. . . . Welcome back to Green Lights. Here’s our roundup of the best of Callaway Climate Insights. David Callaway looks at how the spin on energy prices adds to the noise of this week’s midterm elections. He also reviews Anthropic’s massive filing ahead of its IPO: It’s not just about runaway AI. Mark Hulbert explores how much data center growth has actually benefited renewable energy. Have a great week and please subscribe to support our climate finance reporting.
. . . . The battle in Congress over 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. Tune out the noise and spin over energy prices and crises over the next couple of days.
. . . . Anthropic, in a federal filing ahead of its IPO, warned about runaway AI technology, but almost as important is what it said about climate change. David Callaway writes that while investors will rush to get shares when the company goes public in a few weeks, how those shares perform over time will depend directly on how Anthropic navigates the dual risks of AI and climate and energy impacts.
. . . . 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.
. . . . 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. What makes the budget plan risky 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.
. . . . Depending on who you listen to, this year’s El Nino could be the worst in decades. Shipping routes could be impacted. Commodities prices hit by floods or drought. Infrastructure threatened by winds and torrential rains. Estimates of economic damage running into the tens of billions of dollars. It’s a headline writer’s dream. But investors know better than to trade on shock headlines. When it is over, economists will look back and count the costs. They will be high. But for most of us, it will have little impact on our daily lives, and so should not impact our long-term investing strategies.
. . . . 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 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.”
More greenery . . . .
Secret vote: A U.N. climate report legitimized carbon capture and storage, despite scant evidence (Pro Publica)
Heating up: Global warming is accelerating at a record pace (Science Daily)
Family tree: The historic Bavarian forest that inspired modern sustainability is fighting for its life (Forbes)
Expecting a big bill: The finance sector should capture the full range of climate change risks (Nature.com)