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Any sensible voter who watches television knows that in the final days before an election the best thing to do is turn the sound down. In this election, largely about energy prices, that’s true more than ever.
A barrage of reports spinning the energy prices crisis every which way is hitting our airwaves and digital news feeds this week, each designed to raise or ease concerns ahead of voting day. Forget that more than 30 million Americans have already voted.
Is anyone still trying to make up their minds about the risks vs. benefits of more AI data centers? Will the permitting bill really boost renewable energy? More than fossil fuels? Why are wind turbines suddenly the key to unlocking comprehensive grid reform?
What’s clearer than ever is that the data center controversy is not going away. Wood Mackenzie estimates that some 18% of planned new computing capacity is currently blocked by some form of state or local moratorium on data centers.
The battle in Congress for data centers, largely around the so-called permitting bill, is just beginning. Depending on the outcome of the elections, that will be the next big front in the U.S. renewable energy wars as the current Congress tries to pass it before a new, more Democratic Congress takes over in January.
The rest is just noise for the next few days. Then all hell breaks loose next week.
If you have ideas or suggestions for us, contact me directly at dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.
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How renewable energy benefits from data centers
. . . . A lot of the backlash against data centers is tied into the fact that many of them intend to use natural gas to power their AI development, but a new study details just how much data center growth has benefited renewable energy as well, writes Mark Hulbert. Because projects using renewables such as solar and battery storage can be built quicker and operated with less expense, a lot of the data centers planned and launched in 2022 and 2023 — just after ChatGPT made data centers sexy — were done so with renewable energy at their cores. The study raises the question of what a collapse in the AI bubble might mean to renewable energy growth should it happen, Hulbert says.
Thursday’s subscriber insights
British budget’s risky plan to cut energy prices (hint: it depends on Trump)
. . . . New UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham didn’t win any creativity awards for his cabinet’s first budget plan this week, but he did manage to temporarily cast off some of the pain to consumers from rising energy costs by passing it off in the form of a new tax on banks.
Burnham and Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey maintained a moratorium on government taxes (VAT) on energy bills and even offered millions of consumers a 100 pound ($134), one-time payment to help with their heating bills this winter. It financed this largesse by tacking 3% more on bank profits, which caused bankers to howl but their share prices to rise as most agreed it could have been worse.
The moves were part of a hodgepodge of small tweaks the new Labour Party government leader and his team tried to masquerade as an effort to create “breathing room” for ordinary Britons until the energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the U.S./Israel war on Iran were over.
Energy prices, spurred by soaring oil and gas costs, are at the heart of public discontent around the world, especially since Iran this past summer, and are roiling electorates. A massive swing in sentiment toward Democrats for the U.S. midterms next week can be tied to higher energy costs as well.
The British plan was not deemed by financial markets to be large enough or inventive enough to address the government’s wrenching financial problems or the Bank of England’s need to raise interest rates to battle inflation. But what makes it all the riskier is that it treats the Iran war as a temporary anomaly that will revert to more normal prices once U.S. President Donald Trump ends the hostilities.
Perhaps, but it’s a lot to bet your budget on. “We did not want this war,” Healey told Parliament in his budget speech. Indeed.
Editor’s picks: What happens when the water runs out? Plus, ocean’s ability to absorb carbon weakens
Watch this video: Water shortages are expected to get worse in many parts of the world. So what can we do to cope? In this edition of The Climate Question from the BBC World Service, host Graihagh Jackson explores solutions from water usage apps in South Africa to solar irrigation systems in Egypt. She also looks at the challenges of adapting our energy infrastructure for a warming planet.
Ocean’s ability to absorb carbon is weakening
The ocean absorbs around 30% of human-caused CO₂ emissions and 90% of excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases. But climate change has already reduced its capacity to absorb carbon by approximately 6%, a new UN report warns ahead of the COP31 climate conference in November. “For a long time the ocean has been doing us an enormous climate service, but that service is under increasing pressure,” Sara Traerup, lead author of the report, told UN News. Rising temperatures and changes in ocean chemistry, circulation and ecosystems are weakening its ability to absorb and store carbon, leaving more CO₂ in the atmosphere. And this process “can definitely accelerate” in the foreseeable future, Traerup said.
Latest findings: New research, studies and projects
Lancet: Climate change is a ‘global health emergency’
The 2026 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change warns that climate change is a “global health emergency” and the harms are accelerating. The new report, released Tuesday, also finds that extreme heat is taking a toll on the global economy. Despite some progress since the Paris Agreement, greenhouse gas emissions continue to reach record highs, the report says, and “climate change is increasingly affecting health and threatening people’s survival worldwide, and the window of opportunity to avoid a potentially catastrophic future is rapidly closing.” The 54 indicators in this report document the growing health impacts of climate change and reveal opportunities for a health-protective response. Although captured in the report separately, many of the health and socioeconomic impacts of climate change are co-occurring, compounding, and leading to system-wide risks that could vastly exceed those quantified through individual indicators, according to the report’s executive summary. The authors added, “Now, a severe El Niño threatens to compound the impacts of climate change and trigger unprecedented climate-related humanitarian crises globally. Because of the rapidly growing threats over the past decade, climate change has become a global health emergency.”
Words to live by . . . .
“A decade after the Paris Agreement, our findings are unambiguous: The health harms of climate change are growing faster than the world’s response to them, and in many cases even accelerating.” — Marina Romanello, a professor at University College London and executive director of the Lancet Countdown.