Energy News

Google is signing 15-year-plus nuclear baseload deals to fuel data centers. US gas plant proposals jumped 44% in eight months while planned wind fell 33.9% over the same window, and 60% of that gas buildout is data-center-adjacent. Drax pitched its UK datacentre expansion as AI infrastructure even as campaigners calculate the 4.9 million tonnes of wood it burns yearly would double Gatwick's flight emissions. In Utah's Carbon County, Cheryl Lupo is running for commissioner to block Valar Atomics' 456-reactor plan on the same coal-country land the new economy wants. With gas and electricity prices now tilting congressional outcomes, AI demand has become the proximate cause of nearly every major energy infrastructure fight in the West.

Northeast heating oil hit $6 a gallon, eroding LIHEAP for more than one million low-income households. Mitsubishi is charging $8,000 more than the nearly identical Nissan LEAF, while Suzuki undercut BYD using BYD's own batteries to land a $13,500 mini-EV in Japan. Tesla cut prices 15% in India to move 294 units a month — still a rounding error against Chinese volume players. Kia's sub-$30K EV3 finally arrived as a real affordable option. The transition is colliding with household budgets, and voters are noticing — Axios reports gas, diesel, and power prices are now moving tight midterm contests alongside the Iowan.

SCOTUS heard two hours of arguments on whether Exxon and Suncor can be sued by Boulder for climate deception, with the oil industry pressing justices to draw a line between paying for harms and being told to stop producing. A 9,000-respondent study across 115 countries found techno-optimist scientists 23% less likely to protest — the expertise underwriting climate policy is also the expertise least willing to fight for it publicly. UK meadow pipits are down 19%, part of a 3.6-billion-bird loss. Swiss glaciers shed 20% of their mass in five years, surfacing archaeological material. Scotland installed its first saltmarsh carbon flux tower on ground that has lost 85% of its extent. The Guardian's environment desk is hosting a Q&A on an El Niño it calls 'huge.' The science is outrunning the legal and cultural machinery meant to absorb it.

Jaguar unveiled a £130,000 Type 01 EV as a high-stakes rebrand gamble; Kia's EV3 landed under $30,000; Suzuki's eSKY hit $13,500; a startup is selling a solar scooter that promises 18 miles of daily range without plugging in. Carbon Tracker sizes up COP31 and finds the technological and economic case for the transition at its strongest on record, with 8.8GW of European clean additions — even as US wind plans fall and gas surges. ComEd is now racing a 2027 deadline to define a customer-centered virtual power plant around distributed thermostats, EVs, and solar. The transition is splitting into a luxury escape pod and an affordability lifeline, and the political durability of the whole project depends on which one voters see.