Canary Media

When rockets blast off Earth, they rely on tiny metal powders to help propel them into space. Now, an emerging group of startups and scientists is hoping to harness these particles for something more terrestrial: producing carbon-free energy for factories. Powdered iron can be combusted in industrial boilers to…

This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. President Donald Trump gathered tech leaders at the White House this week to tackle a mounting energy dilemma: data centers. Tech companies want to build more and more of these energy-hungry facilities,…

See more from Canary Media’s ​“Chart of the Week” column . The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas — and the war in the Middle East is about to bring massive profits to its gas producers. As the war destabilizes oil and gas production in the region, LNG prices have shot up globally…

After Susan Lindsay got rooftop solar panels installed on her home in Greensboro, North Carolina, she wanted the low-income households she visited as a parent educator to be able to do the same — but without the expense. “I realized how hard that would be for any of these families I was working with, but also how…

Nearly three years ago, Vermont passed a landmark law that aimed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by shifting residents away from using fossil fuels to heat their homes and businesses. Last month, that plan officially died before ever being put into action — and the path toward cleaner heating in the state is murkier…

Oregon has made heat pumps the default appliance for cooling new homes. Last month, the state Building Code Division’s Residential and Manufactured Structures Board voted 7–1 to adopt energy-efficiency standards that encourage builders equipping new homes with air conditioning to use dual-purpose heat pumps instead…

This story was originally published by Colorado Public Radio . Sign up for CPR’s weekly climate newsletter . Last spring, Occidental Petroleum, an oil and gas company better known as Oxy, began drilling a massive hole in the shadow of a natural gas processing plant south of Greeley. Drilling rigs are a common…

China is accelerating its efforts to clean up heavy industry, allocating money for the first time last year to help hard-to-decarbonize sectors increase the use of fuels such as green hydrogen. The push comes as the country continues building more solar panels, wind turbines, and nuclear reactors and expanding its…

Essentially everyone agrees : Americans shouldn’t pay higher electric bills to feed AI data centers’ insatiable demand for power. But what will it actually take to prevent cost spikes? Lots of states have decided the answer is a “large load tariff” — an unsexy term that basically translates to special utility rates…

An upheaval is underway in the nation’s electricity sector, and Virginia is ground zero. As the data center capital of the world, the state faces surging demand, ballooning utility bills, and a bottlenecked grid — all challenges that policymakers are navigating while maintaining a legally mandated course toward…

This story was originally published by CalMatters . Sign up for their newsletters. If you’re a California homeowner and you’ve been feeling chilly this winter, there are plenty of reasons to go get a heat pump. An all-electric, energy-efficient alternative to gas-burning furnaces, heat pumps are widely seen as…

Geothermal startup Quaise Energy is pushing to build out its first “superhot” power plant this year as more money flows to next-generation geothermal projects. The Houston-based company says it’s developing a 50-megawatt plant in central Oregon that will tap into significantly hotter geothermal resources than its…

Artificial intelligence’s bubblitude fizzes with circular transactions, risk concealment, and exotic real-estate debt finance. In a frenzy to build AI data centers, Big Tech recently borrowed and bonded more money in 11 weeks than in the previous three years combined. More than a thousand new data centers are under…

One of the world’s largest steelmakers has deployed a novel heat battery at its plant in India to curb emissions from its dirty, energy-intensive operations. Tata Steel is using the 20-megawatt-hour thermal-storage system, developed by the German startup Kraftblock , at a massive steel mill in Jamshedpur, in the…

This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. No matter how you feel about data centers, we all rely on them: for reading this email, for scrolling through TikTok when you should be asleep, for streaming last night’s “Traitors” finale, and so on. And…

An energy-affordability bill approved yesterday by the Massachusetts House of Representatives could speed solar permitting, strengthen protections for many electricity consumers, and boost EV charging infrastructure. It could also pull the rug out from underneath the state’s nation-leading energy-efficiency…

Ohio jurors will soon decide whether two former FirstEnergy executives are guilty of state criminal charges related to the House Bill 6 utility bribery scheme. It’s a landmark moment for what is the largest corruption scandal in state history, in which utility execs allegedly bribed state officials to pass and…

See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the week” column . President Donald Trump claimed in his Tuesday night State of the Union speech that Americans worry that “we are winning too much” under his administration. That assessment does not apply to everyone in the U.S., judging by recent public opinion polls ,…

Across Illinois, dozens of communities are locked into contracts to buy power from the state’s biggest coal plant for decades to come. But two cities in search of cheaper, cleaner energy want out. The Illinois Municipal Electric Agency, a nonprofit that procures power for 32 municipal electric utilities, has been…

Lauren Phillips’ balcony just became a power plant. A very small, carbon-free one. A few weeks ago, the attorney set up what may be the first plug-and-play solar panel in the Bronx. The 220-watt installation, which is secured to the balcony railing with zip ties, has been a boon for the co-op apartment owner and…