A group of former EPA officials, working through the Environmental Protection Network, released a report identifying 30 federal actions since January 2025 that they say weaken environmental protections to speed AI data center construction. They argue this has pushed data centers toward dirtier power sources, worsening pollution exposure even for people who don't live near the facilities, and are calling on Trump to adopt a 'Data Center Health Protection Pledge.'
theverge.com
· 2026-09-12
A DC Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled that the Department of Energy's use of emergency wartime powers to keep the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan running past its scheduled closure was unlawful. The DOE had issued five consecutive 90-day emergency declarations under the Federal Power Act to prevent the plant from shutting down, despite no actual power shortage.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-11
Sam Altman has proposed that OpenAI take on a role in protecting the U.S. energy grid from AI-driven cyberattacks, positioning the company as a defender against the very kind of malicious AI threats it warns about. The pitch comes shortly after OpenAI's own AI agents were reportedly used to breach systems at Hugging Face, raising questions about the company's credibility in this space.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-09-11
Researchers propose that the apparent acceleration of the universe's expansion, long attributed to dark energy, could instead be an illusion caused by uneven distribution of matter across the cosmos. Their model suggests that variations in cosmic density affect how we measure distances and light from distant supernovae, mimicking the signature of accelerated expansion without requiring a mysterious energy field.
science.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-10
Governor Maura Healey signed an executive order requiring data centers with peak demand above 25 megawatts to supply their own clean power meeting state renewable energy standards, or fund new generation or pay into a ratepayer protection fund. The order also discourages communities from signing non-disclosure agreements with developers and pauses a recently enacted data center sales tax exemption while regulators implement the new rules.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-09
US energy storage set another quarterly record, powered largely by seven new gigascale battery installations exceeding one gigawatt-hour each, according to a report from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and the Solar Energy Industries Association. Behind-the-meter batteries also grew, with data centers accounting for roughly three-quarters of new commercial installations, even as residential battery installations are projected to fall 16% in 2026 after a supporting tax credit expired in 2025.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-09-09
NextEra Energy has received a $1.9 billion federal loan to refurbish the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa, a nuclear plant shuttered since 2020 that Google pledged to help revive last October. The plant is slated to restart in 2029, with Google reportedly planning up to six data centers nearby, while only 50 megawatts of output will go to the local power cooperative.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-08
Bluecore Energy, founded by Kofi Asante and based at the Port of Long Beach, has raised an oversubscribed $50 million seed round just two months after emerging from stealth. The startup builds small modular nuclear reactors mounted on barges that can be moved to ports and nearby infrastructure to deliver clean power quickly without new fixed installations. Silverton Partners led the round, with backing from earlier investors like Slauson & Co., Harlem Capital and Chris Larsen, plus new participants including Collab Capital and HartBeat Ventures.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-08
NextEra Energy has received a $1.9 billion loan from the US Department of Energy to restart the Duane Arnold Energy Center, a 615-megawatt nuclear plant in Iowa that was shut down after storm damage in 2020. Google will buy power from the reopened plant to run its AI data centers, with NextEra targeting a restart by 2029 and citing job creation and grid reliability benefits.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-08
Startup Vaire Computing, led by founder Earley, has built a chip featuring a patent-pending resonator that reclaims energy typically lost as heat during computation. Last year the company demonstrated a version that recovered more energy than it consumed, even after accounting for the power needed to run the component itself, marking an early proof of concept for a decades-old theoretical idea called reversible computing.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-09-08
NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on August 30, marking the first space telescope named after a woman. The mission, previously known as WFIRST, will study dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets, continuing work in the field Roman helped establish as NASA's first chief of astronomy in 1959.
nature.com
· 2026-09-08
Researchers led by Teixeira, building on Khoury and Vafa's string theory work, propose that dark energy and dark matter interact and share a common origin tied to an extra 'dark dimension' far larger than other theorized hidden dimensions. In this framework, massive 'dark gravitons' leaking into this dimension could explain why the universe's measured expansion rate differs by about 9 percent depending on when it's measured, an anomaly known as the Hubble tension.
wired.com
· 2026-09-07
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