katie brigham

One of the ways to understand the AI boom is that it’s turning software companies into light industrial firms. That means that regions recently dominated by IT and services — such as the Mid-Atlantic — are now undergoing a partial re-industrialization, too. www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...

I spent seven years writing a book on this and she just… said it in three succinct paragraphs to politico.

IEA's mid-year electricity review is out. Some highlights below:

First time in 100 years, renewables are set to overtake coal in global electricity production as soon as this year (or latest next year).

Wind + Solar contribution to global grid mix will reach 20% by 2026, up from 4% in 2016.

🧵

relevant

How Trump Rocked EV Charging Startups The end of consumer electric vehicle tax credits isn’t great, but clawing back federal funding has been even worse.

EV charging startups are much more concerned about trump’s attempts to clawback federal funding for charging infrastructure than they are about OBBBA’s rescission of consumer EV tax credits, execs tell me

Glad to have had the chance to talk with @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social at @heatmap.news about the trends we are seeing in US clean energy investment since Trump office.

Read his article below. For more, check out our Trump + 6 month tracker and report at www.the-big-green-machine.com

it would be funny if I did a post on abundance in like eight months

Climate Tech Companies Are All Data Center Companies Now Artificial intelligence wants the energy and has the money, and climate tech companies need buyers.

are all these climate tech startups basically just data center startups now? lately, cleantech companies of all stripes are finding lucrative early deployment opportunities when it comes to building and powering AI data centers in a cleaner, more energy efficient manner

Quaise Energy Achieves Drilling Milestone with Millimeter Wave… Quaise Energy, a leading developer of grid-scale superhot geothermal energy, today announced it has successfully drilled to a depth of 100 meters using its

Quaise has drilled to 100 meters deep, using friggin' lasers*.

* fine, they're "millimeter waves"

Avalanche Energy Gets $10 Million to Test Micro-Fusion Reactors The grant from Washington State will fund a facility where all kinds of fusion labs can run tests of their own.

NEW: Avalanche Energy, a startup building tabletop-sized fusion reactors, just landed a $10 million grant from Washington state, one of the largest government-led fusion investments to date

the admin's $500 billion Stargate AI project is stumbling. from @alexckaufman.bsky.social's heatmap AM newsletter

TOMORROW: Don't miss our virtual briefing featuring Heatmap's @kbrigham.bsky.social, @latimes.com's @sammyroth.bsky.social, @bloomberg.com's @michellema.bsky.social, and Eric Fischgrund of FischTank PR on the challenges of climate reporting in a rapidly changing political and economic landscape.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin Slashes Agency’s Science Division On betrayed regulatory promises, copper ‘anxiety,’ and Mercedes’ stalled EV plans

Some exciting news: Starting today, I'm the new writer of @heatmap.news' flagship daily morning newsletter, the AM Briefing.

You can read my first issue here, and sign up for tomorrow's edition: heatmap.news/climate/epa-...

before eating this meal let me do a quick gland acknowledgement

this is a table headlined “A Brief Overview of Major US Clean Energy Tax Policy” by Shane Londagin, Avi Zevin, Luke Bassett, and the REPEAT Project. It then goes through each individual tax credit and how it has changed. You can find a full OCR-readable PDF version of the table at Heatmap

Seriously this is the most useful single table I’ve seen for summarizing what just happened to US clean energy tax credits. It is a beast. heatmap.news/politics/obb...

happy calendar emoji day 📆

Why Is Thea Energy, the Fusion Company, in New Jersey? The birthplace of electricity has more recently been known more for smokestacks and traffic jams than world-changing energy breakthroughs. But that could be about to change.

the future of fusion (‪@theaenergy.bsky.social‬) could be in... new jersey!! @zeitlin.bsky.social asks and answers the question on everyone's minds: ...why?

AI Could Help Decarbonize the Grid. It’s Already Helping Find More Oil. Two former Microsoft employees have turned their frustration into an awareness campaign to hold tech companies accountable.

when trying to determine whether AI will help save or destroy the planet, we often forget the 🐘 in the room: the fact that while there are myriad potential climate-positive applications of AI, fossil fuel giants are already using this tech to increase oil and gas production today

Here’s How Much Money Biden Actually Spent From the IRA When Congress rescinded unobligated funds from the historic climate law, it inadvertently answered a question climate advocates have been asking for months.

New from me: A look at the what (could be) the legacy of the historic climate law, the IRA.
Post-OBBB, here's a detailed accounting of which grant programs survived, and how much $$ Biden actually got out the door (or at least obligated) before Congress killed the rest. heatmap.news/politics/ira...

Meta’s AI Buildout Will Require More Than 2 Gigawatts of New Gas-Fired Electricity — At Least CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the company’s expanding ambitions in a Threads post on Monday.

Zuck's AI project will require at least 2 gigawatts of new gas-fired electricity heatmap.news/sparks/meta-...

Mark your calendars for a virtual Heatmap briefing next Tuesday.

Heatmap's @kbrigham.bsky.social will be joined by @latimes.com's @sammyroth.bsky.social, @bloomberg.com's @michellema.bsky.social, and Eric Fischgrund of FischTank PR to talk about covering climate and energy in these strange times.

AI Turns Utility Analysts Into Rock Stars Plus: 10 companies to watch this quarter, and why celebrity cellphone pitches keep coming.

are they like moshing with fellow analysts during utility earnings calls or what

The Software That Could Save the Grid Or at least the team at Emerald AI is going to try.

Emerald AI says they can turn AI data centers into grid ~assets~ by reducing their electricity use just 0.5% of the time, freeing up almost 100 gigawatts of grid capacity. how big a difference will that make in the nation's need for an enormous grid infra buildout? i explore:

What’s Left of the LPO After the One Big Beautiful Bill? Some of the Loan Programs Office’s signature programs are hollowed-out shells.

the Big Beautiful Bill has left the Loan Program's Office a shadow of its former self, hollowing out many of its core programs and greatly reducing its ability to place big bets

Sizzling hot take: A news organization can screw up or even do phenomenal damage on a particular story or coverage area, but that doesn't automatically invalidate everything each one of their reporters says or does.

Crazy, I know!

Ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable, Foreign‑Controlled Energy Sources By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.

New: Trump has issued a new executive order targeting the solar and wind industries, instructing the Treasury Department to limit how many renewable energy projects can still claim clean electricity credits under OBBA

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

is there like an ~AI~ or an actual, human-made doc or something (?!?) available now that lays out how a law will read, word-for-word, once you follow this completely indecipherable list of instructions? (politics reporting is hard)

The @heatmap.news team really doing yeoman's work here. There may be no stronger anti-abundance force at work on renewable energy than local zoning laws. One in five counties in the US, and 17% of the total land mass, now has restrictions. heatmap.news/politics/law...

Where Clean Energy Goes From Here The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is one signature away from becoming law and drastically changing the economics of renewables development in the U.S. That doesn’t mean decarbonization is over, experts t...

the one big beautiful bill is going to pass. it's certainly bad, but not as bad as it could be. so where does clean energy go from here? @emilypont.bsky.social and @zeitlin.bsky.social gotchu

no thank u! 🥰