GoKawiil
Tech News
A Sierra Club analysis, first reported by Bloomberg, projects that US grid emissions could reach 2.1 billion metric tons of CO2 by 2030 if currently planned AI data centers come online as scheduled. That would mark a 42 percent jump from 2025 levels, driven largely by gas-fired power plants built on or near data center sites to bypass grid bottlenecks.
The Department of Energy is providing Constellation Energy with $5 billion in loans to expand capacity at eight nuclear plants by 1.1 gigawatts through reactor 'uprates.' Google, Amazon, and Meta have already agreed to buy most or all of the added power from seven of the eight facilities, which span Illinois, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
Nvidia has entered a preliminary partnership with German energy firm PreussenElektra to evaluate whether its decommissioned nuclear power plant sites could be converted into AI data centers. The assessment, announced October 21st, will examine grid connections, land availability and existing industrial infrastructure at the former plants to see if they can support high-performance computing facilities.
Google has broadened its partnership with energy company Voltus to create one of the largest virtual power plants in the US, covering the Mid-Atlantic PJM grid. Rather than building new generation, Voltus will pay homes and businesses to reduce electricity use during peak demand—often automatically via smart thermostats or batteries—freeing up grid capacity equivalent to a large nuclear reactor's output for Google's data centers.
Constellation announced it will spend more than $4.3 billion to boost output at 11 of its nuclear reactors through a process called a power uprate, which involves upgrading equipment like turbines, pumps and transformers to handle more steam from enriched fuel. The company says the added capacity will generate enough electricity to power roughly 700,000 US homes.
A new analysis from the Environment America Research and Policy Center, highlighted by Electrek, projects that gas-fired generator capacity in the US will grow by roughly 20 gigawatts, a 44 percent jump from today's 41.8 gigawatts, within four years. The report attributes much of this growth to surging electricity demand from AI data centers, and notes that planned wind farm capacity has fallen 34 percent since December 2025.
According to the Census Bureau, private data center construction expenditure surged over 73% year-over-year in August, reaching nearly $85 billion annually. This marks the fastest growth since April 2025 and positions data centers as over 63% of all private office construction, surpassing general office projects for the first time since 2014. The data excludes spending on racks or servers and does not specify reasons for the increase.
Researchers critiquing a series of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health studies say they replicated and expanded the same statistical methodology used to link nuclear power plants to elevated cancer rates. Applying that methodology to other landmarks, they found it also attributes huge numbers of cancer deaths to Costco warehouses, private colleges, Harvard itself, and even Major League Baseball stadiums. The critics argue this shows the method produces spurious correlations regardless of the landmark chosen, undermining the original nuclear-cancer papers published in Environmental Health, Nature Communications, and other journals between December and this year.
Green Mountain Power (GMP) is using networked home batteries and software as a 'virtual power plant' to manage electricity demand instead of relying on traditional power plants. GMP says about half of the households enrolled in its battery programme also have solar panels installed.
At this year's New York Climate Week, much of the climate tech industry's attention centered on the AI data center boom, with founders and investors pivoting toward energy infrastructure to power AI. PitchBook data cited shows climate tech venture funding has risen for four straight quarters, topping $14 billion in Q1 2025, driven largely by grid infrastructure, built environment, and dispatchable energy deals tied to data center construction. Some founders at the event expressed concern that this focus is overshadowing other promising climate tech sectors.
The US Environmental Protection Agency announced on September 14 that it is rescinding the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, which had required coal plants and new gas plants to capture 90 percent of their carbon emissions or close by 2039. The agency says the rollback will save industry $370 million in compliance costs, but has not disclosed the resulting public health toll.
A coalition including the American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, Clean Air Council, Clean Wisconsin, Environmental Defense Fund and NRDC has filed a petition asking the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to review the EPA's recent repeal of climate rules for power plants. The groups argue the repeal violates the Clean Air Act and could lead to thousands of preventable deaths by leaving the largest industrial source of climate pollution unregulated.