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Levi's and Marks & Spencer have launched the Fashion Renewable Collaborative, a joint initiative designed to help apparel suppliers switch to renewable energy sources. The effort targets emissions generated deep in supply chains, such as fiber and fabric manufacturing, rather than focusing solely on the brands' own operations.
The European Commission has proposed requiring data centers with over 500 kW capacity to disclose their energy and water usage through a standardized rating system, similar to appliance energy labels. The rules would not cap power or water consumption but would require operators to report water use relative to local water stress and disclose whether they recycle waste heat back into local energy systems.
Security researchers including Joshua Corman of the Institute for Security and Technology say the immediate danger to energy infrastructure comes from malicious humans using generative AI tools, not from AI systems acting autonomously. They note that much of the grid's equipment, including power plants often decades old, was never built with internet connectivity or cyber defense in mind, leaving it exposed as attackers gain more powerful tools.
GasPulse is a free iPhone app that uses Energy Information Administration data to display weekly gas price trends by state or region, along with up to five years of historical pricing. It also includes an Outlook feature predicting future price direction, state comparisons, price alerts for up to six areas, and home/lock screen widgets with Siri support.
The U.S. Navy has awarded a $3.8 million contract to America's largest shipbuilder, marking the company's first publicly known foray into naval laser weapon development. The deal comes as the Navy accelerates efforts to move directed-energy weapons from experimental prototypes into systems that can actually be fielded on ships.
Mazama Energy closed an oversubscribed $135 million Series B round led by Centaurus Capital and Doerr Capital, with Vinod Khosla among earlier backers. The funds will support horizontal drilling into super-hot rock formations in Oregon, where each well could generate up to 15 megawatts, and the company now estimates the site could ultimately yield 10 gigawatts of power, double last year's projection.
NVIDIA, Google, and startup Emerald AI have created the AI Energy Management Alliance (AEMA), a coalition aimed at making AI data centers more flexible in their power consumption. The group wants facilities to be able to shift workloads, tap batteries, and cut usage during peak demand, in exchange for utilities granting faster grid connections and potentially sharing infrastructure costs.
Private fusion companies raised $3.8 billion in the first eight months of this year, already surpassing all of last year's investment, as firms like Pacific Fusion and Helion Energy push toward commercial electricity targets. Despite this funding surge and scientific milestones like the National Ignition Facility's 2022 net energy gain experiment, no company has yet demonstrated a system that produces more electricity than it consumes on a sustained, grid-ready basis.
In 2023, Poland's state-backed Orlen energy group tried to buy 6 million barrels of Venezuelan crude during a sanctions reprieve, hiring intermediary Hannon and UK firm Lexcor Energy to handle the deal in USDT stablecoin. Multiple currency-to-crypto conversions in Dubai went wrong, leaving tens of millions unaccounted for, and a representative who carried USB drives loaded with crypto wallets to Venezuela was reportedly defrauded by fake brokers posing as PDVSA officials.
MIT Technology Review's latest list of under-35 innovators highlights researchers and founders working on climate tech, including Jae-Won Chung's software for measuring AI models' energy consumption, Jing Wei's AI-based pollution tracking, and Zhonghua Zheng's city-specific climate models. The list also features Mohammad Alkhadra of Lithios and Benjamin Mowbray of Rock Zero, two startups developing faster, cheaper methods to extract lithium from brine and hardrock ore respectively.
A new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute finds that 53% of Americans are extremely or very concerned about AI's environmental impact, up from 41% a year ago. The rise is driven largely by Democrats, though the poll also shows widespread unease about the local effects of data centers that power AI and cloud computing.
Businesses are facing a sharp increase in energy costs, and companies are split on whether to pass those costs to consumers immediately through price hikes or absorb them for now. The divide reflects differing bets on how long the energy cost surge will last and how sensitive customers are to price changes.