Skeptic Society Magazine

Tag: energy

Three Big Projects Offer Hope That Our Energy Nightmare Is Ending

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Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Empowerment Alliance,

A few short months ago, much of the world seemed doomed to a bleak energy future, with unreliable, taxpayer-subsidized “renewables” being foisted upon homes and businesses by governments kneeling at the altar of the climate cult. The result was nation after nation winning plaudits from the extreme environmental movement, but increasingly incapable of meeting the energy demands of the 21st Century.

Thanks to U.S. voters in the 2024 elections, the world’s leading superpower has reversed course – and where America leads, the world tends to follow. Today, there’s renewed optimism that our energy resources will meet future demands – particularly as it relates to natural gas, the most affordable, reliable and clean choice among traditional energy sources.

In some cases, the turnaround is in the form of projects producing more gas for domestic use. But even when U.S. projects transport gas to other countries, the new infrastructure, additional jobs and an expanded tax base combine to benefit states and local communities.

In addition to the new gas pipelines from Pennsylvania to New York previously highlighted in this space – along with a growing list of other projects – three recently announced developments highlight the resurgence of natural gas.

1. Alaska LNG project. Once considered a lost opportunity, there is renewed interest in a project on Alaska’s North Slope “that would deliver vast amounts of natural gas … in an 800-mile pipeline, super-chill it in Southcentral Alaska, and transport the liquefied natural gas overseas to countries like Japan, Korea and Taiwan,” according to the Anchorage Daily News.

Some reports have suggested that President Trump’s tariff threats played a part in getting Asia’s attention. Whatever the case, delegations from those countries trekked to Alaska in early June “expressing interest in the project and also seeking to learn more about it. A Taiwanese official even said Alaska LNG could one day become that country’s primary source of energy, if the project is built,” the Daily News reported.

While there remain skeptics due to the project’s cost, others are optimistic. State Rep. Chuck Kopp (R) said the interest from Asian representatives and other favorable developments “give him confidence that it will be built starting in the next two or three years.”

In addition to supplying foreign countries, the project would also provide more natural gas within Alaska’s borders, available to Fairbanks by 2028 or 2029, according to the report.

2. Louisiana LNG project. A $28 billion LNG export project recently broke ground in Louisiana, slated to bring jobs and an expanded local tax base.

“Upon completion, Venture Global expects to become the largest LNG exporter in the United States and the second largest in the world,” according to the trade news site Offshore Energy. “Recently, CP2 received final approval and notices to proceed from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).”

In addition to providing U.S. natural gas to customers around the world, the project is expected to mean more than $4 billion in local property taxes during its operation and support 3,000 jobs in the state, including 400 direct, permanent employees.

The project’s impact will reach far beyond Louisiana’s borders, with roughly 7,500 direct construction jobs and “tens of thousands of indirect subcontractor, part-time, and full-time jobs in over 30 states,” according to the report.

3. Texas data center gas power plants. Texas is ground zero for many of the crucial new AI data centers springing up to meet demand. Previously, it was assumed that these server farms would be powered by wind or solar, meaning long wait times before the centers could go online. But thanks to government policies friendlier to proven traditional resources, those plans are changing.

Across Texas “a frantic race to boot up energy-hungry data centers has led many developers to plan their own gas-fired power plants rather than wait for connection to the state’s public grid. Egged on by supportive government policies, this buildout promises to lock in strong gas demand for a generation to come,” according to The Texas Tribune.

“Operating alone, a wind or solar farm can’t run a data center,” the article noted. “Battery technologies still can’t store such large amounts of energy for the length of time required to provide steady, uninterrupted power for 24 hours per day as data centers require.”

Facing a “tidal wave” of new AI projects, companies are increasingly partnering with natural gas companies to “fuel the new era of demand.”

The Tribune story includes standard-issue climate cult handwringing. But it drives home the reality that “the yearslong wait times for turbines has quickly become the (AI) industry’s largest constraint in an otherwise positive outlook,” and quotes one energy economy expert as saying, “If you’re looking at a five-year lead time, that’s not going to help Alexa or Siri today.”

Thanks to radical policies of the recent past, the U.S. and much of the world seemed hell-bent on phasing out natural gas and other reliable energy sources, racing instead toward endless cycles of brownouts, blackouts, and complete grid failures brought on by the inadequacies of “alternatives.”

In the nick of time, thanks to President Trump and other forward-thinking leaders, the turnaround has begun – and natural gas is leading the way.

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Empowerment Alliance.

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June 28, 2025
Redwood Materials launches energy storage business and its first target is AI data centers

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Tucked between two massive buildings in the hills of the Nevada desert, 805 retired EV batteries lie in neat formation, each one wrapped in nondescript white tarps — and hiding in plain sight.

A passerby might not realize this unassuming array is the largest microgrid in North America, that it’s powering a 2,000 GPU modular data center for AI infrastructure company Crusoe, or that it represents the next big act of JB Straubel, the co-founder and CEO of Redwood Materials.

Redwood Materials announced Thursday during an event at its Sparks, Nevada facility that it was launching an energy storage business that will leverage the thousands of EV batteries it has collected as part of its battery recycling business to provide power to companies. And they’re starting with AI data centers.

The new business, called Redwood Energy, is kicking off with partner Crusoe, a startup Straubel invested in 2021. The old EVs, which are not yet ready for recycling, store energy generated from an adjacent solar array. The system, which generates 12 MW of power and has 63 MWh of capacity, sends power to a modular data center built by Crusoe, a company best known for its large-scale data center campus in Abilene, Texas — the initial site of the Stargate project.

image credits: redwood materials

The scale of Redwood’s battery collection operation is staggering — and an opportunity. Redwood said it recovers more than 70% of all used or discarded battery packs in North America. Today, it processes more than 20 GWh of batteries annually — the equivalent of 250,000 EVs.

It has apparently been stockpiling batteries that aren’t ready for recycling, with more than 1 gigawatt-hour worth in its inventory already. In the coming months, it expects to receive another 4 gigawatt-hours.

By 2028, the company said it plans to deploy 20 gigawatt-hours of grid-scale storage, placing it on track to become the largest repurposer of used EV battery packs.

Straubel’s confidence in the endeavor was apparent in every detail of the launch event. To illustrate the commitment of Redwood — and by extension, Straubel — everything at the event from the music and projection on the big screen to a laser light show that included giant Pac-Man ghosts navigating the rows of EV batteries were powered by the microgrid.

image credits: kirsten korosec

“We wanted to go all in,” Straubel said, breaking into a wide, toothy smile. Splashy effects for the event aside, the microgrid setup with Crusoe is not a demonstration project. Straubel said this is a revenue-generating operation, which was constructed in four months, and one that is profitable. He added that even more of these will be deployed with other customers this year.

“I think this has the potential to grow faster than the core recycling business,” he said.

Redwood Materials has been on an expansion tear in recent years. The company, which has raised $2 billion in private funds, was founded in 2017 by Straubel, the former Tesla CTO and current board member, to create a circular supply chain.

The company started by recycling scrap from battery cell production as well as consumer electronics like cell phone batteries and laptop computers. After processing these discarded goods and extracting materials like cobalt, nickel and lithium that are typically mined, Redwood supplies those back to Panasonic and other customers. Over time, the company has expanded beyond recycling and into cathode production. Redwood generated $200 million in revenue in 2024, much of which comes from the sale of battery materials like cathodes.

The company’s footprint has grown too, and well beyond its Carson City, Nevada headquarters. It has locked up deals with Toyota, Panasonic, and GM, started construction on a South Carolina factory, and made an acquisition in Europe.

Redwood Energy is the next step — and one that isn’t tied to setting up its systems to be off-grid. The retired EV batteries can be powered by wind and solar, or they can be tied to the grid. In the case of the Crusoe project, the system is powered by solar.

“There’s no green intent required here,” CTO Colin Campbell said during a tour of the microgrid. “It’s a good economic choice that also happens to be carbon-free.”

The business model addresses a longstanding challenge in the energy storage sector. For over a decade, companies have been promising to build grid-scale storage from used EV batteries, but they’ve only materialized in small amounts. Redwood, which got its start as a battery materials and recycling company, is creating a new line that promises to deliver gigawatts of much needed energy storage in just a few years.

“This really demonstrates how economical the waste hierarchy actually is,” Jessica Dunn, a battery expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told TechCrunch. That a large recycler like Redwood recognized the profit potential in repurposed EV batteries shows “where this end-of-life market will go,” she added.

Repurposing batteries is a clear business opportunity for Redwood, but it might also be a business imperative. Redwood was founded to build a supply chain that could handle the predicted wave of used EV batteries that will hit the market. But that wave hasn’t materialized quite as quickly as some predicted.

“If Redwood didn’t enter the repurposing market, then they wouldn’t get a share from the repurposed battery. They’d have to wait the five, 10, 15 years until they retired,” she said. In the meantime, other companies would be able to sell the batteries for grid-scale storage, cutting Redwood out of years of revenue.

Straubel acknowledged this, noting in an interview that in many ways Redwood Materials started a bit early.

“We started really early, and in a way we started Redwood almost too early,” he said, noting the company initially was collecting consumer batteries and production scrap ahead of the coming wave of EVs.

The current state of the recycling market underscores the challenge. “Right now, the recycling market is mostly manufacturing scrap, consumer electronics, and EV batteries that have failed under warranty,” Dunn said. That has been enough for Redwood to process over 20 gigawatt-hours annually. But it pales in comparison to the 350 gigawatt-hours in EVs today and the 150 gigawatt-hours expected to hit the road every year.

Redwood currently has a recycling facility at its 175-acre campus in Sparks, Nevada, and it’s developing a 600-acre facility in Charleston, South Carolina. The latter will remanufacture cathode and anode copper foil, both of which contain critical minerals that the U.S. would prefer stayed within its borders.

The company previously said that it will be capable of making 100 gigawatt-hours annually of cathode active material and anode foil by the end of this year. By the end of the decade, it expects production to hit 500 gigawatt-hours.

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June 27, 2025
Agresti Energy secures patent for PFAS destruction tech

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Agresti Energy LLC has taken a major leap forward in the global clean energy race by securing international patent coverage for its innovative Fiber Conversion Process (FCP).

This development not only solidifies Agresti’s intellectual property portfolio but also reinforces its leadership in PFAS destruction and renewable fuel generation.

The extended patent protections cover key elements of the company’s advanced waste-to-energy platform, including the proprietary Pressure Hydrolysis Process (PHP) and a third-generation vertical reactor design.

These patented components work together to convert cellulosic waste, such as agricultural residues and municipal sludge, into renewable natural gas (RNG) while slashing greenhouse gas emissions by up to 60% compared to fossil fuels.

James Wade, Chairman of Agresti Energy, commented: “Securing international patent protection and an EPA-approved RFS pathway uniquely positions Agresti Energy as a global leader in renewable fuel production and PFAS destruction.

“Our platform doesn’t just convert waste to clean energy – it solves some of the most urgent environmental challenges of our time.”

EPA-approved and RFS-certified for clean energy

Agresti’s FCP has already earned approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) programme.

This approval allows the company to generate D3 Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs), high-value credits that represent compliance within the renewable fuel marketplace.

This dual achievement of EPA certification and global patent protection uniquely positions Agresti as a frontrunner in sustainable energy production and environmental remediation.

PFAS destruction and zero-emission output

One of the most compelling features of Agresti’s FCP technology is its ability to neutralise per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – toxic “forever chemicals” linked to serious health risks.

Through a sophisticated integration of subcritical wet oxidation, weak acid hydrolysis, and anaerobic digestion, the system completely breaks down PFAS, pharmaceutical contaminants, pathogens, and heavy metals in just hours.

The result is a zero-emission process that produces compressed renewable natural gas (CNG) and inert ash while offering scalable, cost-efficient deployment.

Next steps

Each Agresti facility is capable of producing up to 5 million ethanol-equivalent gallons of clean fuel annually, with a potential carbon offset of up to 80,000 tonnes.

The company is now inviting international partners to join in commercialising its technology and is finalising its first Facility Optimisation & Training (AFOT) unit to accelerate deployment.

With its groundbreaking approach to PFAS destruction and renewable fuel production, Agresti Energy is setting a new standard for environmental innovation.

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June 26, 2025
Reality Check For Gen Z: ‘Green’ Energy Requires Wealth

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Authored by Ethan Watson via RealClearPolitics,

One of the reasons President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill has drawn fire in recent days is the blow it deals to green energy. Climate-anxious Gen Zers may clutch their pearls at the expanded oil and gas sales on federal lands, or the elimination of the methane emissions fees, especially since over 40% of Gen Z supports completely phasing out fossil fuels. But the well-meaning environmentalists of my generation should acknowledge the most important asset our society has in fighting pollution – wealth. For now, environmental policy should unleash fossil fuels and keep energy cheap to preserve this asset.

Environmentalism is a privilege only a select few humans throughout history have been able to indulge in. Most humans cared about the environment only in the narrowest sense: Will the land be able to feed me next year? Will it support my family this harvest?

That’s why you never hear about a climate protest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where biomass fuels like wood and animal dung are still important sources of energy. Some of the world’s most polluted cities lie along the Indus Valley in India and Pakistan, two economies that are still very much industrializing. When was the last time Greta Thunberg and her ilk tried to cram down a Green New Deal on Pakistan?

Human material wealth increased dramatically with the ability of societies to produce cheap energy. Developed countries can’t pull the ladder up behind them and discourage using the very resources that made them prosperous in the first place.

Climate change activists largely put pressure on highly-developed, extremely affluent Western countries because we can afford it. Via fossil fuels, we have such a high baseline level of prosperity that we can invest in cleaner energy solutions. We can take risks, and spend years and billions of dollars conducting research. That’s why American and European countries have pioneered electric vehicles, solar energy, and other technologies.

All of the modern comforts that we take for granted in the West are rooted in accessible energy. Most of us have cell phones and computers. We live in climate-controlled buildings, drive cars, and have access to the entirety of mankind’s knowledge via the Internet. All of this requires energy.

Even the “poorest” in the United States and Europe reap the benefits of cheap energy. The street lights stay on and social welfare programs are funded by taxes levied on the prosperous. Very few people are living truly subsistence-focused lives. We can afford to think about the distant future, because our immediate future is so secure. But all of this ceases as soon as the lights don’t turn on (like they’ve stopped doing in Spain and South Africa).

Our prosperity has allowed us to develop remarkable technologies, but people’s appetite for climate talk will dissipate quickly once they start struggling to pay their bills. A 2022 study from the Journal of Cleaner Production shows that a middle class struggling to pay its bills engages in more pollutive activities with a larger ecological footprint. Liberal environmental policies squeeze this very subset of the population.

Today, Americans largely accept the inconveniences of fluorescent light bulbs, paper straws, and other boondoggles because our lives are so decadent anyways. But blue states are pushing the envelope. California, notorious for its renewable energy mandates, has burdened its residents with electricity 80% more expensive than the national average, hitting middle and lower income residents the hardest. New York, famous for its RetrofitNY initiative, sees electricity costs more than 50% higher than the national average.

These represent just the direct costs of energy. When one considers energy as an input for most goods and services we use every day, it’s easy to see how these costs stack up. Placing this financial strain on everyday Americans could shift their focus from long-term concerns like climate change to immediate survival. The fledgling Gen Z, on the cusp of starting families and careers, will have to choose between climate sensitivity and prosperity.

Privileged Westerners who have never known anything approaching a struggle to survive should be cautious to abandon the vehicle of our prosperity. Eventually, we will need cleaner energy. Nobody is happy to see factories belching out smog, or giant oil spills destroying marine ecosystems. But the solution isn’t to stymie development or impose ascetic restrictions on energy. We need to unburden the industry so that market solutions can become more efficient and more accessible.

Above all else, we need to keep people interested in saving the environment, and that can only happen if they’re secure in the comfortable lives they lead. Gen Z voters should support environmental policy that follows the Big Beautiful Bill’s example and lets humans use the environment, so that one day we may actually save it.

Ethan Watson is a Young Voices contributor and incoming O’Connor Fellow at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. He holds a degree in political science from the University of Kansas, and undergraduate and master’s degrees in accounting. His commentary has appeared in RealClearPolitics, The Daily Caller, and InsideSources. Follow him on X: @erwatson13.

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June 23, 2025
How Much Energy Does AI Use? The People Who Know Aren’t Saying

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“People are often curious about how much energy a ChatGPT query uses,” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, wrote in an aside in a long blog post last week. The average query, Altman wrote, uses 0.34 watt-hours of energy: “About what an oven would use in a little over one second, or a high-efficiency lightbulb would use in a couple of minutes.”

For a company with 800 million weekly active users (and growing), the question of how much energy all these searches are using is becoming an increasingly pressing one. But experts say Altman’s figure doesn’t mean much without much more public context from OpenAI about how it arrived at this calculation—including the definition of what an “average” query is, whether or not it includes image generation, and whether or not Altman is including additional energy use, like from training AI models and cooling OpenAI’s servers.

As a result, Sasha Luccioni, the climate lead at AI company Hugging Face, doesn’t put too much stock in Altman’s number. “He could have pulled that out of his ass,” she says. (OpenAI did not respond to a request for more information about how it arrived at this number.)

As AI takes over our lives, it’s also promising to transform our energy systems, supercharging carbon emissions right as we’re trying to fight climate change. Now, a new and growing body of research is attempting to put hard numbers on just how much carbon we’re actually emitting with all of our AI use.

This effort is complicated by the fact that major players like OpenAI disclose little environmental information. An analysis submitted for peer review this week by Luccioni and three other authors looks at the need for more environmental transparency in AI models. In Luccioni’s new analysis, she and her colleagues use data from OpenRouter, a leaderboard of large language model (LLM) traffic, to find that 84 percent of LLM use in May 2025 was for models with zero environmental disclosure. That means that consumers are overwhelmingly choosing models with completely unknown environmental impacts.

“It blows my mind that you can buy a car and know how many miles per gallon it consumes, yet we use all these AI tools every day and we have absolutely no efficiency metrics, emissions factors, nothing,” Luccioni says. “It’s not mandated, it’s not regulatory. Given where we are with the climate crisis, it should be top of the agenda for regulators everywhere.”

As a result of this lack of transparency, Luccioni says, the public is being exposed to estimates that make no sense but which are taken as gospel. You may have heard, for instance, that the average ChatGPT request takes 10 times as much energy as the average Google search. Luccioni and her colleagues track down this claim to a public remark that John Hennessy, the chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, made in 2023.

A claim made by a board member from one company (Google) about the product of another company to which he has no relation (OpenAI) is tenuous at best—yet, Luccioni’s analysis finds, this figure has been repeated again and again in press and policy reports. (As I was writing this piece, I got a pitch with this exact statistic.)

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June 19, 2025
Bosses of Octopus Energy and SSE clash over ‘postcode pricing’ proposals | Money News

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The head of Britain’s biggest energy supplier has claimed his competitors oppose proposals for so-called postcode pricing because they financially benefit from the current system.

Octopus Energy chief executive Greg Jackson told Sky News his business’s rivals were against customers being charged based on where they lived, rather than on a national basis, because they would lose out on profits.

He said: “A very small number of companies that today get paid tens of millions, sometimes in a single day, to turn off wind farms and generate gas elsewhere, don’t like it.

“The reason you’re seeing that kind of behaviour from the rivals is they are benefiting from the current system that’s generating incredible profitability.”

The government is currently considering whether to introduce the policy, which is also known as zonal pricing. Energy secretary Ed Miliband is expected to make a decision on the proposals by this summer.

Money blog: Millions may wait months for payouts in Mastercard case

Octopus has become Britain’s biggest supplier with more than seven million customers.

Mr Jackson has been a vocal proponent, as he said he wants to charge customers less and boost government electrification policies by having cheaper electricity costs.

What is postcode pricing?

Sarah Taaffe-Maguire

Business and economics reporter

@taaffems

Zonal pricing would mean electricity bills are based on what region you live in.

Some parts of Britain, like northern Scotland, are home to huge energy producers in the form of offshore wind farms.

But rather than feeding electricity to local homes and businesses, power goes into a nationwide auction and is bought to go across Britain.

As the energy grid is still wired for the old coal-producing sites rather than the modern renewable generators, it’s not straightforward to get electricity from where it’s increasingly produced to the places people live and work.

That leads to traffic jams on the grid, blocking paid-for electricity moving to where it’s needed and a system where producers can be paid a second time, to power down, and other suppliers, often gas plants, are paid to meet the shortfall.

Zonal pricing is designed to prevent paying the generators for power that can’t be used.

It would mean those in Scotland have lower wholesale energy costs while those in the south, where there is less renewable energy production, would have higher wholesale costs.

Whether bills go up or down depends on implementation.

Savings from one region could be spread across Britain, lowering bills across the board.

Mr Miliband has said he’s not going to decide to raise prices.

However, SSE’s chief executive Alistair Phillips-Davies described the policy as a “distraction” and said it could affect already agreed-upon upgrades of the national grid that will lower costs.

“I think you’ve got a very, very small number of people who are asking for this. It’s just a distraction. We should remove it now,” he said.

While Octopus Energy estimates that said postcode pricing could be introduced in two to four years, Mr Phillips-Davies said it could take until 2032 before it was implemented, by which time Britain would have “built much of the networks that are required to get the energy from these places down into the homes and businesses that actually need it”.

“We just need to stay true to the course,” he added.

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Unions, as well as industry and energy representatives, have also spoken out against the policy. Opponents include eco-tycoon Dale Vince and trade body UK Steel.

A joint letter signed by SSE, UK Steel, Ceramics UK and British Glass, along with the unions GMB, Unite and Unison, said zonal pricing could lead to scaled-back investment due to uncertainty and higher bills.

A separate letter signed by 55 investors, including Centrica and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, has also criticised the policy.

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Businesses facing fresh energy cost threat

However, Mr Jackson said many investors had not voiced opposition, with thousands of small and medium businesses instead backing the policy in the hope of paying less on energy bills.

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June 17, 2025
The prospectors hunting hydrogen along a US continental rift

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New Scientist visited a hydrogen well in Kansas

Hyterra/Adler Grey

The drilling rig rises several stories above a field normally full of grazing cattle. Though we’re in Kansas, the rig is flying both an American and an Australian flag to reflect its owner’s origin down under: HyTerra has come all the way from Australia in search of natural hydrogen fuel produced deep within an ancient fracture in North America.

“Behind us is the Midcontinent rift, which we think is the kitchen where the hydrogen gets made,” says Avon McIntyre, the company’s executive director. The rift has drawn many companies to the US Midwest, making eastern Kansas one of the busiest frontiers in a worldwide search for “geologic hydrogen”, which many hope could serve as a zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.

The story starts around 1.3 billion years ago, when the continental plate that is now North America began to split in two. Although the continent eventually stopped spreading, the fracture left behind a 2000-kilometre-long scar of iron-rich mantle rock. Today, this rift is buried deep beneath the farms and ranches of the US Midwest.

In eastern Kansas, where the solid rock around the rift rises relatively near the surface, high concentrations of hydrogen have been measured in old oil and gas wells. To see if it can be harvested, a handful of companies have leased hydrogen drilling rights on more than 100,000 hectares of land in the area. That’s according to McIntyre’s estimates, which are based on public courthouse filings. HyTerra and its competitor Koloma have gone further, beginning to actually drill deep underground.

“It is kind of like the gold rush, where everybody is trying to find it,” says Kristen Delano at Colorado-based Koloma. She would not say where the company is drilling in Kansas, but says it is public knowledge they have drilled there. Other companies, such as another Australian firm called Top End Energy, have been buying up mineral rights based solely on where Koloma is thought to be buying.

“There’s been a lot of buzz around the community,” says Shawn McIntyre, who has no relation to HyTerra’s executive director. Shawn is a rancher in Waterville, Kansas who has leased several thousand acres of his land for hydrogen drilling. “This could be a very good opportunity to bring industry back to some of the smaller towns that are drying up in this part of the world.”

The global hunt for underground hydrogen was spurred just a few years ago by revised estimates of how much the planet might contain. Companies searching for accumulations of the gas hope it could serve as a low-emissions alternative to the fossil fuels now used to make fertiliser and power heavy industry and transportation. “Natural hydrogen just fits perfectly into that picture,” says Jay Kalbas at the Kansas Geological Survey. “If we… are sitting on vast quantities of producible hydrogen, that could change not only the state and the region, but the country.”

At the drilling site south-west of Manhattan, Kansas, Avon McIntyre and I tramp through the mud and climb up onto the drilling platform. “It’s all to find out what the hell is going on down there,” McIntyre shouts over the roar of the rig.

The company’s working theory is that hydrogen is generated when water from underground aquifers seeps into the iron-rich mantle rock of the Midcontinent rift and reacts with the metal in a process called serpentinisation. This reaction frees up the water’s hydrogen molecules, which migrate into the surrounding rock.

This is the second of five exploratory wells HyTerra plans to drill in Kansas this year, intended to detect hydrogen along a line stretching eastwards from the rift itself to an underground rise in the bedrock called the Nemaha ridge. Earlier this year, the company reported that its first well, drilled into the high point of the ridge, detected hydrogen concentrations of 96 per cent.

Now, after weeks of drilling for 24 hours a day, the second well was nearing its maximum depth, just beyond 1600 metres. Atop the rig, mud filled with cuttings from the granite far below burbled out of the hole into a trough, where tubes sucked gas out of the liquid for measurement.

In the “mud shack”, a small mobile office at the edge of the site, a group of contractors watched on a bank of screens as instruments reported the composition of the gas from different depths in real time. After staying at low levels through much of the solid rock, the hydrogen concentration had just started to tick up to more than 800 parts per million.

“[The first well] had some really nice peaks, but this one is just bleeding hydrogen,” says HyTerra’s Josh Whitcombe.

These measurements mean little on their own. Gas samples have to be sent off site for more controlled testing. Further, high concentrations of hydrogen don’t indicate anything about how much gas might actually flow from the well and for how long.

Even if hydrogen eventually flows from any of these wells, numerous other questions remain, including how it would be separated from other gases, how it would be stored and transported and who would buy it.

But McIntyre was excited that they had detected hydrogen that far down at all, and he pushed for the crew to continue drilling through the night. “We’re drilling for information,” he says. “And now we’ve got some.”

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June 16, 2025
EU nuclear energy development needs €241bn investment by 2050

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The European Commission has released the eighth edition of its Nuclear Illustrative Programme (PINC), outlining a bold vision for the future of EU nuclear energy.

The report estimates that approximately €241bn will be required by 2050 to support the extension of existing nuclear reactor lifetimes and the construction of new large-scale nuclear plants.

This substantial investment underscores nuclear power’s critical role in achieving a decarbonised, resilient, and competitive European energy system.

The investment plan includes additional funding for next-generation technologies such as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), Advanced Modular Reactors (AMRs), microreactors, and long-term fusion energy.

These innovations are expected to significantly enhance flexibility, reduce costs, and strengthen Europe’s energy independence.

Strategic role of nuclear energy in Europe’s decarbonisation path

Nuclear energy is viewed by many EU Member States as essential to achieving climate neutrality, improving industrial competitiveness, and ensuring energy security.

According to the Commission, over 90% of the EU’s electricity mix is projected to come from decarbonised sources by 2040, with nuclear power playing a vital role alongside renewables.

Currently, nuclear-installed capacity across the EU is expected to rise from 98 GWe in 2025 to approximately 109 GWe by 2050.

This moderate but crucial increase will help stabilise the energy grid, especially as intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar take on a larger share of electricity generation.

Strengthening Europe’s global nuclear leadership

Maintaining and expanding EU nuclear energy leadership is a central priority of the PINC strategy. Ensuring top-tier safety standards, robust security frameworks, and effective radioactive waste management remains paramount.

The programme emphasises the need for investment in long-term waste disposal solutions and streamlined decommissioning procedures to support sustainable growth.

The Commission also highlights the importance of international collaboration with reliable partners to secure a diversified fuel supply and prevent dependency on single sources.

Closer cooperation among national nuclear regulators is expected to accelerate the licensing of innovative technologies.

Dan Jørgensen, EU Commissioner for Energy and Housing, commented: “To truly deliver the clean energy transition, we need all zero- and low-carbon energy solutions. Nuclear energy has a role to play in building a resilient and cleaner energy system.

“Ensuring the necessary framework conditions will allow the EU to keep its industrial leadership in this sector while also upholding the highest safety standards and responsible management of radioactive waste.”

Boosting innovation and workforce skills

A critical pillar of the PINC roadmap is nurturing a future-ready nuclear workforce. The strategy calls for upskilling current professionals, attracting young talent, and supporting nuclear-focused start-ups.

These efforts aim to spur innovation and bring cutting-edge technologies like SMRs, AMRs, and fusion energy to commercial viability.

By fostering research, development, and early market adoption, the EU hopes to position itself at the forefront of the global nuclear energy revolution.

The Commission will finalise the PINC after consulting the European Economic and Social Committee.

The document will be discussed further with EU Member States during the Energy Council meeting on 16 June 2025 in Luxembourg, shaping the next chapter of Europe’s nuclear energy policy.

The case for EU nuclear development

Increasing investment and support for EU nuclear energy is not just an environmental necessity – it is a strategic imperative.

Nuclear energy provides stable, low-carbon electricity and helps balance the variability of renewable sources. In times of geopolitical uncertainty, it also offers greater energy sovereignty.

As Europe pushes toward climate neutrality, nuclear energy can bridge the gap between today’s fossil-dependent system and tomorrow’s green future.

With clear policies, robust safety standards, and sustained investment, nuclear power can become a cornerstone of Europe’s clean energy transformation.

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June 16, 2025
Wood Pellet Mills Are Prone to Catching Fire. Why Build Them in California?

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This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Wood pellets, by design, are highly flammable. The small pieces of compressed woody leftovers, like sawdust, are used in everything from home heating to grilling. But their flammable nature has made for dangerous work conditions: Since 2010, at least 52 fires have broken out at the facilities that make wood pellets across the US, according to a database of incidents compiled by the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Of the 15 largest wood pellet facilities, at least eight have had fires or explosions since 2014, according to the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit founded by a former director of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

At the same time, the world’s largest biomass company, Drax, is cutting down trees across North America with a promise to sell them as a replacement for fossil fuels. But even its track record is checkered with accidents.

In South Shields, UK, wood pellets destined for a Drax plant spontaneously combusted while in storage at the Port of Tyne, starting a fire that took 40 firefighters 12 hours to extinguish. In Port Allen, Louisiana, a Drax wood-pellet facility burst into flames in November 2021.

Now, despite finding itself in the midst of a lawsuit over accidental fire damages, Drax is pressing on with a new business proposal; it involves not just cutting down trees to make wood pellets, but, the company argues, also to help stop wildfires.

In October 2023, after purchasing two parcels of land in California to build two pellet mills, one in Tuolumne County and another in Lassen County, Drax’s partner organization, Golden State Natural Resources, or GSNR, “a nonprofit public benefit corporation,” met with residents of Tuolumne County to address concerns about its vision for how the process of manufacturing wood pellets can mitigate wildfire risk.

GSNR has since touted its close work with community members. However, according to Megan Fiske, who instructs rural workers at a local community college, residents living close to the proposed pellet mill sites were not always aware of the plans. “People who were a hundred feet away from the [proposed] pellet plant had no idea about it,” said Fiske.

Both of the proposed mills are in forested areas that have been threatened by wildfires. When asked about the risks that manufacturing wood pellets poses, Patrick Blacklock, executive director of GSNR, told Grist, “We sought to learn from those incidents. The design features can go a long way to mitigating the risk of fire.”

If county representatives approve the plan, loggers will be allowed to take “dead or dying trees” and “woody biomass” from within a 100-mile radius of the pellet mills within the two counties, which overlap with the Stanislaus National Forest and the Yosemite National Park.

Fiske said she’s seen instances, unrelated to Drax, where loggers weren’t trained properly and ended up taking more wood than should have been allowed under a wildfire resilience scheme. “There’s a difference between what the loggers are told and what happens on the ground,” said Fiske. You have “inexperienced or young people who are underpaid, maybe English isn’t their first language, so there are a lot of barriers.”

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June 14, 2025
How battery energy storage delivers grid resilience amid blackouts

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Christophe Albertus, Head of the Engineering Design Department at Socomec, discusses how battery energy storage and decentralised resilience offer vital protection against growing electricity blackouts and grid disruptions in Europe.

The challenge of grid flexibility is widely known, yet recent electricity blackouts from the UK and the Canary Islands to mainland Spain and Portugal have thrust the issue of grid resilience back into the spotlight.

While the cause of these outages remains unclear, the switch to variable renewable energy sources creates new challenges around grid frequency and stability. Variations in renewable generation also pose a growing risk of gradual frequency fluctuations or ‘frequency drift’, potentially reducing power quality and damaging electrical equipment.

With the rapid electrification of the economy leaving industries increasingly exposed to grid instability, there is a growing need for more resilient and reliable power, especially for energy-intensive industrial and commercial consumers. Just as distributed computing helped protect the digital economy from data centre outages, the decentralisation of power management, energy storage and generation could similarly make our economy more resilient to power supply risks. Producing and storing more power onsite can provide essential backup power for large energy consumers and alleviate demand for electric grids.

The renewable risk to grid stability

High-profile recent blackouts across the Iberian Peninsula have sparked renewed discussion around the risk that renewable energy could pose to grid stability. With renewable energy accounting for 47% of net electricity generated in the EU and over 50% of the UK’s electricity mix in 2024, these concerns are increasing.

Research has shown that the rapid integration of renewable energy sources into the grid is reducing our ability to control grid frequency and stability. This is because renewable grids lack the inbuilt resilience of ‘system inertia’, the combined kinetic energy stored in many synchronously spinning power station turbines, which keeps them rotating and thus resistant to any sudden frequency shifts. This buys time to correct any imbalances.

As many renewables cannot directly produce Alternating Current (AC) power, they are also decoupled from the grid and thus cannot directly influence grid inertia. Weather-related variations in renewable generation can also produce ‘frequency drift’ where frequencies deviate from the required tempo of the grid, potentially affecting power quality and electrical equipment. Europe’s grids are also becoming more interconnected, which means any disruption to power supply can produce wider domino effects across the continent.

At the same time, the rapid electrification of the economy means that any grid instability can also produce ripple effects across multiple sectors. This was exemplified when recent outages in Spain caused widespread disruption across industrial and commercial facilities, from oil refineries and factories to food stores and hotels and wiped an estimated €1.6bn off annual GDP.

Decentralising resilience

Recent events have renewed the focus on improving power grid resilience with industry body Eurelectric estimating that Europe will need to invest €67bn a year from now until 2050 to make grids more stable. Yet there has been less discussion of the way that distributed energy generation and storage could provide decentralised resilience for industrial and commercial users, reducing reliance on utilities and providing an added layer of protection for our economy.

There are many technical challenges to providing off-grid backup power, such as controlling variable renewable energy output to avoid overcharging batteries and keeping the building’s voltage and frequency aligned with the ebb and flow of the grid. Buildings need to switch between different backup power sources, such as drawing from a generator when solar or wind produces less power. Battery cycles have to be intelligently managed to preserve their health and capacity and extend their lifespan.

Some pioneering organisations are now turning to smart battery energy storage systems (BESS) and onsite power sources from biomass to solar capable of providing off-grid power during an outage. Intelligent power management systems can now perform ‘planned islanding’, intentionally disconnecting from affected electricity networks and then conducting a ‘blackstart’, restoring full power from onsite battery energy storage and power sources within 30 seconds of a blackout. These systems even form microgrids able to operate fully independently from the main grid.

Advanced energy management systems can now automatically calculate and regulate energy consumption, production and storage across buildings to balance off-grid supply and demand during an outage. For example, they can ‘derate’ or reduce the output of onsite renewable or diesel generators to avoid overcharging batteries or practice ‘load shedding’, reducing power consumption to conserve electricity. The same smart control systems enable microgrids to seamlessly switch between the optimal power sources at all times, such as controlling and connecting to diesel generator sets when solar generation stops at night.

Digital measurement tools can automatically synchronise voltage and frequency levels with those of the main grid, enabling buildings to seamlessly reconnect to the grid after an outage without any voltage or frequency fluctuations. This also helps safeguard customers against any frequency fluctuations emanating from the grid.

These systems not only boost resilience but help plug gaps in electric grid infrastructure and thus accelerate the energy transition while the main grid is being expanded. One EV charging operator combined onsite solar PVs with our battery energy storage systems to provide fully off-grid power for 39 EV charging stations, creating a secure local power supply for electric transport and bringing ultra-fast EV chargers to places without network connections.

Towards an ‘edge electricity’ model

Just as the ‘edge computing’ model of distributed data storage helped safeguard the digital economy from data outages, a model of ‘edge electricity’ based around onsite energy management, storage, and production could transform economic resilience. Building owners could use advanced modelling to size and scale battery energy storage systems to their future energy needs and generating capacity, providing a secure and future-proof power supply. We could also see ‘resilience-as-a-service’ models offering more flexible, affordable energy security for smaller commercial and industrial facilities.

Beyond resilience, there are also many commercial benefits to intelligently managing, storing and producing power onsite. Companies could harness smart islanding systems to take advantage of price schemes that reward major industrial and commercial consumers for reducing peak-time power consumption, transforming resilience into revenue. Storing surplus power onsite also enables ‘peak shaving’, strategically charging and discharging batteries to reduce peak-time consumption and thus electricity costs.

Surplus power can even be sold back to the grid to provide essential functions from flexibility to frequency regulation, creating a virtuous circle where decentralised resilience for large consumers, in turn, provides improved stability and flexibility for the whole network. Some utilities pay BESS operators to help stabilise grid frequencies and operate other ancillary services like voltage regulation, creating a potential revenue source for commercial and industrial building owners and helping the grid.

Commercial buildings can also be paid to sell power back to the grid and provide stabilisation when the grid is under strain such as from extreme temperatures during summer. This means a BESS resiliency solution can effectively pay for itself, providing both behind-the-meter cost savings and commercial front-of-the-meter services for utility companies.

Recent events in Europe have highlighted the need to future-proof electric grids against a more unstable renewable energy landscape. Yet, ultimately, the transition to decentralised renewable energy sources will require a parallel shift towards decentralised resilience so that electric grids cease to be a single point of failure for the economy.

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June 12, 2025