Energy

The EV maker has been granted a license to supply electricity to British households and businesses, mirroring its similar business in Texas. The approval doesn’t include dual gas/electric fuel contracts, however, and local supplier Octopus Energy already allows Powerwall battery owners to sell energy back to the grid.

They joined a new initiative called Utilize that aims to use strategies like battery storage and virtual power plants to make more use of the electrons already available to the grid. It’s a plan that’s supposed to make electricity more affordable as opposition grows to data centers blamed for higher utility bills.

It’s a $100 million project meant to limit methane and other pollutants that are even more powerful greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. But any company serious about climate change still needs to address their carbon emissions, the most abundant planet-heating pollutant. Both companies’ carbon footprints have grown as they expand data centers for AI.

Reserves can offset short-term disruptions to the global market. Beyond that, higher prices could encourage American companies to ramp up production in coming months.

During his State of the Union speech, Trump claimed to have negotiated a “ratepayer protection pledge” to keep data centers from raising utility bills for other customers. He didn’t say which companies are involved or what commitments they’ve made.

The Supreme Court is poised to make a decision that could determine whether states and local governments attempting to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate disasters will need to fight their battles in federal rather than state courts.

California regulators killed a proposal that would have imposed fees on gas-burning furnaces and water heaters that release smog-forming pollutants. More than 20,000 comments they received opposing the proposal were generated by a single AI platform, some addressed from people with no idea their names had been used.

A coalition including the American Public Health Association, American Lung Association, and Sierra Club have filed suit against the Trump administration for repealing the landmark ‘endangerment finding.’ The repeal — if successful — could strip away the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to to regulate planet-heating pollution.

The NAACP sent a notice of intent to sue, accusing Musk’s company of illegally installing gas turbines in Mississippi to power its Colossus 2 data center. Thermal images taken by drone show more than a dozen turbines running at the site without a permit, according to a Floodlight investigation.

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:

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.

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.