The President announced a new $12 billion public-private partnership called Project Vault, meant to establish a strategic reserve of critical minerals. It’s expected to safeguard stores of rare earths and other materials used in batteries, smart phones, cars, planes, and more.
The Trump administration ordered five major offshore wind projects to pause construction in December, suddenly citing national security risks even though developers had previously secured approvals to start building. After the companies filed suit, federal courts have now allowed all five projects to start construction again.
The Trump administration is quietly weakening regulations meant to protect groundwater and limit radiation exposure to workers at new nuclear reactors, NPR reports. Trump has worked to speed up the deployment of new nuclear reactor designs to power AI data centers.
The company, which was led by ex-Tesla CTO JB Straubel, says it just closed its series E funding, including participation from Google and other investors. The money will be put toward building out Redwood Materials’ energy storage platform as well as its EV battery recycling and critical minerals business. And in a blog post, the company gestures at the current debate over AI data centers and electricity demand, saying:
As electricity demand surges—driven by AI, data centers, manufacturing and electrification—energy storage is no longer optional; it is essential infrastructure.
Scientists announced a new expedition to study the potential origin of ‘dark oxygen’ rising from the abyss, a recent discovery that’s been contested by some other researchers and mining companies seeking to exploit new sources of battery minerals along the seafloor.
At least 25 were canceled last year in the US, according to an analysis by Heatmap Pro. It’s a significant increase from 2024 as local opposition to energy and water-intensive data centers grows across the nation.
Trump wants Venezuela’s oil, Greenland’s minerals, and above all — control.
Since his administration attacked Caracas and arrested President Nicolás Maduro, Trump’s been clear that he wants US companies to “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken [oil] infrastructure” in Venezuela. That’s easier said than done with massive logistical challenges and political instability still weighing on the oil industry in the region.
These are the boxes that’ll make up its new Solix E10, aka “the world’s first smart hybrid whole home backup solution.” What that means, exactly, won’t be known until the launch event on January 12th. I’m seeing stackable battery expansion and an inverter as you’d expect, an inlet box and smart panel to tap directly into your home’s circuitry, and what looks like a gas-powered generator like EcoFlow sells.
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The energy demands of AI are driving investment in futuristic fusion reactors from Big Tech and now Trump Media. Is it viable?
The solar industry is pivoting to survive Donald Trump’s attacks on clean energy.
The Trump administration has taken down content about the human causes of global warming — greenhouse gases from fossil fuels — from the Environmental Protection Agency website, part of a larger purge of science-backed information on federal websites.
“It’s clearly a deliberate effort to misinform,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain tells the Washington Post.
They used 30 times more electricity on average than other models according to research by the AI Energy Score project that included responses to 1,000 written prompts. “We should be smarter about the way that we use AI ... Choosing the right model for the right task is important,” Hugging Face research scientist Sasha Luccioni tells Bloomberg.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) completed its safety evaluation for the Kemmerer Power Station in Wyoming and determined that “there are no safety aspects that would preclude issuing the construction permit” for the plant. The NRC says it could take up to another 18 months to make a licensing decision on the advanced reactor.
The tech industry “needs to earn the social permission to consume energy” for AI data centers he says in an interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner. Nadella also called for faster permitting for new power infrastructure and “innovation” in energy efficiency and generation.
Now, the independent market monitor for the northeast’s PJM Interconnection is asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to only allow large data centers to connect to the grid if there’s enough capacity available to serve them reliably. PJM is struggling to finalize a plan to cope with surging data center growth.
The goal is to speed scientific breakthroughs on key priorities including meeting soaring energy demand that’s raising electricity costs for Americans.
Negotiators are deadlocked in a tumultuous close to United Nations climate talks. A proposed roadmap for transitioning away from coal, oil, and gas has become a flashpoint. “We’re facing the reality of a no-deal scenario” EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said earlier today.
