging.

“Chips are being redesigned because efficiency determines how fast intelligence can scale,” Huang wrote in a rare blog post published last week.

• “Energy becomes central because it sets the ceiling on how much intelligence can be produced at all.”

Zoom out: Energy efficiency has long been a boring but important component of technology.

• We might think of energy-efficient appliances or a Toyota Prius — saving money and helping the planet.

But that’s not what’s happening with the AI boom. Energy efficiency is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have.

• Electricity is physically limited. AI demand appears unlimited.

• That makes energy efficiency the backbone of society’s astonishing growth in AI computing power.

The intrigue: It’s like going from a Model T to a Tesla in under a decade — instead of more than a century.

• If cars’ fuel efficiency had improved as swiftly as chips, “we’d be driving to the moon and back in one gallon of gas,” said Josh Parker, head of sustainability at Nvidia, the world’s leader in AI computation.

Flashback: In 1865, British economist William Stanley Jevons observed that when England made coal steam engines more efficient, they actually used more — not less — coal.

• This has become known as the Jevons paradox, where energy efficiency — inherently a term to describe saving energy — often creates more demand for energy.

AI is putting the Jevons paradox on steroids.

• “The absolute footprint of AI, in terms of energy consumption, we do see it growing year over year, and we expect that trend to continue,” Parker said.

How it works: Two essential components of a chip’s efficiency are its energy consumption and how it’s cooled.

• Physics dictates that electricity powering a chip ultimately becomes heat, which then needs to be cooled down.

Catch up quick: Cooling technologies broadly break down into two ways.

• Traditional air-cooled data centers often rely on evaporative cooling, which can consume significant amounts of water.

• Newer liquid-cooled systems can reduce that water use — though total demand still depends on design and location.

“If you have chips and servers, they’re useless if you don’t have power and you don’t have cooling,” said Rich Whitmore, who leads Motivair, Schneider Electric’s liquid-cooling business, which works with Nvidia.

Zoom in: Each generation of Nvidia’s chips — named after famous scientists — posts massive efficiency gains over the last.

• The chip hitting the market today — called Blackwell — redesigned the whole architecture of computing to get more performance and efficiency, said Dion Harris, senior director of AI infrastructure at Nvidia.

• Scroll down to go deeper on the different chips.

What’s next: If we went from a Model T to a Tesla in the past decade, imagining what comes next —in just the next few years — feels almost absurd.

• “Maybe some kind of hovercraft,” Parker said, joking (maybe).

Illustrated: Nvidia's chip dominance

Nvidia dominates in cumulative chip sales since 2022, but competitors are encroaching, per data from research and consultancy firm SemiAnalysis.

Why it matters: If you lead on chips, you lead on everything.

What they’re saying: The continuous evolution of chips allows Nvidia to keep an edge ahead of competitors, analysts say.

• The pace at which Nvidia releases chips “continually resets the competitive benchmark,” SemiAnalysis’ Ivan Chiam, said in an email to Axios.

• “That speed of iteration makes it extremely difficult for competitors to close the gap, as they would need to execute flawlessly across multiple generations just to catch up.”

Yes, but: Nvidia faces a threat as the industry shifts from one type of AI — training — to another — inference. Its chips are optimized for the former.

• “All this inference stuff is incredibly threatening to Jensen, because it’s all efficiency-driven,” Paul Kedrosky, a venture investor and fellow at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, told the WSJ. “He’s desperately trying to find a way to extend the franchise into inference.”

"50x" efficiency fuels AI boom: Inside Nvidia's chips

Nvidia is seeking to keep an edge over its competitors by rapidly innovating on its moneymakers: its chips.

Why it matters: Understanding the intricacies of something as arcane as computer chips unlocks the center of the AI boom.

State of play: Each new generation of Nvidia chips delivers dramatic gains in performance per watt — even as total AI energy demand keeps surging.

The intrigue: You’ve probably seen how cats fit into small boxes. Well, that’s kind of what’s going on with Nvidia’s quest to get ever-more computing out of its chips.

• “We think of data centers as a box,” said Harris.

• The question is always: “How can we squeeze more performance out of the same power envelope?”

How it works: Nvidia names its chips after famous scientists. Let’s meet them.

Hopper — named after computer scientist Grace Hopper — is in many ways the original AI chip.

• Nvidia introduced it in 2022, and it still accounts for roughly half of all installed computing power today, according to estimates from SemiAnalysis.

• Hopper systems were introduced into data centers that were still primarily air-cooled, though they can also be liquid-cooled.

Blackwell — named after mathematician David Blackwell — generates up to 50 times more performance per watt compared to Hopper.

• This generation, introduced in 2024, completely redesigned the whole ecosystem to maximize the efficiency of the chip.

• This includes introducing liquid cooling, which Parker says enables it to use 300 times less water compared to traditionally air-cooled systems.

• This chip accounts for about half of all computing power today, a rapid rise from almost nothing in 2024, per SemiAnalysis.

Rubin — named after astronomer Vera Rubin — is expected to generate up to 10 times more performance per watt than Blackwell.

• Rubin will complete a full shift to liquid cooling for Nvidia’s chips.

• This generation is expected to account for just a small fraction of computing power this year, but by next year, it’ll account for more than half, SemiAnalysis projects.

The bottom line: “Understanding the pace we’re advancing these platforms is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in any other sector,” Harris said.

Meet the sustainability exec at the center of the AI boom

Josh Parker didn’t intend to work at Nvidia or even in sustainability — and yet finds himself at this precise intersection at a pivotal moment.

Why he matters: As head of Nvidia’s sustainability efforts, Parker oversees the behemoth’s efforts to contain its environmental footprint despite explosive growth.

Catch up quick: Parker joined Nvidia in August 2023, less than a year after the first ChatGPT model was released to the public and turned the world as we know it upside down.

“Working at Nvidia during the AI revolution, talking about AI applications for human good — it would have always been a dream job if I knew it was going to exist,” Parker told Axios.

Flashback: Parker was a lawyer practicing intellectual property. Sustainability came up kind of out of the blue for him in the first half of the last decade.

• He was in Thailand working on behalf of Western Digital, a computer storage firm, when he got a call asking if he wanted to stand up a formal sustainability function at the firm.

• Parker volunteered — even though, as he puts it, he “didn’t know what I was doing.”

The intrigue: He was trying to recruit someone from Nvidia to work at Western Digital, when a reverse poaching occurred, and he was recruited away to the chipmaker.

Context: The 47-year-old, originally from Oregon and now living in Denver, has a far lower profile than the sustainability leads at other tech firms.

• As one limited barometer: He has 2,500 followers on LinkedIn, while the chief sustainability officers of many of Nvidia’s top customers — Microsoft’s Melanie Nakagawa, Amazon’s Kara Hurst and Google’s Kate Brandt — each have tens of thousands, if not a couple hundred thousand, followers.

• These three are also regularly on the road doing public speaking.

Parker is ramping up how often he gives talks. “I would have been shocked,” he said, “to be doing so much public speaking.”

• He says he enjoys it, but — as an introvert — he also needs time to recharge afterward.

Yes, but: Parker acknowledges that people have concerns both about the environmental footprint of the AI boom — and of the potential of AI itself to displace jobs and our humanity.

• “This is a huge change in the world, and there are some near-term inevitable bumps in the road,” Parker said.

• But he added: “I see more rays of sunshine than gray clouds in the future.”

The bottom line: “People are recognizing that this is the new normal,” Parker said. “AI is part of our lives now.”

Nature finds a way

Greetings from the windy city, where Chicago is living up to its cold winter reputation (scroll down for proof from my morning run).

I’ve been here to moderate an event for the Aspen Institute (more info here), and meet with my fellow colleagues on the University of Chicago’s Shocked podcast.

✈️ Last week, I hosted a keynote conversation at the Dallas Fed’s first-ever AI and energy conference. And later this month, I head to the energy Super Bowl in Houston (aka CERAWeek) to help host conversations with Axios.

🎙️ The grid is too slow for AI and more declarations from yours truly in this SunCast podcast I recorded while in San Diego last month for a solar confab.

And now, read on for my latest in Axios.

Trump White House still has solar panels

The White House is (still) getting energy from solar panels that his predecessors put on its roof, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The panels have somehow endured through President Trump’s criticism of renewable energy and his Democratic predecessors.

Driving the news: Axios reached out to the White House as part of a story about how oil-price spikes — like those following the Iran war — typically set off debates about consumers moving toward electric cars and solar panels.

Flashback: Then-President Jimmy Carter first put solar panels on the White House following the 1970s oil crisis in a direct nod to domestic energy security.

• His predecessor, Ronald Reagan, removed them a few years later.

• Fast forward a few decades. President George W. Bush’s administration added back solar to heat water and a swimming pool. When President Barack Obama moved in, another set went up on the roof.

State of play: Trump didn’t remove them during his first administration. And they remain there today.

• In addition to confirmation from the White House, they’re visible from Google satellite images.

• A White House spokesperson wouldn’t comment on whether there are any plans to remove them or otherwise update them.

Between the lines: Although Trump has been critical of solar power, he has directed most of his — largely unfounded — criticism toward wind power, especially offshore wind.

The intrigue: Solar has recently gained some new supporters among MAGA influencers, including Katie Miller, wife of deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

What we’re watching: Whether the rooftop of the new ballroom might sport any panels.

Share this story from Axios.

Why oil price spikes (probably) won’t lead to lasting shift

Oil prices would need to stay high for years — not weeks or months — to drive a lasting shift away from the fossil fuel.

The big picture: Every time oil spikes, the same question surfaces: Will this push more people into electric cars or install solar panels onto rooftops?

State of play: That’s happening again after oil prices zoomed past the $100-a-barrel mark in the wake of the Iran war.

Driving the news: Prices dropped at least temporarily in the wake of President Trump signaling Monday evening he wants a quick end to the conflict, as well as talking up ways to lower oil prices.

Reality check: Energy transitions hinge on stable policies and market signals that last for decades.

• Temporary price jolts from unstable geopolitical unrest haven’t produced durable change — at least not in the U.S.

What they’re saying: “Consumers have been riding an oil price roller coaster for 20 years now,” said Bob McNally, who leads consultancy Rapidan Energy Group and advised President George W. Bush on energy security.

• This includes everything from the 2008 recession to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

• “They’ve learned that booms follow busts, and vice versa. Absent stable and higher fuel prices, we are unlikely to see a rapid and lasting shift to EVs.”

Read the full story in Axios.

American gas bounty shielding consumers from war spikes, for now

America’s natural gas bounty is acting like a moat, largely shielding the U.S. from price spikes while much of the world reels from escalating unrest in the Middle East.

Why it matters: Natural gas hasn’t, historically, drawn the same headlines as the more volatile oil markets. But it’s increasingly central to the economy — including powering the AI boom.

Yes, but: The moat isn’t impenetrable. And if substantially more American natural gas gets exported, it could raise heating and electricity bills.

The big picture: Fueled by fracking, the U.S. has been the world’s largest natural gas producer since 2011. Since 2022, it’s also been the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the fastest-growing segment of the global gas trade.

• That dominance provides a cushion when overseas supply is disrupted.

What they’re saying: “The U.S. covers all of its domestic demand with its own production but then produces more to export,” said Alex Munton, director of global gas and LNG for research and consulting firm Rapidan Energy.

• “So when things happen internationally, that doesn’t create problems for consumers in the U.S.”

Read the full story in Axios and check out this striking chart ⤵️

Dallas Fed tackles AI and energy

🛢️ 🛢️ 🛢️ The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, known for its leadership on oil and gas, just hosted its first-ever AI and power conference.

The topics overlap, but it's also a new area for the bank.

I had the pleasure of hosting the keynote opening interview. Read more about the event here.

The fog of war Chicago

Come for the charts, stay for the legit surprising panel talk at the end.

When (any) price is right: Big Tech and power prices

Even with rising costs, power is a small slice of what Big Tech spends on data centers.

Why it matters: This is why deep-pocketed tech companies are voluntarily offering up pledges to pay for their own power. To them, it’s just not that much money.

By the numbers: Power costs comprise up to 7.6% of the overall capital expenditures of data centers, according to McKinsey.

Reality check: The data is from a report published in April 2025, and this is a fast-moving story. McKinsey’s largest demand scenario is looking more likely than the other two lower demand scenarios.

Driving the news: Big Tech is under pressure to pay for their power prices as electricity rates rise across the country, with many communities blaming data centers.

• Several Big Tech firms are slated to meet at the White House next week to sign a pledge to pay for their own electricity.

What we’re watching: Power demand from data centers could increase 50% by next year and by as much as 165% by the end of the decade, Goldman Sachs predicted earlier this month.

Friction point: Ongoing power constraints could push power prices up so high that they begin to bite into a larger share of capital costs.

Bottom line: Rising power prices hit households a lot harder than the richest companies in the world.

Share this story, and subscribe to Axios’ Future of Energy.

With investing, AI’s gain may be energy’s loss

AI may be siphoning off investment dollars that once flowed to energy startups, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.

Why it matters: The global shift is a stark, data-driven sign of the times — climate ambition is collapsing just as the AI race accelerates.

Driving the news: Some of the world’s largest venture capital funds that back energy startups have redirected at least part of their capital toward AI.

Zoom in: Across the 50 biggest funds investing in energy, specialization in energy innovation has slowed since 2022 — tracking with a rise in AI investments, the report finds.

Reality check: At the macro level, this is correlation, not clear causation. It would take a deeper dive into individual deals to determine who’s truly losing — and who’s winning — at the other’s expense.

Between the lines: There’s an irony here: The AI boom’s biggest need — energy — may be getting financially undercut by the boom itself.

Yes, but: The IEA says AI isn’t the only factor. Higher interest rates and other market pressures are also dampening energy investment.

What we’re watching: To what degree the AI surge ultimately pulls more money back into energy innovation to power its own growth.

What’s next: Major tech companies are pledging billions for clean energy, from fusion to geothermal — potentially reshaping the investment landscape yet again.

Share this story, and sign up here for Axios’ Future of Energy newsletter.

Global AI data center boom hits delays

As many as half of the world’s data center projects slated to come online this year could face delays, according to a report issued Tuesday.

Why it matters: It’s a sign of mounting collisions in the AI race — from power constraints and grid equipment shortages to rising community opposition.

The big picture: As tech giants sprint to build AI infrastructure, the physical — and political — limits of the power system are starting to bite.

State of play: Up to 11 gigawatts of 2026 capacity “remains in the announced stage with no signs of construction,” per the report by Sightline Climate, a data intelligence firm.

• With typical build times of 12 to 18 months, that capacity could still come online — but only with dramatic acceleration, the report states.

Yes, but: Development is still surging despite growing hurdles. Data center additions hit a record in 2025, and 2026 is on track to surpass it, Olivia Wang, a Sightline research analyst, told Axios.

By the numbers: Nearly six gigawatts came online last year, and five gigawatts are already under construction this year. (One gigawatt can power about 1 million U.S. homes.)

• “While power continues to be a constraint, developers that locked in power and equipment contracts early are rapidly bringing capacity online,” the report says.

Driving the news: With midterm elections heating up, communities are growing restless over rising power prices — which many blame on data centers that increasingly require city-scale electricity.

Zoom in: Sightline has tracked more than 10 new moratorium proposals in the past month alone in U.S. states.

• This includes New York, Michigan, Virginia and Oklahoma, Wang says.

• “We expect this trend to continue and meaningfully increase the risk of projects being delayed, withdrawn, and ultimately canceled,” Wang wrote.

• The firm is tracking nine canceled projects in its database, so for now, most are facing delays, not outright cancellations.

Flashback: More than one-quarter of the 110 data center projects that were slated to come online last year were delayed.

What we’re watching: Whether high-profile cancellations rise along with the wave of moratorium efforts.

Share this story, and sign up here for Axios’ Future of Energy newsletter.

Word cloud darkens San Diego solar confab

😬 What's one word that best describes clean energy coalition dynamics right now?

Fight
Unstable
Uncertainty
Stuck
Difficult

Ouch. These were actual -- live, in the moment -- words dozens of participants attending Intersolar’s recent San Diego confab put up into a spontaneous Slido word cloud we hosted at the end of our keynote conversation.

Our panelists, seeing this in real time, sought to balance out the difficult candor with perseverance when I asked them for their one words, including committed, exciting, resolve and hope.

Read more here.

Come for the unique news, stay for the old/new energy contrast in my hometown.

Emissions will keep falling despite Trump’s climate rollback

President Trump is trying to pull the rug out from under federal climate regulation. But the U.S. economy may no longer be standing on it.

Why it matters: The energy transition is well underway and is unlikely to be reversed by Thursday’s historic move.

The big picture: America’s emissions are projected to decline substantially even if major climate regulations are repealed, driven by falling renewable energy prices and cleaner natural gas outcompeting dirtier coal.

Driving the news: The Environmental Protection Agency last week overturned the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which determined that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare.

• The finding sets the foundation for federal regulation of climate pollution under the Clean Air Act.

• Issued under President Obama, it reflects the global scientific consensus that greenhouse gases are warming the planet.

Between the lines: The repeal is legally and symbolically seismic. Its real-world impact may be more muted.

• It would likely slow emissions cuts — but not reverse them, according to modeling by the Rhodium Group, a New York-based research firm.

By the numbers: The firm projects that without big EPA rules underpinned by the finding, U.S. emissions in 2035 would be 26-35% below 2005 levels.

• If the rules were intact? A steeper decline of 32-44%.

Reality check: Neither path comes close to what scientists say is needed to avoid the worst climate impacts.

• In its final weeks, the Biden administration set a target of cutting emissions at least 61% by 2035 — roughly aligned with the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to well below 2°C above preindustrial levels.

Flashback: After years of regulatory whiplash, the finding itself has directly reduced little, if any, emissions since 2009.

• Obama-era rules for vehicles, power plants and oil and gas were delayed, challenged or repealed in Trump’s first term.

• Then-President Biden restarted the process. Trump has now begun unwinding things again.

What they’re saying: “Although the environmental community has viewed the endangerment finding as the holy grail, it has done very little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Jeff Holmstead, a former top EPA official who’s now a partner at the lobbying firm Bracewell, which represents a range of corporate clients.

Yes, but: The finding’s influence likely extended beyond formal rules.

• It signaled that federal climate regulation was coming — shaping corporate decisions in ways that are hard to quantify.

“As an energy system modeler, I can only do what’s on my spreadsheet. And there’s not something that says, ‘turn on U.S. leadership on climate,’ “ said Ben King, a director at Rhodium who was involved in the analysis.

Zoom out: Thursday’s action marks the most aggressive move yet in nearly two decades of climate policy ping-pong.

• And it’s reigniting debate about the limits of tackling a decades-long problem through these regulatory swings.

“It does point to the risk of basing sweeping and really important policy on fragile foundations,” said Josh Freed, senior vice president for the climate and energy program at the center-left think tank Third Way.

What we’re watching: Inevitable lawsuits will likely take years to make it to their final destination of the Supreme Court.

• “More importantly, the primary drivers for clean energy generation right now are commercial,” said David Goldwyn, president of consulting firm Goldwyn Global Strategies.

• “There is market demand for fast, clean power, especially for data centers, which face formidable license to operate issues.”

The bottom line: Decades of state and federal policy, plus market shifts, have pushed the economy toward cleaner energy. So far, Trump’s rollback isn’t enough to turn it around.

Axios’ Ben Geman contributed reporting.

Exclusive: Power broker in AI boom draws takeover interest

An obscure, two-year-old company has emerged as a quiet power broker — literally — in the AI boom.

Why it matters: Houston-based Cloverleaf Infrastructure is lining up massive deals securing land and city-scale electricity to fuel data centers — the single biggest bottleneck in AI expansion.

Driving the news: The company — founded in February 2024 by three energy veterans — is being courted by multiple potential buyers, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

• A decision could come within weeks.

• Brian Janous, co-founder of Cloverleaf, declined to comment on acquisition discussions.

The big picture: Cloverleaf’s rapid rise — and takeover interest — underscores the frenzy to lock down power as AI demand explodes.

Catch up fast: Natural gas is fast becoming a default choice to fuel the AI boom. Janous, who is also the firm’s chief commercial officer, says Cloverleaf is proving another way by pooling existing clean energy.

“A lot of people default to the easy thing,” Janous said in a recent interview in his office in downtown Seattle. “Doing this the more sustainable, lower-carbon way is actually better, faster and cheaper.”

Follow the money: Cloverleaf has raised roughly $300 million, announced in July 2024.

• Backers include NGP Energy Capital Management and Sandbrook Capital, alongside investments from company leadership.

What they’re saying: “I see Cloverleaf as an example of data center development done right,” said Michael Thomas, founder and CEO of Cleanview, a market intelligence platform.

• “They are finding creative ways to build data centers and bring their own capacity, but they’re doing it almost entirely with clean energy storage and flexible curtailment.”

How it works: Cloverleaf’s thesis: America’s regional grids already have stranded or underused capacity. The challenge is coordination.

• “We have a lot of leverage to orchestrate solutions that are, right now, sitting in silos,” said Janous. “It’s more a business problem than a technical problem.”

Zoom in: Most of that unrealized electric capacity is coming from renewable energy, but Janous said some of their projects have made use of natural gas plants that only run during peak demand.

• “We don’t want to hitch our sites on the need to run a lot of new fossil fuels,” Janous said.

The other side: Many developers are moving in the opposite direction, installing on-site natural gas because it’s dispatchable and reliable.

• In parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest — America’s AI hotbed — gas is increasingly the default for AI facilities.

By the numbers: Cloverleaf is pursuing projects totaling 10 to 15 gigawatts of peak power capacity — roughly 10 to 15 times Seattle’s peak electricity demand.

• “That’s a very big bite for anyone,” Janous said.

• Projects have included large-scale developments in Wisconsin and Georgia.

The intrigue: Janous was Microsoft’s first energy hire 15 years ago.

• Co-founders David Berry and Jonathan Abebe bring decades of electricity development experience across U.S. power markets.

• Despite managing multibillion-dollar prospects, Cloverleaf is lean — about 30 employees across its Houston headquarters and Seattle office.

• In Seattle, the team works out of a shared high-rise space. Janous showed up to our interview in jeans and a Seahawks jersey ahead of the Super Bowl.

Reality check: Community pushback is rising as developers propose city-sized data centers. Janous acknowledges that opposition could slow growth.

• “We’re literally on the ground every single week talking with locals,” he said.

• Some communities, he added, prefer data centers to factories because they don’t drive population growth.

Yes, but: It backed out of at least one project in Wisconsin after local opposition intensified.

• “I definitely think the opposition is increasing,” said Janous, who added the company still plans to pursue a project in that region. “We’re not so Pollyannish that we believe everyone is going to be super excited we’re there.”

What we’re watching: Whether Cloverleaf sells — and whether its clean-power-first model wins in this AI arms race.

Read this full story in Axios.

This is a charging station contrasted with old trucks in my tiny hometown of Sprague, WA. I was visiting home last weekend and find the contrast between old and new quite striking in rural parts of our country.

Scroll to the end for a 💯 Seattle sunset.

In the AI boom, this energy company is suddenly flying high

Meet the unlikely poster child for the AI boom and its insatiable energy demand.

Why it matters: Bloom Energy, long seen as a niche energy player, can deliver on-site power far faster than traditional options — a critical edge as data centers race to secure electricity.

Driving the news: Over the past year, Bloom Energy’s stock has surged more than 400%, outpacing even AI bellwethers like Nvidia.

State of play: Bloom Energy makes shipping container-sized fuel cell units that generate power with natural gas through a chemical reaction instead of combustion.

• It has signed major deals with key players across the AI and energy landscape over the last year and a half. They include Oracle, utility AEP and Brookfield, a leading financier and owner of data center assets.

• The stock price surged late Thursday after its earnings beat investor expectations earlier in the day.

“We went from zero hyperscalers directly talking to us to pretty much every hyperscaler talking to us,” Bloom Energy co-founder and CEO KR Sridhar said in an interview during last month’s World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain town of Davos.

• The sudden interest in the San Jose, Calif.-based company reflects how unusual the moment is for a firm that spent years pitching fuel cells to a market that largely wasn’t listening.

• During the first half of 2025, “pretty much our phones wouldn’t stop ringing, and we had to be selective on who we were talking to,” said Sridhar, a physicist and materials scientist who previously worked on energy at NASA.

The big picture: The AI boom is scrambling winners and losers across the economy.

• That’s been especially true in the electricity sector. It has long had stagnant growth and a reputation for moving slowly, constrained by regulations and years-long waits to plug into regional power systems.

Zoom out: Bloom Energy has had a long — and controversial — run. Founded 25 years ago by Sridhar, the company initially framed its technology as a clean-energy solution.

• It even drew national attention with a “60 Minutes” segment in 2010.

Flashback: Axios reporting has chronicled some of Bloom’s earlier governance and disclosure controversies.

• Bloom’s 2018 IPO filing included a surprising disclosure involving investors with ties to a firm sanctioned for misleading investors, and a 2019 Axios investigation flagged a history of unreliable projections.

• “It’s a cautionary tale of what can happen when narrative overtakes results,” Axios’ Dan Primack wrote at the time.

Catch up fast: It now appears some results may be catching up with Sridhar’s long-running narrative — thanks to AI.

• “We knew the day would come. We kept plugging away and AI came as a catalyst,” Sridhar said in our interview.

Reality check: Analysts at Jefferies raised its 2026 outlook for Bloom on stronger order visibility, according to a late January report by the investment bank.

• But Jefferies is cautious longer term, citing competition, supply risks and limited margin for error at current valuations.

Learn how it works and more in the full story in Axios.

The AI boom is making natural gas great again

Natural gas is the clear winner in a fast-moving push to generate power directly at data centers, a new report finds.

Why it matters: These are billion-dollar bets that last decades — and doubling down on fossil fuel today locks in more global warming far into the future.

Driving the news: Nearly 75% of the power equipment planned to be used on site at data centers is natural gas, according to a report released Tuesday by Cleanview, a market intelligence platform.

“Press releases for these projects say one thing. But the 35+ permit documents, site plans, and equipment deals we found tell a much different story,” the report finds.

• Despite public nods to renewables, hydrogen, or nuclear, the equipment being installed this year and next is “almost entirely gas-powered.”

By the numbers: Cleanview identified 46 data centers planning to build their own on-site power, with a combined capacity of 56 gigawatts.

• That represents roughly 30% of all planned data center capacity in the United States.

• It’s roughly five times the peak electricity demand of New York City.

Between the lines: “This is a very new trend,” Cleanview’s Michael Thomas wrote recently. “A little more than a year ago, virtually all data center developers planned to use the electric grid to power 100% of their projects.”

The big picture: Wind, solar, and batteries are cheaper in a lot of places. But the AI race is so intense that companies are choosing power they can get now over power that’s cheaper later, amid years-long grid connection delays.

• “The rub for solar and wind developers is that they’re essentially locked out of this market until” developers begin building renewable-energy farms adjacent to data centers, Thomas told Axios in an interview.

Zoom out: Natural gas is already the largest source of electricity on U.S. power grids — and it’s also dominating data centers that do connect to the grid, particularly in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, the country’s AI hotbed.

Flashback: A decade ago, natural gas was becoming politically toxic, with some activists and lawmakers pushing to ban it alongside coal.

• Now, as global climate ambitions falter and AI drives a race for power, gas is regaining political and commercial appeal.

Read how Bloom Energy fits into this in the full Axios story.

🏈 Go Seahawks! 🏈

⛷️A drive ski-by Davos update ⛷️ (stay ‘til the end for an actual ski shot)

🎥 At Axios House:

• Matt Damon courts Davos set to partner with Water.org: Read and watch

• Emerald AI CEO Varun Sivaram on AI and energy

• Energy Impact Partners Founder Hans Kobhler on cleantech

• Colossal Biosciences co-founder on conservation and de-extinction

• Conservation Fund’s Larry Selzer and The Nature Conservancy’s Jennifer Morris on how nature is persevering

• Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle on trade and energy

• Novonesis CEO Ester Baiget on persisting sustainability

I typically cover the energy that powers our lives — but for one night in Davos, I focused on the energy within us as humans. Lose that, and nothing else matters.

It felt like stepping into an oasis of authentic connection amid a gathering otherwise dominated by AI obsessions, geopolitical power plays and economic hierarchies.

As Calm CEO David Ko wrote: "No networking theater. No agenda chasing. Just leaders sitting together, sharing honestly. What unfolded was deeply human."

We even ate a healthy meal optimized for sleep and recharge.

As AI reaches deeper into our lives, experiences like this reinforce my belief that we need more moments centered on our humanity. Here’s to more authenticity — in real life and on platforms like this.

More Davos by photo

Meet the Australian billionaire bucking Trump on climate

DAVOS, Switzerland — Australian mining executive Andrew Forrest is emerging as one of the world’s few top business leaders willing to publicly and loudly buck President Trump on climate change.

Why it matters: The broader business community is largely staying quiet in the face of Trump’s aggressive moves in a number of areas, including on clean energy.

Driving the news: Forrest is the CEO and founder of Australia-based Fortescue, one of the world’s largest mining companies.

• “Even the most selfish political leaders know that there are boundaries to everything,” Forrest said on the main stage at the World Economic Forum, which took over Davos last week.

• “We risk being those business and political leaders who knew of the planet’s limits, and crossed them anyway.”

The intrigue: Forrest convened three private meetings with between 20 and 50 CEOs to talk about the topic on the sidelines of the official proceedings.

• “I’m a lone ranger here, and they’ve chosen to let me stand alone,” Forrest told Axios in an interview, when asked about other attendees.

Forrest says the fact that he’s not American gives him more latitude to speak up. He said other CEOs are largely staying the course on cleantech investments and climate — but they’re not saying that publicly.

• “They fear retribution,” Forrest said. “That’s not the way to run a country.”

Read the full story in Axios.

What gives energy leaders pause on AI

Covering the energy demands of AI while increasingly using AI feels like a strange form of immersion therapy.

Why it matters: We’re all humans first, and only then journalists, founders, philanthropists or experts. And AI is fast reshaping how we work, think and find meaning.

Catch up fast: This is a followup to my Finish Line article on this topic. It’s taken on additional currency with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s warning this week of the imminent “real danger” that super-human intelligence will cause civilization-level damage absent smart, speedy intervention.

Driving the news: I’ve begun asking interviewees to drop their talking points and answer as humans: How are you using AI, and what worries you?

“I’m certainly most scared about the loss of meaning in human life,” said Varun Sivaram, founder of startup Emerald AI. He is referring to the loss of reason to do economically useful work, which gives people initiative in life.

• Some people may see AI as helping liberate them from their jobs, Sivaram said, instead spending their time just seeing art and music.

• “But a lot of people don’t want only that right, right? And I really worry about that a lot for the human soul,” Sivaram said.

Reality check: Others emphasize agency over inevitability.

• “I think what’s missing in this conversation is the idea we have agency. We get to make choices,” said Mike Schroepfer, former CTO of Meta, now a founder of cleantech venture capital firm Gigascale Capital.

• For example, he said: he can choose not to use GPS to preserve his sense of direction.

• “I have faith in people to make good decisions about it and figure it out as we go along,” he said.

The intrigue: Getting people to truly open up has been hard. Some retreat to safe language; others invoke children or grandchildren as a proxy for deeper unease.

Inside the room: In a live interview last fall with philanthropist Bill Gates at Caltech, he responded with humor that carried an uncomfortable truth.

• “Someday the AI is going to say to me, ‘Hey, stop messing around trying to eradicate malaria. I’m so much smarter than you. You just go play pickleball, and I’ll get back to you.’ And I’m going to be a little disappointed, like ‘Oh geez, I’m not that good at pickleball, ‘ “ Gates told me.

Read the full article in Axios.

Nordic ski, Swiss style!

The climate agenda’s fall from grace over the past year has been stunning — in speed, scale and scope.

Why it matters: Whether this collapse in climate-change ambition proves permanent or temporary will shape the planet — which is still warming in unprecedented ways — and trillions of dollars in global energy investment.

Driving the news: President Trump last week announced that he’s withdrawing from the world’s flagship climate treaty that’s been in place for more than 30 years, making the U.S. the only country not to be part of it.

• “There’s no hand-waving about how ‘We want to cooperate on climate,’” oil historian and S&P Global vice chairman Dan Yergin said in an interview. “It’s, ‘We’re slamming the door on that issue.’”

• “We’ve gone from over-indexing it to zero-indexing it.”

The big picture: The last 30 years of global history “was an exceptionally unusual period,” said Nat Keohane, president of the nonprofit Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

• After the Cold War, countries — led by the U.S. — bonded together and created global institutions.

“Climate policy was facilitated by multilateralism, globalization and the sense nations had a common agenda far more than the world we live in right now,” Yergin said.

Catch up fast: The last year has seen an epic reversal that spread quickly from governments to boardrooms to pop culture.

Read the full Axios story here.

What history says about today’s AI power surge

This might be our first AI race, but it’s not America’s first power boom.

Why it matters: The latest boom in power is scrambling our communities, politics and power bills, with Big Tech companies making promises seeking to ease said scramble.

The big picture: The U.S. has been able to meet soaring electricity demand in decades past at even higher growth rates than what experts are predicting now.

Yes, but: “One must keep in mind that the magnitude of current load is far above that of the ‘70s and ‘80s,” said power expert and consultant Rob Gramlich, president of consulting firm Grid Strategies LLC.

The magnitude is “relatively large and possibly unprecedented,” Gramlich said by email.

Zoom out: “Every technology that has required a major infrastructure expansion has involved precisely the kinds of questions that we’re facing here,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told Axios’ Ina Fried about his company’s recently stated pledge to not burden locals with its data centers.

• “Private companies cannot solve all the issues by themselves, but they can make it easier when they take a high road,” Smith said.

Share this Axios story.

How much power prices are really rising

Yes, national average power prices have risen, but no, not as much as President Trump said.

Why it matters: With plug prices the political term du jour this election year, sifting through arcane power price data will be important to find the facts.

Driving the news: In a Truth Social post this week, Trump claimed household utility bills rose “over 30%” under President Biden.

Where it stands: National electricity prices rose 4.7%, when adjusted for inflation, during Biden’s term, with a noticeable uptick in 2022, alongside the early boom in AI.

Between the lines: Without adjusting for inflation, that 4.7% figure rises to 25.8%, far closer to Trump’s claim.

Zoom in: Some states — particularly those in the Mid-Atlantic where a lot of data centers are being built — are seeing higher price spikes than the national average.

Reality check: Similar to gasoline prices, electricity prices go up and down for a variety of complex reasons, often not correlating much at all with the sitting president.

What we’re watching: Prices are continuing to rise under Trump, including in the nation’s capital.

The Energy Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Share this Axios story.

Here’s what kind of energy is fueling AI

Natural gas is filling the biggest role fueling electricity for data centers in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest — the country’s AI hotbed — but the region is still staring down a huge shortfall in power.

Why it matters: Society faces the risk of spiking power prices or — worse — no power at all if this gap isn’t resolved by either adding more power or fewer data centers.

How it works: The chart above illustrates what’s known as the effective load carrying capability, or ELCC.

• This is a method that grid operators use to measure how much an energy resource — such as renewables or natural gas — can reliably contribute to meeting power demand at times when the grid is most at risk of shortages.

• As wind and solar grow on the grid, ELCC provides a more precise way to assess how much dependable capacity they actually add, accounting for their variability.

• That’s unlike traditional resources such as natural gas, which can generally be dispatched on demand, according to a spokesperson for BloombergNEF.

Go deeper in Axios.

🏃‍♀️ Art on the run 🙃

I snapped this photo while on recent pre-dawn run. It looks kind of like art, but what is it really?

Read on for my latest coverage, and stay ‘til the end for a bluebird day.

Bonus: Let me know if you’re going to the World Economic Forum in Davos later this month. I’ll be there the whole week!

How AI is affecting me as a human (and journalist)

AI is making my life more convenient and my job more efficient, but it’s also tempting me to think less — and sparking new frustrations.

Why it matters: AI is infiltrating daily life faster and more aggressively than any modern technology. We’re all living experiments in its effects: the good, the bad and the unknown.

Driving the news: Early research — and plenty of anecdotes — suggest AI is already reshaping our brains.

• A recent MIT Media Lab study found students who used ChatGPT to write essays showed significantly lower cognitive engagement.

• One of the researchers, Nataliya Kosmyna, put it bluntly: Evolution pushes us to adopt tools that make life easier, “but your brain needs friction to learn.”

Catch up fast: When I joined Axios in September and jumped into the AI-and-energy beat, it felt like AI immersion therapy.

• Axios itself is integrating AI tools into our newsroom workflow. Our journalists can use them to take a first stab at alt text for photos and charts so they’re more accessible, to research new topics, to sort through huge datasets for trends, and to get suggestions for smoother language.

• The effect: I’m covering AI while also depending on it.

Flashback: History shows a long list of technologies that have made our lives easier while compelling us to let go of certain skills.

• We ceded handwriting to computers.

• We ceded math to calculators.

• We ceded direction to GPS.

• We ceded our attention to social media.

Friction point: I worry we are ceding our thinking to AI.

You know the saying, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” With AI, I worry the opposite might be true — that the sum of what we’re offloading is starting to add up to something that’s the opposite of great.

• I don’t need good handwriting, I never liked math, and I don’t mind following Google’s blue dot around the world.

• But AI goes after our thinking itself, the foundation beneath all the other skills we’ve offloaded over time.

How it works: Early on in this job, I could feel AI making a difference to my mind, so I started taking notes:

1. It’s tempting me toward intellectual laziness. I could ask ChatGPT to do big pieces of my job. I resist it, but the temptation exists — and humans are efficiency-maximizing creatures, as Kosmyna said.

2. Learning feels heavier. Diving into a new topic — traditionally the joy and oxygen of journalism — now sometimes makes my brain groan like it’s heading to the gym.

3. I’m retaining less. Reading, listening, interviewing, prepping for talks — it all feels less “sticky.”

4. AI’s “magic” leaks into real life. When my jacket zipper jammed the other day, I caught myself frustratingly thinking: Why can’t this just work? AI always just works. The feeling of AI’s magic in the digital world is setting impossible expectations for the physical one.

The intrigue: Between the span of September and December, late October was a peak of when I was using AI a lot, ceding my thinking to it more — driven by both temptation and experimentation.

• Since then, I’ve intentionally pulled back, putting guardrails around when and how I use it.

Between the lines: I never let ChatGPT write drafts, and for things like public speaking, I use it even more sparingly, since the success of a live interview or talk depends so much on the written prep process itself.

To be sure, I do use AI for a lot of things (still).

1. Professionally, I ask it to help me refine interview questions (originally created by me), and I use it for initial research on a topic (specifying that it should mine from legitimate sources).

2. Personally, it’s been a lifesaver simplifying complex finance and tax guidance (which I then run by human professionals), and I enjoy asking it to write satirical versions of popular songs and speeches.

Reality check: This is just one person’s snapshot of a few months inside a fast-evolving technology. Plenty of experts argue AI could improve our lives in ways other tech hasn’t.

• Mark Manson, a bestselling self-help author, wrote recently: “The more I use it, the more I think, ‘I should be finding more ways to use this.’ And that is something I’ve never experienced in my life.”

• He just launched an app that offers AI coaching.

Zoom out: AI could help cure cancer or commercialize fusion. It could also trigger mass layoffs. It’ll likely do things we can’t imagine today.

• Its impact on the human brain is just one thread in a sprawling tapestry — but considering we each only get one brain, it’s a pretty important one.

The bottom line: Despite my unease, I don’t think AI is inherently bad — or that we shouldn’t use it. After all, I ran this story through ChatGPT to make it better. It did. Of course it did.

Share this story from Axios and sign up for our Finish Line newsletter where this story appeared.

Six energy trends for 2026: Affordability, AI and abundance

If 2024 marked the pre-dawn of the AI boom and 2025 the sunrise, we are now fully in daylight.

Why it matters: This AI daylight will ripple through our midterm elections, your power bills and the future of all kinds of energy.

Here are my six headline trends, and click here to read more about each.

🔌 The ‘affordability’ elections

🌇 AI, full daylight

🛢️ Abundance deepens for oil and gas (👀 Venezuela)

↩️ Finding the “climate reset” button

💨 Choose your own adventure, clean energy edition (👀 China)

🌎 Trading climate tensions (👀 Europe)

How energy powers your AI work and fun: a step-by-step guide

AI feels like magic — largely because most of us don’t understand how it really works.

Why it matters: This story will radically break down the process so this technology — which is becoming as commonplace as the Internet — feels more real and less magical.

Go deeper: Check out the Axios story here that uses an AI-generated image of my giant cat to break it all down.

From years to weeks: How a fusion startup aims to use AI to speed breakthroughs

A trio of companies including Nvidia announced Tuesday that it’s using AI to accelerate the development of fusion that’s eluded innovators for decades.

Why it matters: Fusion, the energy that powers stars, has long had unrealized potential to provide vast swaths of clean, stable electricity for the AI boom and to cut emissions.

Driving the news: Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), leveraging data from Siemens and an AI platform from Nvidia, is creating what it calls a “digital twin” of its demonstration machine to speed progress toward commercial fusion.

Read the full story in Axios.

My final journalism of the year! Stay ‘til the end for a 🎄 greeting.

🎙️ Plus: I recently shared my perspective about energy and climate journalism on Columbia University’s Energy Exchange podcast. Listen here.

2025’s wild ride: The AI energy boom, climate rethinks and surprises galore

This year took humanity on a wild ride — and energy was no exception.

The big picture: The AI boom came of age, climate ambition was reset and the surprises never stopped.

Catch up fast: Here are trends I’m reflecting on — anchored by ones I predicted in January would drive this year.

1. Cleantech scrutiny

“Scrutiny” was the word I used in January. It holds up — but President Trump went after wind and solar more aggressively than I anticipated.

Friction point: Offshore wind took the biggest hit. BloombergNEF’s forecast for U.S. offshore wind capacity plunged from 39 gigawatts to just six, per Canary Media.

On Capitol Hill, Congress also repealed more of the Inflation Reduction Act than many expected.

• But a sizable chunk of cleantech support survived — including funding for advanced nuclear, geothermal, sustainable aviation fuel and battery storage.

2. Humility and surprises

This one hits close to home, as many of you know. Cipher News, the outlet I was leading until July, shut down after funding changes at Breakthrough Energy, which is backed by Bill Gates.

Zoom out: Gates’ shifting priorities — and his controversial memo — reflect a broader reset across climate and tech that’s driven largely, but not exclusively, by Trump’s election.

• From companies like Ford to institutions like the International Energy Agency, the forces pushing ambitious climate action clearly lost momentum this year.

Surprises were everywhere. Even accounting for present bias, last week’s news that Trump Media & Technology Group (parent of Truth Social) is merging with nuclear fusion startup TAE Technologies felt like a Mad Libs headline come to life.

3. The AI race

This ranked third in my January outlook. It should have been first.

• We’re now so deep into the AI race that talks of bubbles are the norm.

The bottom line: We’ve spilled plenty of ink on AI and energy this year, and spoiler alert: we’ll keep it up next year.

• My article on tectonic plates sums up the AI and energy story for 2025.

4. Europe’s existential competition

The European Union is also scaling back its climate ambitions — partly in response to Trump, but also because of deeper, unresolved tension over global competitiveness considering its higher energy prices.

5. Tariffs, China, Brazil, oh my!

This was my January catchall for geopolitics, and it largely holds up.

• Trump’s tariffs rippled across the economy, but somehow faded into background noise amid the AI energy rush.

• The annual United Nations climate talks in Brazil came and went with relatively little fanfare.

China is the world’s biggest and most enduring energy and climate story.

• China flexed its geopolitical muscle by restricting exports of rare earth materials and extending its cleantech lead by investing in emerging areas like fusion.

Read the full story in Axios.

Exclusive: Whole Foods to deploy novel food recycling tech

So the chicken does come before the egg.

A new kind of AI-supercharged food recycler will turn fruit and vegetable scraps at Whole Foods into chicken feed — which will then help produce the grocer’s own eggs.

Why it matters: The technology can shrink waste volumes by up to 80%, according to its maker, startup Mill, cutting greenhouse gas emissions from food waste and saving Whole Foods money.

Read in Axios.

Exclusive: Lawmakers push bill showing fusion’s bipartisan appeal

Fusion hasn’t actually arrived in reality, but a bipartisan group of lawmakers is already looking to make sure it sticks around in Washington.

Why it matters: A bill being introduced that would codify a new fusion office at the Energy Department might seem like inside baseball. But it’s a concrete sign it’s emerging as a bipartisan energy solution in U.S. politics.

Read in Axios.

🎄 Happy holidays from Tosha my cat!

Here’s my last few weeks of journalism! Stay until the end for a festive London photo op.

AI’s energy gusher

The age of AI is ushering in the golden age of American energy.

Why it matters: Long prized for being boring — cheap, reliable, predictable — American power is exploding with new growth, new wild ideas and new sci-fi level possibilities.

It’s a massive growth engine for the U.S. economy and brimming with once-unimaginable investment and experimentation.

• The tech and energy industries — and perceptions of them — are shifting fast and often in counterintuitive ways.

The big picture: AI sucks up most of the media and public attention. But our energy landscape is also changing at an unprecedented clip to power that AI.

Reality check: As with past energy golden ages — shale oil and gas, electrification, the rise of cars — this one carries its own underbelly: data center backlash, higher power prices and new equity concerns.

How it works: The AI boom is shifting the tectonic plates of our stubborn energy systems. One tectonic plate has been squarely in our face (and our power bills) this past year. Three others are also sliding into place.

Let’s break them down:

1. A data center land rush is pushing up electricity prices, igniting NIMBY fights and straining grid reliability. The latest sign of stress: The NAACP is holding an event this week called “Stop Dirty Data“ to highlight its concerns.

2. Skyrocketing power demand is boosting once-too-expensive clean-energy technologies — from advanced nuclear to carbon capture — by giving them massive prospective customers such as Google and Microsoft willing to pay top dollar.

3. AI itself could accelerate cleantech breakthroughs, including long-promised dreams like fusion. It’s already helping with geothermal discoveries.

4. AI is also boosting oil and gas, improving subsurface mapping and squeezing more fuel out of existing fields.

Read the full story in Axios here.

AI could unleash a trillion more barrels of oil

AI is emerging as the oil industry’s next big unlock by boosting reserves and supercharging efficiency.

Why it matters: This could stabilize oil and gas prices over the long term, but it’s also raising questions about the climate impacts of such trends.

• “The sky is the limit in terms of the production,” Mike Sommers, head of the American Petroleum Institute, told Axios. “The days of predicting peak oil are long gone.”

Driving the news: AI could “unlock an extra trillion barrels of oil,” Wood Mackenzie wrote in a recent report.

• The consultancy says its new proprietary AI tech is allowing companies to better identify where they “can wring substantially more oil out of producing reservoirs.”

• In layperson’s terms: AI is helping squeeze more juice out of the same orange.

What they’re saying: “That’s a TRILLION ADDITIONAL barrels of oil [that] would not otherwise be possible. 🤯,” wrote climate activist Holly Alpine on LinkedIn.

Read the full story in Axios.

China blowing past world on renewables and EVs

Read the story in Axios.

Where Bill Gates draws the line on dimming the sun

Bill Gates says he would support deploying artificial cooling technologies to lower global temperatures — but only if the planet hits so-called climate tipping points.

Why it matters: The Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist is a major funder of research into this controversial technology, and his comments in a recent interview with Axios are among his most expansive yet.

• Activity by startups has sparked a wave of media attention to the tech, which is known as geoengineering. Coverage includes The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Politico magazine during November alone.

The big picture: Solar radiation management — reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space — is a subset of geoengineering that’s shifting from fringe science and conspiracy theory into mainstream policy debate.

• The idea could help blunt extreme weather, but its risks remain uncertain and likely significant.

How it works: Solar radiation management, or solar geoengineering, aims to cool the planet by reflecting sunlight.

• The most-discussed method involves injecting sulfuric-acid particles into the upper atmosphere, mimicking the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions.

Driving the news: Gates’ comments, made during an interview last month at Caltech, are significant because he makes a distinction between what’s become a more common position — supporting research into geoengineering — versus actually deploying it.

Zoom out: In the interview, Gates said the world is largely on track to avoid the worst climate impacts thanks to rising clean-energy deployment.

• But he emphasized there’s still an outlier chance of especially dire consequences driven in part by tipping points — scenarios in which warming triggers reinforcing feedbacks, or secondary effects, which accelerate climate change.

• You “would then need to reach for some other type of intervention,” Gates said.

When asked whether that meant geoengineering — and whether he would support its deployment in such a scenario — Gates replied: “Yes, I’ve been a funder of trying to understand geoengineering.”

Read the full article in Axios.

The unintended consequences of pipeline fights

The latest episode — and last for season 1! — of the Shocked podcast with U Chicago tackles the unintended consequences of trying to stop fossil-fuel infrastructure.

Listen here + read my coverage of the episode in Axios.

Holiday in Covent Garden!

“Landman” TV show reflects oil industry’s renewed swagger

• My hot take: I took one for the team and watched TV for a story, but I promise this is a serious story not just about a show.

• Read in Axios.

Global warming is like a human fever, influential scientist says

• In our latest Shocked podcast with the University of Chicago’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth, I interview well-known climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe.

• Listen here and read my Axios take here.

Our global progress on climate change, in two charts:

• My hot take: We have made things less bad with more clean energy, but global temperatures are still rising—just not as much.

• A big shoutout to the Axios visuals team!

• Read in Axios.

U.S. should brag on climate progress, GOP senator says

• My hot take: I was in Salt Lake City last week to host an Axios Live event on Utah’s energy future. The feature photo is from our event, which was a lot of fun and a big success!

• Read in Axios.

Fewer solar projects are being stalled, Energy Department says

• My hot take: This is true in the shorter term, but more projects are being stalled longer term.

• Read in Axios.

Electric car sales drive record quarter for cleantech investments

• My hot take: A dead count bounces once, right?

• Read more in Axios.

Mayors forge global partnership on AI and sustainability

• My hot take: They’re at the frontlines of this more than most.

• Read more in Axios.

Bonus 🎧

• I joined NPR’s 1A this week to talk about the UN climate talks. Listen here.

• I recently joined this podcast to talk about my Landman show.

• I’ll be joining Columbia University’s Energy Exchange podcast soon. Stay tuned!

Read ‘til the end if you want to laugh!

Bill Gates defends contentious climate shift

Bill Gates defended criticism this week from all sides about his controversial memo calling for a shift to prioritizing human welfare in climate debates.

Why it matters: Gates’ response to the widespread and polarizing reactions to his own shifting positions shows the high stakes of this debate and his influence as a major funder of both climate and public health initiatives.

Driving the news: Gates, in an interview with Axios Monday night in front of roughly 1,000 Caltech students, talked at length about the memo, his broader views on energy and climate change and more.

“I’m glad people are listening,” he said, before adding that it was hard to convey “nuanced positions nowadays.”

State of play: Since the Microsoft co-founder published the memo on Oct. 28, reaction has been wide-reaching and fierce. Numerous conservative leaders — including President Trump — are cheering what they described as a wholesale retreat for the billionaire philanthropist.

“It’s a gigantic misreading of the memo,” Gates said of Trump’s post and others like it. He said his funding toward addressing climate change and public health measures are both going up.

• “I didn’t think the memo was going to convert the non-believers into believers, and sure enough, it didn’t convert them,” Gates said.

Context: Gates has ramped up his funding of the Gates Foundation while announcing its closure in 2045. He cut some parts of his clean energy group, Breakthrough Energy, earlier this year, but he is continuing his venture capital investments and has talked about increasing them.

Friction point: Gates also pushed back against climate scientists who said he was setting up a false dichotomy pitting climate efforts against foreign aid.

• “What world do they live in?” Gates said. He went on to say that foreign aid budgets going to poorer countries do often choose between climate and health. “This is a numeric game in a world with very finite resources, more finite than they should be,” Gates said.

What’s next: Read the full story in Axios.

Catch up fast:

• How Bill Gates is reframing the climate debate

• Bill Gates urges UN climate summit to refocus on improving lives

Tiny Guyana’s eye-popping ascent on oil production and wealth

Guyana is racing ahead on oil production and wealth since Exxon struck crude off its coast a decade ago.

Why it matters: The South American nation, about the size of Idaho, shows how quickly oil money can transform — and test — a country.

State of play: A new episode of the “Shocked” podcast explores how oil cash is reshaping Guyana and then zooms to Texas to see similar forces at work.

The big picture: This newfound oil is catapulting Guyana to the top of the world’s economic growth.

• The IMF says Guyana led the world with an average 47% real GDP growth from 2022 to 2024, propelled by Exxon’s offshore projects.

Reality check: Challenges persist, of course, including an ongoing border dispute with Venezuela and charges of corruption, which the oil wealth risks exacerbating.

• Guyana also boasts one of the world’s largest virgin forests, which allows it to keep describing itself as “net zero” despite rapidly growing oil production.

Friction point: We reference a BBC interview with President Irfaan Ali last year that got heated.

• When the journalist asks if its forest gives it a right to drill for oil, Ali responds: “Does that give you the right to lecture us on climate change? I want to lecture you on climate change.”

• In a related exchange about Greenpeace, Ali says: “Who is going to pay for the development and advancement of our country? Are you going to pay? It’s not coming from anywhere. It’s not coming from Greenpeace or anyone else.”

Follow the money: Let’s share two strikingly different figures:

• $1.8 billion: That’s how much the World Bank has given Guyana from 1969 to 2024, the latest available number (adjusted for inflation), according to calculations done by the University of Chicago’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. Most was loaned for specific purposes, so it’ll have to be paid back.

• $6.3 billion: This is what Guyana has earned by allowing Exxon to drill for its oil from 2019 to 2024.

What’s next: Read the full story here.

Catch up fast: Another recent Shocked episode got in the weeds water on sea level rise and its tangible impacts.

Cleantech veteran hopes to “turn AI energy crisis on its head”

As founder of one of the buzziest startups at the intersection of energy and AI, Varun Sivaram is having a moment.

Why it matters: His company, Emerald AI, just landed its first commercial deployment and announced new funding — all while Sivaram was named to Time’s Climate 100 and released a TED Talk.

The big picture: Emerald AI sits at the forefront of a nationwide — and increasingly global — race to build data centers at breakneck speed and to power their enormous electricity demand.

• “My hope comes from turning the AI energy crisis on its head,” he told Time.

• “While the narrative is often about AI’s massive and problematic electricity consumption, I see something different: the emergence of the single greatest tool we’ve ever had to manage a clean energy grid.”

Driving the news: In addition to the Time accolade, just in the last week:

• A coalition led by Nvidia announced the first commercial deployment of Emerald AI’s software at a data center in Virginia.

• Emerald AI announced $18 million in additional seed money (after coming out of stealth in July to announce $24.5 million).

• And his TED Talk is publishing on Monday.

How it works: The startup’s software adjusts energy draw in real time — a model Sivaram and partners say can ease strain on the grid and curb electricity costs.

Catch up quick: At 36, Sivaram is already a cleantech veteran.

• A physicist by training, he’s led innovation at offshore wind giant Ørsted and served as a senior aide to U.S. climate envoy John Kerry under President Biden.

Read more in Axios.

Read my exclusive on Emerald AI’s new partnership with Nvidia.

Kicker quote

Bill Gates on how concerns over AI could impact people:

“Someday, the AI is going to say to me, ‘Hey, stop messing around trying to eradicate malaria. I’m so much smarter than you. You just go play pickleball, and I’ll get back to you.’ I’m going to be a little disappointed, like, ‘Oh geez, I’m not that good at pickleball.’”

My journalism this week! ⤵️

• A rare inside look at a private convening of the world’s most high-profile investors, including Bill Gates, John Arnold and Vinod Khosla. More below.

• Latest Shocked podcast episode: China’s dominance in batteries shows just how much the Asia powerhouse is beating the U.S. on key tech fronts, which I also covered in Axios.

• America faces an economy-shaping energy jam: We’ve never needed more of it more urgently to meet rising consumer and business demand, Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in their Behind the Curtain column, which I contributed to.

• Green energy stocks are making a comeback despite political headwinds, according to new data released this week.

Investors mull locking arms to back high-risk climate tech

Top climate investors are aligning on an unusual plan to scale high-risk startups after a private coastal retreat sparked a push for joint action.

Why it matters: The investors — including Bill Gates, John Arnold and Vinod Khosla — hope that synchronized investment can break the logjam for deploying new energy projects.

• Cautious unity emerged at the retreat in the face of cooling political and economic momentum for climate action.

The intrigue: The event — dubbed All Aboard — was hosted by former TED leader Chris Anderson at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California, in late September.

• Attendees included a curated group of entrepreneurs and roughly 150 high-profile investors, including Gates, Arnold Ventures co-founder Arnold and Khosla Ventures founder Khosla.

• The gathering followed the Chatham House Rule, meaning information could only be shared without attribution (unless a speaker gave approval). Axios was invited to attend and interview attendees.

Twenty startups — culled from hundreds through a months-long nomination process —made the final cut to present:

• Energy tech and storage: Form Energy, Energy Dome, Antora

• AI-related: Positron and Panthalassa

• Geothermal: Zanskar, Sage Geosystems, Mazama

• Carbon + materials: Dioxycle, Fortera, Sublime Systems, Brimstone, Hertha Metals

• Recycling + resources: Ascend Elements, Cyclic Materials, Ceibo

• Green fuels: Verdagy (hydrogen), OceanWings (wind-powered ships)

• Others: Greenlight Biosciences (agriculture), Type One Energy (fusion)

“We are arguing that the very best returns on the planet will be in these companies,” Anderson said.

• The startups represent the types of bets that the world’s highest-profile investors are making.

Read the article in Axios and read my profile of the event’s organizer, TED’s Chris Anderson.

State of play: The convening is part of a broader corporate response to kick-start climate investment.

• Related endeavors include a new matching fund and a surrounding coalition of 14 investment firms, including Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Energy Impact Partners.

• All are aimed at focusing investments on a limited number of startups to generate enough capital to build expensive first-of-their-kind commercial-scale projects.

• “With so many companies ready for deployment, it’s critical that investors come together, as we did at All Aboard, to find and fund the entrepreneurs building the next generation of energy and infrastructure solutions,” said Rodi Guidero, managing partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, in a statement after the convening.

How it works: The fund aims to “anoint” the strongest startups by matching the total amount of investments made by at least three or more fellow coalition members.

• At least two of those must be new to that investment, said fund lead Stan Miranda, a veteran private equity executive.

• “That will help accelerate commercialization and winnow down what’s otherwise a crowded space of different tech startups,” he said in an interview after the gathering.

Catch up fast: The All Aboard Fund has an initial raise goal of $300 million, which Anderson concedes is far less than what’s needed. He hopes to raise billions in future funds.

Follow the money: From the stage, Arnold pledged $50 million to the fund. He confirmed it post-event, calling it an “interesting concept” and a way to capitalize on smart due diligence.

Reality check: Clean tech has a history of hype — and heartbreak. Despite billions invested over the past 15 years, exits into public markets (or even acquisitions) have been scarce.

• Political tailwinds are increasingly shifting — especially under President Trump, who has dialed back key climate policies, and with investors’ exuberance over AI.

Inside the room: The vibe at the gathering was “Shark Tank” crossed with a TED Talk.

• On stage, a screen revealed interested funders, prompting others to raise their hands.

• “Welcome to ‘Climate’s Got Talent,’ “ one entrepreneur quipped from the stage.

Friction point: Bubbling beneath the feel-good vibes was scrutiny from participants of the All Aboard structure, including the general collaborative nature and the fund’s specific design.

What they’re saying: “Investors are paid to make decisions on companies to invest in, so any sort of collaborative effort or non-individual decision-making effort will be approached with some skepticism,” said Mike Schroepfer, former Meta CTO and now head of Gigascale Capital, a coalition member.

• “That tension only matters when you have a zero-sum or pie-shrinking point of view,” he said in an interview afterward.

• But Schroepfer says he’s confident startups will deliver meaningful returns for all involved.

Zoom in: Some attendees questioned whether more equity is what startups need most — versus, say, project finance — and to what degree the fund could reinforce groupthink.

• A related concern was adverse selection — that the fund could draw in startups that look popular among investors but may be less sound underneath.

What we’re watching: Anderson expressed confidence that such concerns will be alleviated as investments unfold.

• “If people see this first fund deployed quickly and into good companies,” Anderson said. “I think we will have a knockdown argument to institutional capital to come in and support the next round.”

Katie Fehrenbacher contributed reporting.

Disclosure: Amy Harder is a former employee of Breakthrough Energy in her role leading Cipher News, an independent news outlet supported by Breakthrough Energy.

The man who made TED a household name is moving from ideas to (climate) action.

Why he matters: After nearly 25 years at TED, Chris Anderson is stepping back to launch a new initiative seeking to mobilize businesses on climate change — as political focus wanes and investor energy shifts to AI.

• Anderson announced Wednesday that Sal Khan, educator and founder of Khan Academy, would take over the nonprofit TED conference, which produces expert thinkers’ “TED Talks.”

“Ideas can change the world,” Anderson said after a recent private gathering about the new initiative in Half Moon Bay, Calif. “But only if someone can figure out how to turn them into action. That’s what I see cleantech entrepreneurs doing every day.”

Read the full story in Axios, and stay tuned next week for a behind the scenes look into the exclusive gathering Anderson recently hosted in California.

Driving the news: Anderson’s new venture is a combined new fund, coalition and convening called All Aboard.

• It compels an atypical level of coordination and collaboration for investors, even among those funding climate technologies who are often more collaborative than most.

• The goal is to boost startups from lab proof of concept to massive scale, which is particularly hard and expensive for capital-intensive technologies such as climate.

Zoom in: Anderson himself isn’t a household name — about once a month he gets called “Ted.” But he has one of the broadest and most unique global networks because he has led TED for so long and engaged with its speakers.

• “It turns out a lot of those minds are concerned about climate,” he said.

Flashback: Anderson, who accumulated significant wealth through his early media ventures, traced the beginning of his journey toward this new chapter back to 2019. That was when he helped launch TED Countdown, an initiative specifically about climate change.

• With a front-row seat to pretty much any TED talk, Anderson credits his evolution on the topic to leaders who have, unsurprisingly, given TED talks.

• Two he named: Mexican climate activist Xiye Bastida and John Doerr, the philanthropist and investor whom Anderson said helped convince him to launch Countdown.

“I became more and more persuaded that the biggest impact would come from changing what businesses did, and the biggest impact on that would be the disruption caused by exciting startups in this space,” Anderson said.

The intrigue: Anderson, an affable 68-year-old who was raised in Pakistan by British parents, carries himself as an extrovert but says he’s an introvert.

• Across one evening during Climate Week NYC and three days in Half Moon Bay shortly thereafter, Anderson hosted what in many ways felt like a tailor-made TED conference for a small group of invited climate investors and entrepreneurs.

The big picture: Anderson is going all-in on climate during what is otherwise a trough of climate momentum.

• President Trump is repealing U.S. climate policies, global attention to the matter is waning and investors are shifting their excitement — and dollars — to artificial intelligence.

• Anderson is undeterred, seeing the AI boom as a tailwind for cleantech and the government as no longer central.

• “At the stage we’re at right now, the government role is less influential than we know. Things have moved and are unstoppable.”

Follow the money: The All Aboard fund acts as a double-matching co-investing fund alongside a vetted group of more than a dozen well-known investors, including Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Energy Impact Partners.

• The fund, which is being raised now, is currently just $300 million, which Anderson acknowledged at the Half Moon Bay gathering isn’t nearly enough. He hopes it reaches billions in the next couple of years.

His relatively new arrival into the climate world — the first All Aboard convening was last year — could sit poorly with those invested (both monetarily and morally) in the cause far longer than Anderson.

• But he exuded a high degree of humility that attendees said softened simmering skepticism.

• “I accept it may not work,” Anderson said at the gathering at his New York home during Climate Week. “Many will look quite skeptically about this whole thing.”

What they’re saying: Multiple attendees at the convening in late September expressed mostly intrigue at both Anderson and his new effort.

• “He’s kind of a wizard. He makes magic happen,” said Nigel Topping, a longtime climate leader who helped launch the TED Countdown with Anderson in 2019 and was at the gathering. “He’s pretty courageous. The chances of failure of something as bold as this are always high.”

The bottom line: Topping, also a climate adviser to the U.K. government, said Anderson’s “arc from ideas worth sharing to actions worth taking is quite clear. If he’s successful, it will be the biggest thing he will have done.”

Shocked podcast: The farmer’s A.I. Manac

AI will help us better forecast the weather, which will be nice for the average person, but it will be livelihood-saving for farmers.

In the latest Shocked podcast episode, we look at how AI is applied for good to people who arguably need it the most.

As a reminder: Shocked is a podcast hosted by yours truly and supported by the University of Chicago’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. You can listen to our prior episodes spanning AI’s energy use, geoengineering and more by clicking here.

Latest from Axios:

• Nuclear startups pursue side profits from offshoot products: https://bit.ly/3IZhVGv

I love this article because it combines everything about this beat:

✅ It highlights a trend underway for a while but largely unnoticed/disconnected.
✅ It illustrates the omnipresent challenge of time when it comes to the energy industry and the climate problem.
✅ It dips into other sectors, like defense and healthcare.

• AI power demand to grow tenfold by 2030, new report says: https://bit.ly/48nTpta

Shocked podcast: Markets for Pollution

The latest episode of Shocked listens like it’s the 1990’s. No, seriously, it goes back in time to when Republicans were pushing FOR environmental regulations, and then we come up to speed to the present on a market-based environmental program in India.

As a reminder: Shocked is a podcast hosted by yours truly and supported by the University of Chicago’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. You can listen to our prior episodes spanning AI’s energy use, geoengineering and more by clicking here.

Bonus: Art + climate

I moderated a discussion hosted by The Nature Conservancy and the Domicile Art Gallery in Seattle, WA, this week. I participated in this with my Axios hat on, and also my volunteer role as a board member for TNC’s Washington chapter. Photo ⤵️

• We heard from TNC’s Jamie Stroble and artist Spencer Frazer, whose art collection focused on fire was featured in the gallery.

First, a rapid fire recap of my dozen on-stage interviews at New York’s Climate Week + Axios’ revamped Future of Energy focus.

Then, a link to the latest Shocked podcast episode, which shows how Moneyball — the book and movie about baseball — can help protect the environment.

Let’s imagine the summation of each of my dozen on-stage interviews + panels at New York’s Climate Week this year were humans (or AI models) and could say in just ONE sentence what you should take away from each discussion.

Here’s what they would tell you in a nutshell because that’s all the time our attentions have:

➡️ Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island at Axios House: Fighting words, and debates lingering on winning the offshore wind battle but losing the war.
➡️ Secretary of Energy Chris Wright at the Dynamo Energy Hub: Questioning renewable energy and extolling nuclear, but don’t tell him he agrees with Al Gore about the latter.
➡️ Neil Chatterjee, of Palmetto, and former FERC chairman at Axios House: Worries about AI’s energy demand and let’s stop with the politics, man!
➡️ Mateo Jaramillo of Form Energy at Axios House: What politics? Demand and support for energy storage is (still) going strong.
➡️ Dr. Katharina Beumelburg of Heidelberg Materials at Axios House: Cement is all around us! And we’re doing unprecedented things to clean it up.
➡️ Hillery Hunter of IBM at Axios House: AI math is complicated, and hey ChatGPT help yourself clean up.
➡️ Amelia DeLuca of Delta Air Lines at Axios House: Economic times are actually forcing positive focus on sustainable execs.
➡️ Axios Expert Voices roundtable: We need LOTS of energy–and it needs to be affordable, and hopefully clean too.
➡️ Panel with Josh Parker of NVIDIA, Varun Sivaram of Emerald AI, Cully Cavness of Crusoe: AI is going to solve everything and its energy problem too!
➡️ Christophe Beck of Ecolab at Axios House: Water is the unsung ingredient in this whole AI thing.
➡️ Dynamo Energy Hub panel with Pedro Pizarro of Edison International, nick chaset of Octopus Energy US and Kim Hedegaard of Topsoe: Thank goodness for (some) government certainty, but we (still) need permitting.
➡️ Christopher Levesque of TerraPower at Axios House: AI is a major boost, and hey so is the offshoot medical product.

This is a record number of on-stage events for me at NY’s Climate Week, most of them at the Axios House in midtown. A huge thank you to my Axios journalist colleagues and the Axios live team for helping host an A+ series of conversations.

Bonus! Also this week, we relaunched Axios’ Generate newsletter to be the Future of Energy, where we’re even more focused on the people, tech and resources powering our future. Sign up here if you’re not already.

Here is some of our coverage from last week:

• Data centers should be ready to bring their own power, Wright says

• How AI is helping Al Gore warm up to nuclear power

• Exclusive: White House looking to ink oil and gas deals at Climate Week

• DOE’s Wright calls offshore wind disruption a unique case

Podcast: Moneyball for the Environment

The data-based strategy of picking a winning baseball team, as documented in the book and then movie Moneyball, is being applied to rooting out environmental violators, we report in the latest episode of the podcast Shocked.

Hot tip: I recommend reading the book, watching the movie and then listening to our podcast!

As a reminder: Shocked is a podcast hosted by yours truly and supported by the University of Chicago’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. You can listen to our prior three episodes spanning AI’s energy use, geoengineering and vultures (yeah, those ugly-but-important birds!) by clicking here.

Hello! Getting you caught up fast with what I’m up to ⤵️

Here are the highlights of my happenings at New York’s annual climate week, beginning Sept. 22:

Monday-Wednesday: Alongside my Axios colleagues, I’ll be interviewing several top newsmakers for a suite of programming at Axios House in midtown, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the chief sustainability officer of Delta Airlines, nuclear power executives and more. Register your interest here.

• Fun fact: We will have a variety of snacks and refreshments throughout the day — caffeine to fuel your mornings and more fun libations later to fuel your evenings.

Monday evening: I’m moderating a panel about AI and energy use with the head of sustainability for Nvidia and more.

• RSVP for more info here.

Tuesday afternoon: I’ll be interviewing Energy Secretary Chris Wright and moderating another panel on data centers and energy at the Dynamo Energy Hub.

• Register your interest here.

The second episode of the Shocked podcast aired this week, where we tackle geoengineering.

Listen here, and read my Axios coverage below:

• How extreme weather fuels interest in geoengineering

• Climate scientists discusses “chemtrails” conspiracy theory

• An inside glimpse into a major direct-air capture sale

Is there such a thing as a “bad” use of energy? How can we demystify geoengineering? Why do vultures matter? What does Moneyball—that book (and movie) about baseball—teach us about environmental issues? And how does artificial intelligence fit into most of this?

These are a few of the wide-ranging questions we’re tackling in a new narrative podcast from the University of Chicago, launching today. It’s called Shocked, because we hope the topics, findings and insights surprise you.

Listen to Shocked here!

This isn’t your typical energy-expert podcast where Expert A expounds upon Expert B. That niche is crowded and insular. We want to reach a broader audience by making these important topics more accessible and engaging.

I’m your host in my new role as the inaugural journalism fellow for UChicago’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. I’m joined by Michael Greenstone, the institute’s founder, who brings his humble wit and expertise to every episode. As part of my fellowship, I will also moderate events at UChicago this school year. It feels good to be back—I held a similar fellowship at the university’s Energy Policy Institute in 2018–2019.

Each episode runs about 30 minutes, including a debrief between Michael and me. We know you don’t have all day—and I do work at Axios, home of Smart Brevity—so we aim to enlighten without taking up your afternoon.

I’ll occasionally feature an episode in my Axios coverage, starting with episode one, where I go on an energy self-discovery journey. You can listen here or wherever you get your podcasts, and read my Axios story here.

Speaking of, thank you for all the well wishes last week about my new role at Axios. I am working my way through your messages, and I hope to respond soon if I haven’t already!

Another component of the podcast that excites me is the global scope: we talk with guests from India, Guyana, Australia and beyond. Climate change and energy touch every corner of the world in different ways, and Shocked embraces that.

This project was a true team effort—thank you to colleagues at UChicago, our production firm Magnificent Noise and marketing firm Bumper for helping bring it to life. And of course — thank you to our listeners, which I hope will include YOU!

Episode one is out now. I hope you’ll give it a listen—and let me know what you think: amy@amyharder.com.