A year-long investigation by Lighthouse Report, Trouw and other European media found that most data centers in Europe do not disclose their electricity and water consumption, despite an EU directive requiring larger facilities to report such data. In the Netherlands, fewer than a quarter of the 186 commercial data centers with capacity of 500 kW or more have published usage figures, and the national agency tasked with collecting this data has records for only 104 of them.
nltimes.nl
· 2026-09-30
The US Energy Information Administration reported that solar power generated 47,147 gigawatt-hours in May, surpassing coal's 45,119 gigawatt-hours and outproducing wind as well. It marks the first month solar has exceeded both coal and wind in national electricity generation.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-29
Delhi's electricity distribution, once plagued by daily outages and losses exceeding half of all power supplied, was overhauled starting in the early 2000s through privatization of utilities and investment in modern grid technology. The reforms replaced aging infrastructure and weak accountability structures that had let theft and equipment failures drain the system for decades.
spectrum.ieee.org
· 2026-09-28
A Brookings Institution study by Columbia Business School professor Stijn van Nieuwerburgh finds that AI infrastructure investment—chips, electricity and data centers—now averages 3.63% of US GDP per year, exceeding prior booms in canals, railroads, electrification and highways. The study estimates 183 gigawatts of new data-center capacity is planned over seven years, more than tripling the roughly 57 gigawatts currently installed, and projects this could double the electricity consumption of the entire US residential sector.
slashdot.org
· 2026-09-27
A tech reviewer evaluated three newly launched home battery systems designed for easier installation than earlier models. The testing comes as electricity prices climb and power outages become more frequent for many households. The reviewer reported spending weeks hoping for an outage to properly assess how the batteries would perform during a real blackout.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-24
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed seven bills requiring data center operators to disclose electricity and water consumption details starting next year. The legislation also directs the California Public Utilities Commission to create separate electricity rates for data centers so their grid connection costs aren't passed on to other ratepayers, and pushes facilities toward greater renewable energy use.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-23
A new analysis suggests that future lunar settlements could tap abundant sunlight to generate massive amounts of solar electricity, potentially enough to support large populations. However, researchers warn that water, largely locked as ice in permanently shadowed lunar craters, may not be sufficient to sustain such large-scale habitation.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-15
Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather analyzed his own usage of Anthropic's Claude Code assistant and calculated that a typical day of work consumed between 1.2 and 5.9 kilowatt-hours of electricity, comparable to running two refrigerators nonstop for a day. He found that 96 percent of the roughly 3.2 billion tokens processed over eight weeks came from the agent repeatedly re-reading its own accumulated memory at each step, rather than generating visible output.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-15
A newly launched site runs a continuous daily simulation applying carbon-aware electricity pricing to real grid data from Switzerland and 38 US grid regions. It compares this dynamic model—where prices fall during clean generation and rise during dirty generation—against standard flat-rate pricing to estimate potential CO₂ reductions.
carbonawarepricing.com
· 2026-09-04
X's Global Government Affairs team says it uncovered a network of roughly 200,000 accounts, suspected to be linked to Chinese operators, with about 200 of them actively posting content meant to sway American discourse on AI and energy policy. The flagged accounts used American-sounding names and shared legitimate news alongside inflammatory commentary and AI-generated images claiming data centers drive up electricity bills and strain the power grid.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-08-28
A Congressional Research Service report cited by the Library of Congress estimates US data centers consumed 17 billion gallons of water in 2023, about triple the 2014 level. Over 80% of that footprint comes indirectly from electricity generation needed to power the facilities, rather than from onsite cooling systems.
forgeeks.net
· 2026-08-25
An analysis compares today's AI investment surge to earlier historical booms, such as the early 1900s period of industrial optimism following the financial panics of 1873 and 1893. It argues that rapid technological expansion, whether driven by electricity, internal combustion, or now AI, tends to attract opportunists whose excesses eventually spread systemic risk throughout the broader market.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-08-24
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