Energy Security

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order on Aug. 18 that raises the bar for large data center development in the state, directing agencies to condition favorable permitting treatment and tax benefits on compliance with new energy, infrastructure, environmental, workforce, and community requirements. Executive Order 2026-05 applies its central permitting provisions to data centers with […]

PJM Interconnection has proposed a new framework that would allow large data centers and other major electricity users to enter service without first securing enough new capacity to cover their demand—but would make the uncovered portion of that load available for reduction before PJM calls on existing pre-emergency demand-response resources if electricity supplies become dangerously […]

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s (WVDEP) Division of Air Quality (DAQ) has determined that Purcellville, Virginia-based Fundamental Data satisfied the site-control requirements associated with its August 2025 air quality permit for the Ridgeline Facility—a gas turbine power plant that Fundamental Data is planning as the first phase of a project intended to include […]

The Trump administration’s decision to unwind offshore wind leases through negotiated buybacks has predictably reignited the debate over renewable energy. Many welcome the move as a correction to policies that heavily favored offshore wind during the previous administration. That debate is perfectly legitimate. However, the recent agreements involving TotalEnergies, Bluepoint Wind, Golden State Wind, Duke, Invenergy, and […]

More than 3 GW of data center load left the PJM system on July 22, 2026, after a single transmission fault. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) investigated the same failure mode in 2024 and found that utility equipment shed none of it. Customer-side protection did all of it. Those settings are about to […]

A growing group of data center operators—including Dallas-based Skybox Datacenters, Austin-headquartered bitcoin miner and hyperscale developer Mara, and global colocation giant Digital Realty—have publicly committed to comply with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s data center standards and the state’s active audit of projects in the Texas grid operator’s interconnection queue. They join QTS Data Centers, Blackstone’s […]

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Aug. 3 order pausing all new data center connections to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid until a comprehensive audit is complete could delay 49.8 GW of new data center electricity demand from advancing on the ERCOT system—nearly 20% of the U.S. development pipeline—BloombergNEF (BNEF) said in an Aug. 5 […]

NRG Energy on Aug. 4 unveiled its first Bring Your Own Power (BYOP) project, a 1.2-GW combined-cycle plant in Texas supported by a 15-year contract with an investment-grade “leading global cloud and artificial-intelligence hyperscaler.” The $3.2 billion facility, backed by a customer parent guarantee, is targeted for commercial operation in late 2029 and could be […]

Growth in artificial intelligence (AI) is outpacing the world’s ability to generate enough power to sustain it. As AI adoption accelerates worldwide, it’s colliding with a power system that wasn’t built for its level of demand. Vittorio Pierangeli, senior vice president PowerGen at Rolls-Royce Power Systems (Figure 1), explains why electricity, not chips or algorithms, […]

The global energy landscape is experiencing increased uncertainty. Recent geopolitical tensions have created volatility in oil and gas markets, highlighted vulnerabilities in global supply chains, and renewed attention on energy security. While these events often dominate headlines, the effects extend far beyond energy producers and governments. For businesses that depend upon reliable power to keep […]

The transition to sustainable energy infrastructure has been experiencing steady progress in recent years across the globe, while simultaneously undergoing constant fluctuation. Actual progress is influenced by a wide variety of factors, such as the drivers behind participants’ motivations and the technologies enabling the transition, as well as the status of supply chains and geopolitical […]

For most of the last two decades, the anxiety in power planning was about demand: would consumption grow fast enough to justify new capacity, and how would an aging fleet keep pace? That question has inverted. Demand is no longer the uncertain variable—it is the one thing forecasters are confident about. The uncertainty now sits […]

Critical infrastructure operators should view recent incidents where artificial intelligence (AI) agents escaped containment from test environments and executed successful cyberattacks on a relatively sophisticated production infrastructure as near-misses. This challenge is urgent precisely because AI moves fast and infrastructure moves slow. All indications suggest these were not malicious uses of AI for targeted attacks. […]

For Rayburn Electric Cooperative, ownership of the 758-MW combined cycle plant in Sherman, Texas, means stable rates, hardened reliability through heat waves and winter storms, and a hedge against the

Facing potential supply constraints along the Makkah-Jeddah corridor, Saudi Arabia’s power sector compressed a combined cycle schedule by months driven by early alignment, staged authorization, and

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) closed a loan of up to $3.26 billion to American Electric Power (AEP) Texas on July 8, the office’s third utility

A coalition led by Brookfield and NextEra Energy has unveiled plans to build a $100 billion, privately funded artificial intelligence (AI) data center campus at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Paducah Site in Western Kentucky, paired with up to 4.6 GW of dedicated new power generation that will be built and paid for solely to serve […]

Last week, Microsoft announced a $60 million, multiyear commitment to the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Genesis Mission, the national initiative to embed artificial intelligence (AI) across the country’s 17 national laboratories. The company’s stated goal, echoing DOE’s own framing, is to help “double the productivity and impact of American research and innovation within a decade.” […]

Congress and the White House advanced parallel tracks this week to keep large data centers from shifting their grid costs onto electricity customers, reflecting a concern that has gathered momentum among state regulators, consumer advocates, and members of both parties. On July 21, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 52-0 to advance the Ratepayer Protection […]

The explosion of artificial intelligence (AI) computing is, for most utilities, a problem to be absorbed: gigawatts of new data-center demand arriving faster than transmission can be planned or built. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Genesis Mission does not dispute that framing. But buried in the national research portfolio it unveiled July 22 is […]

President Trump’s four nuclear executive orders issued on May 23, 2025, represented a historic liftoff for American nuclear energy. COMMENTARY As electricity demand surges, geopolitical energy competition intensifies, and America’s power infrastructure faces mounting strain, the administration acted decisively. It recognized that American energy dominance—and leadership in the digital age—requires a resurgence of nuclear reactor […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has directed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to file one or more new or modified mandatory reliability standards governing the integration of computational loads—a category defined broadly enough to cover generative-AI data centers, cryptocurrency mines, and other information-technology facilities—by Dec. 31, 2026. FERC’s order, issued on July […]

Why AI Data Centers Can No Longer Be Treated as Passive Customers For decades, even very large electric customers fit inside a familiar planning model. A factory, refinery, industrial campus, hospital complex, hospital system, or manufacturing facility requested service. The utility studied the load, identified required facilities, assigned costs, and folded the demand into its […]

The U.S. Department of Energy has closed a loan of up to $3.26 billion to AEP Texas to finance a portfolio of nearly 100 transmission projects, the agency’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) said on July 8. The financing will fund the rebuilding, reconductoring, and new construction of roughly 2,800 miles of transmission lines across […]

AI-driven load growth is putting significant strain on the grid, intensifying pressure on utilities and developers to secure firm capacity and meet increasingly compressed delivery timelines. While tools such as transmission optimization can deliver incremental gains, they do not address the core issue: the pace of AI data center expansion is forcing a shift from […]

Join energy leaders in the Space Solar Power Symposium at Experience POWER 2026 in Washington, D.C. A few weeks ago, while opening a panel on Space Solar Power (SSP) at SF Climate Week 2026 co-hosted by the Space Frontier Foundation and the Young Professionals in Energy, Bay Area, I asked the audience a simple question: […]

Battery energy storage promises fast response, grid flexibility, and predictable output, yet most discussions rely on modeled projections rather than actual operating data. This article presents first year performance results from Caballero, a 100-MW/400-MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) active in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) grid since early 2025. It also examines a […]

GE Vernova modernized four hydro units at the plant that supplies roughly 40% of Kyrgyzstan’s electricity—without ever taking the plant fully offline. The project is a POWER Top Plant award finalist. When

Brian Kemp is a Republican. Katie Hobbs is a Democrat. The governor of Georgia campaigns on tax cuts and a growth agenda; the governor of Arizona calls herself a social worker who came to the job from a

With support from the Japanese government, hospitals in several Cuban provinces will have access to renewable energy solutions to help ensure the continuity of medical services during power outages. These