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Tech Brew

Climate Change

Tricia Crimmins

techbrew.com

The debate over how the US will satisfy energy demand from data centers, EVs, and rising electrification continued this week in a divided Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing.

Republicans and Democrats offered different solutions to the problem, and were split on recent energy permitting executive orders from the Trump administration.

Committee Chairman Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) opened the hearing by claiming that wind and solar power aren’t reliable sources of energy—even when paired with battery storage—and that the US has “spent much of the last 20 years shutting down the generation that can actually meet that demand,” like coal- and natural gas-fired power plants.

“The federal government has been investing heavily in certain green energy technologies for decades, handing out tax credits like candy,” Lee said. “Renewables and storage have a place. They’re capable of helping do their part to make the grid more resilient and reliable, but 

And when faced with the reality of the greenhouse gas emissions that come from carbon-intensive energy sources like coal and natural gas, Lee and hearing witness Peter Huntsman advocated for making materials lighter so they require “less energy” to manufacture. Huntsman is the CEO of chemical manufacturer Huntsman Corporation, and said in the hearing that using only renewable energy sources “risk[s] losing both our manufacturing and consumer affordability.”

“Ruinous and unrealistic net-zero and decarbonization policies,” Huntsman said, foster the “failed idea…that you can power a modern economy without developing oil and gas resources.”

Democratic members of the committee, including Ranking Member Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO), and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), advocated for an “all of the above” energy strategy, which has been touted by 

 in the House, and cited batteries’ ability to provide stable, reliable power. Heinrich in particular bashed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” for phasing out clean energy tax credits that fast-tracked renewable power generation, and a recent Trump administration policy that requires Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to provide an “elevated review” of all proposed wind and solar projects on federal lands.

“I am deeply disturbed by the recent Department of Interior policy,” Heinrich said. “This nakedly political decision will risk delaying new generation additions to the grid when we need them the most.”

Democrats were also joined by Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) in highlighting the importance of renewable energy. She cited off-the-grid communities in Alaska that usually have to rely on expensive diesel fuel to power their 

“If they can get 20% of their diesel-powered consumption offset by some incremental wind and solar, it’s 20% that they’re not spending [on diesel],” Murkowski said. “We’re operating in different worlds.”

Hearing witness Rob Gramlich, president of energy consulting firm Grid Strategies, presented a separate perspective on the energy generation divide, and one that has come up in debates about other national issues: It should be left up to the states.

“Each state uses markets or regulation or various combinations of investor-owned and other types of utilities to meet their power demand needs. And that’s where the process should take place,” Gramlich said. “I don’t think the federal government needs to be meddling right now in specific power plants.”

Still, Gramlich advised states to utilize the aforementioned “all of the above” approach.

“The power system is more like a basketball team. The point guard doesn’t do what the center does, and vice versa. You need it all,” Gramlich said. “Particularly in this moment of rapidly rising low growth, we can’t be taking one of those players off the court.”

Senators debate wind and solar power in energy demand hearing

Hearing witnesses offered competing strategies in the face of the country’s mounting energy needs.

Frequent wildfires and other severe weather events in Oregon often leave communities at the end of power lines without electricity. Now, thanks to two new state laws, tribes, municipalities, and third-party developers looking to set up and own microgrids in rural areas will soon have the legal and regulatory framework to do so.

Governor Tina Kotek recently signed House Bill 2065, which requires public utilities to provide groups needing microgrids in their area with the required information, and House Bill 2066, which calls on the state’s Public Utility Commission to “establish a regulatory framework for allowing the ownership, deployment, and use of microgrids and community microgrids within the service territories of electric companies,” into law. Both are the first of their kind in the country.

“Red tape should never get in the way of technology that could mean the difference between fast, efficient electricity restoration and delays and risk when power outages strike,” Kotek said in a statement. “These new laws will help bring more microgrids online faster and deliver cost savings to consumers in every part of the state.”

Prior to these laws, entities hoping to build and own their own microgrids faced legal hurdles and bureaucratic bottlenecks when they tried to set them up, Sustainable Northwest President Dylan Kruse told Tech Brew. Sustainable Northwest is a clean tech and regenerative farming nonprofit that helped draft both bills and will help create the regulatory framework.

“We’re seeing increased demand on the grid and decreasing reliability. A lot of communities, particularly in these rural and tribal communities that are out at the end of the line with less reliable infrastructure, are really feeling the brunt of those changes,” Kruse said. “This is about creating another option, another tool in the toolbox. Because it’s going to take an all-of-the-above strategy.”

Kruse said that the laws are “technology-agnostic,” meaning future microgrids can run on any source of energy, but communities looking to install the technology that Sustainable Northwest has talked with are interested in renewables, including solar and hydro power, and backup power using battery storage.

“It’s an important step forward in the evolution of the energy space,” Kruse said of the laws. “And it’s showing state leadership and showing better local leadership for people and rate payers to get the best value out of what they’re ultimately paying for.”

Oregon’s new laws will allow for more community-owned microgrids

The legislation will remove barriers to entry for tribes and municipalities to set up microgrids in rural areas.

TBR-geothermal energy audio embed

Leaders in the geothermal industry came together last month and admitted a hard truth: Geothermal energy isn’t well understood by the public. And to change that, geothermal companies need to come together and work on clear messaging and visuals to help educate the world about geothermal’s potential.

To do so, Kristina Hagström-Ilievska, chief marketing officer at geothermal company Baseload Capital, brought big names in the geothermal market together for a 

 to start a united campaign explaining what geothermal is.

“The [geothermal] bottleneck [is] always that I have to stop to explain it in order to continue to talk about it,” Hagström-Ilievska told Tech Brew. “This is actually a problem. We need more airtime to get more investments, but we don’t get airtime, so we don’t get investments.”

Geothermal is energy derived from heat stored within the earth’s crust, or rock underground. That heat can be in the form of steam or hot water. Geothermal energy can be used directly for heating or indirectly by converting it into electricity, and is extracted by drilling wells into the ground.

Because geothermal energy depends on pulling something out of the Earth, like oil and natural gas, it might not seem like a renewable energy source at first glance. But geothermal sources regenerate over time—some quicker than others—so “that energy is continually percolating up to the surface,” Cornell University Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems Jefferson Tester told Tech Brew.

“Some geothermal wells that are producing fluid have been doing it for 75 years or so with certainly no decline,” Tester said. “Others, though, show decline because it’s not recharging fast enough from the earth.”

That said, geothermal companies can use technology to create geothermal energy where there is heat but a lack of underground fluid, making sources of geothermal energy abundant. And unlike some other renewable energy sources, geothermal is always available and not dependent on weather.

 and enormous potential, it’s still considered an “emerging” technology. Tester told Tech Brew he thinks the reason geothermal isn’t as well-known as solar or wind energy is simple: It’s underground.

“You can’t look at a geothermal system underground like you can look at a wind turbine or a solar field,” Tester said. “Everybody can feel the wind and they can feel the sun, but they really have a hard time appreciating what’s underneath their feet in terms of hotter rock.”

And because geothermal is underground, it also takes more money and time to set up than solar panels or wind turbines. That’s because geothermal that can be converted into electricity comes from deeper in the earth than the kind used for heating, meaning it takes more energy to bring to the surface. Like manufacturing 

, though, the power used to ferry geothermal energy above ground can be renewable.

Despite struggling with obscurity, geothermal had its big break recently thanks to heating pumps. Over a million homes in the US are heated by geothermal pumps, which pull heat from trenches six to 10 feet below ground, or wells that are approximately 500 feet underground.

“[Heat pumps] convinced people that, ‘Hey, this stuff might not be as far off as I think,’” Tester said.

That’s why Tester believes the best way the US can make use of geothermal energy is to use it as the main source of heating in the northern states, which rely on fossil fuels for heating more than other regions in the country.

“That’s where I think geothermal could be the future in many ways,” Tester told Tech Brew. “But we’ve got to make it work better, and we’ve got to get the cost down.”

And as things stand, the geothermal exploration phase, wherein researchers assess potential geothermal zones and resources, depends on large initial investments—investments that Tester said geothermal companies and federal or state governments should go in on together.

Hagström-Ilievska’s Declaration of Communication reached the same conclusion: “[We] want geothermal companies and associations to focus on growing the industry rather than competing with one another,” the open letter reads. Hagström-Ilievska told Tech Brew that she takes inspiration from the 

“They haven’t been selling different technologies of solar,” she said. “They’ve been selling solar—period.”

That’s why she hopes the industry can coalesce around one clear definition of geothermal, one hashtag to use on social media, and a set of publicly available images startups can use to market geothermal and explain it to potential investors.

“If we unite around a way of visualizing, talking about geothermal and so on, it doesn’t mean that you cannot market your own company,” Hagström-Ilievska said. “We just need to unite around the top layer.”

Drilling equipment next to a smoke stack depicting geothermal energy

Why is geothermal energy an emerging technology when it's existed for 100 years?

Tech Brew spoke with geothermal experts about its underestimated power, and how to unite the industry.

Geothermal energy has been around for over 100 years. Why is it still an emerging technology?

, a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) took a more optimistic outlook on how AI will affect the climate crisis—and even claimed that “concerns that AI could accelerate climate change appear overstated.”

The report, which focuses on AI’s energy usage, underscored how under-equipped the electrical grid is for incoming data centers and provided recommendations for how the large amount of energy they consume could be mitigated.

One of the recommendations focused on where data centers are located: Almost half of US data centers are in “five regional clusters,” so the IEA suggested that new data centers be built “in areas of high power and grid availability.” Plus, like a 

 from Duke University, the IEA recommended that data centers operate using on-site generators and do so “more flexibly.”

And the stakes are high: “If the electricity sector does not step up,” the report said, “there is a risk that meeting data center load growth could entail trade-offs with other goals such as electrification, manufacturing growth, or affordability,” a warning 

The report was, however, more reassuring about the effects AI will have on the environment. Though it acknowledged that optimizing AI to stabilize electricity networks won’t be adequate to combat the climate crisis, the report said that “the widespread adoption of existing AI applications could lead to emissions reductions that are far larger than emissions from data centers.”

“AI can be a tool in reducing emissions,” the report said, “but it is not a silver bullet and does not remove the need for proactive policy.”

Data center emissions could be further curtailed—or at least delayed—by the recent news that Microsoft has paused data center construction projects in 

“Data center planning is a multi-year and capital-intensive program we plan for years in advance to ensure we have sufficient infrastructure in the right places,” Microsoft President of Cloud Operations and Innovation Noelle Walsh said in a LinkedIn post. “We are slowing or pausing some early-stage projects.”

Amazon data centers near houses in the Loudoun Meadows neighborhood

New IEA report suggests concerns that AI could exacerbate climate crisis ‘appear overstated’

The report also recommends that data centers be built outside areas where they’re concentrated.

Jordyn Grzelewski

Repealing the EV tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act could decimate the nascent EV and battery manufacturing industries in the US, according to a recent 

The report concluded that as many as half of existing EV assembly plants could close if President Donald Trump gets his way on 

 implemented under the Biden administration.

Researchers found that axing clean vehicle tax credits and weakening 

The cancellation of all “planned construction and expansion of US EV assembly” capacity.

The closure of between 29% and 72% of battery cell manufacturing plant capacity, and the cancellation of all planned facilities.

EV sales dropping by approximately 30% by 2027 and 40% by 2030 compared to projections under current policies.

A decline of 18%–40% in EVs’ projected market share growth in the next five years.

A cumulative decline of 8.3 million EVs and plug-in hybrids on US roads by 2030.

 to dismantle federal policies aimed at spurring adoption and production of zero-emissions vehicles, including repealing subsidies and incentives in the IRA.

One of the report’s focuses is the 30D New Clean Vehicle Tax Credit, which was part of the former administration’s broader agenda aimed at decarbonizing transportation and spurring domestic investments in clean energy. The tax credit has strict sourcing provisions that, among other requirements, stipulate the vehicles be built in and use battery components primarily from North America. The 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Tax Credit incentivizes investments in domestic battery manufacturing.

“Together, this pair of tax incentives have succeeded in supporting over $85 billion of capital investment in electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle assembly and battery manufacturing facilities currently operating or under construction across the United States,” the report states.

At the moment, the US has more than 500 EV manufacturing facilities across nearly every state, according to the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation and Atlas Public Policy’s 

“Taking a sledgehammer to a growing sector of the nation’s auto industry is a terrible idea,” Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a labor and environmental advocacy organization, said in a statement. “It will cost jobs immediately and severely hamper the nation’s ability to remain competitive as demand for clean vehicles grows worldwide.”

“We’ve already sunk capital…in battery production and assembly plants all through Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said at a conference in February, 

. He warned that “many of those jobs will be at risk if the IRA is repealed.”

Although investments tied to the IRA have 

 GOP districts, Republicans in Congress have largely avoided speaking out in favor of the clean energy incentives, The Guardian 

 warning of some of the potential consequences of repealing the IRA.

The International Council on Clean Transportation released an analysis suggesting that repealing the IRA would threaten 130,000 US auto manufacturing jobs and another 310,000 indirectly related jobs by 2030.

The projected job losses would be most extreme in states with large concentrations of EV and battery manufacturing investments, like Michigan, Tennessee, and Texas.

“These job losses would cascade throughout the economy, affecting not just autoworkers but also employees in mineral processing, retail, hospitality, and others dependent on a strong manufacturing base,” Stephanie Searle, chief program officer at ICCT, said in a statement.

Princeton analysis: Killing IRA’s EV tax credits would decimate US EV, battery manufacturing

“Taking a sledgehammer to a growing sector of the nation’s auto industry is a terrible idea,” Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, said.

Under the Paris Climate Agreement—which President Trump 

 early in his second term, just as he did in his first—the US and other participating countries agreed to work to keep the average global temperature “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. A new analysis of global emissions as a result of policies enacted so far in President Trump’s second term says that meeting that goal is “increasingly improbable.”

The report, from energy consulting firm Baringa, also stated that if the Trump administration continues down its current “

” path, there will be a “5% increase in cumulative global emissions from 2020 to 2100.” And according to David Shepheard, a partner at Baringa who specializes in energy, such an increase isn’t just the result of Trump energy policies, it’s also the result of a perfect storm of three intertwined energy dilemmas.

“Not only are we chasing a decarbonization objective, we’re now simultaneously chasing an unprecedented increase in electric demand,” Shepheard told Tech Brew. “[We’re] having to balance the objectives of reliability, decarbonization, and customer affordability, and it is a tough equation to square right now.”

That’s because Shepheard said decarbonizing the electrical grid isn’t beneficial if doing so will make the grid unreliable, which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 

 last month when it accepted a proposal from a large transmission organization to increase power, regardless of how it’s generated, to meet electricity demand.

And Shepheard said the reality is that renewable energy sources just aren’t dispatchable enough to provide for the increased energy demand, at least not without a high cost to consumers—even though renewable energy is cheaper than non-renewables.

“It’s not as simple an equation as just saying ‘let’s pick the lowest-cost energy,’” Shepheard said. “[It’s] let’s pick the lowest-cost energy that delivers to the grid when we need it.”

Would the US be in the same sticky situation under a Harris administration? Shepheard told Tech Brew yes and no. No, because there wouldn’t be 

 and offshore wind leases, both of which can help lower emissions. But the US still needs to figure out how it will satisfy energy demand without turning mostly toward fossil fuels, as Trump did in one of his executive orders, and without large consumer costs.

“Whichever political system we’re running in,” Shepheard said, “we’ve got to put those three things together faster than we’re doing right now.”

Baringa analysis of global emissions thus far into Trump term finds 5% increase

The analysis from Baringa also found that staying 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is “increasingly improbable.”

Analysis of global emissions thus far into Trump term finds 5% increase

TBR-Climate resiliency audio embed

In the aftermath of the disastrous wildfires in Los Angeles, city officials, Angelenos, and construction experts alike are discussing how to rebuild the parts of the city that burned down. Most importantly, stakeholders have identified that LA must be rebuilt using strategies that will allow its new structures to withstand future extreme weather events—or, with climate resilience in mind.

Climate resilience is a term used to describe preventive policies, business decisions, and technical advancements that help better prepare people, businesses, and physical structures for the damage potentially caused by the climate crisis. It can look like 

 shared with local governments to help them set up hazard mitigation plans, companies 

 to rely on renewable energy rather than dwindling fossil fuels, or fire retardant building materials being used in places like Los Angeles.

David Hart, a senior fellow for climate and energy at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Tech Brew that climate resiliency boils down to risk management.

“If you’re building power plants or you’re building cars, to the extent that the climate transition really takes hold, there’s a risk,” Hart said. “Resilience is about managing that risk.”

Christian Agulles, the president and CEO of sustainable engineering firm PAE, thinks about the physical risks of the climate crisis daily. He told Tech Brew that when building climate-resilient buildings, he thinks about “the Four Rs”: buildings that are robust enough to continue operating through extreme weather, resourcefulness, rapid recovery, and redundancy, or having backups.

“With a lot of these strategies, when you’re looking at on-site generation—whether it be power or water—step one is to reduce how much you use,” Agulles said. “So then what you need to build out for your infrastructure is much less.”

And there are a lot of options for on-site generation of resources. As for energy, Agulles said that climate-resilient buildings generate just as much as or more energy than is used, meaning they don’t use up local energy resources and are able to run when utilities are down, perhaps due to extreme weather. Such buildings also use lower amounts of energy than usual by using passive design strategies when possible: Think large windows to light spaces during peak daylight hours, and operable windows to ventilate rooms rather than running an air conditioner.

When it comes to water, climate-resilient buildings tend to be net-zero as well, Agulles said. This can mean using technology to collect and treat rainwater to make it potable, or collecting and treating black and gray water to make it usable for flushing toilets or watering plants.

In addition to having their own energy and water supplies, climate-resilient buildings might have advanced air filtration systems so they can close windows and remain operating during wildfires.

When it comes to climate resilience policies, Colgate University professor of environmental studies Andrew Pattison told Tech Brew that they usually work hand in hand with climate mitigation and adaptation policies, or policies that reduce emissions and respond to consequences of the climate crisis. And climate resilience is “getting ready for the shock events,” like wildfires, extreme flooding, and other natural disasters.

“It’s the anticipation and preparing for—and the recovery from—those impacts,” Pattison said, “trying to minimize damage, especially to the critical functions of a local government or to a business.”

What’s more, Pattison said that good climate resilience planning is actually just good community planning. Not surprisingly, communities that are societally disadvantaged are more likely to be “vulnerable” to the effects of the climate crisis.

“It’s taking a proactive approach to planting the trees to deal with the heat event, but also being ready for people in your community to need to access cooling centers, for instance, or when the ERs are going to get crowded,” Pattison said.

That’s why it’s also important for elected officials and business leaders to make sure that climate resilience planning is “contextually relevant” to their area, community, or company—“sea level rise is a problem for San Francisco, not for Denver,” he noted—and perform vulnerability assessments to figure out where their planning is lacking before disaster strikes.

That said, great planning is made possible by ample funding, which Pattison acknowledges not all local governments have access to, forcing elected officials to make tough choices.

“We’re good at responding to the Category 1 storm, the Category 2 storm, but when the three, four, or five hits, we don’t do as well,” Pattison said. “We know that when the five hits, it’s going to be more expensive to fix everything than it would be to invest to save us from it—yet we tend to be [worse] at responding to low-probability, high-consequence events.”

All of which results in some governments being more reactive than proactive, which CFR’s Hart said isn’t a good thing.

“We’re going to need, probably, public institutions of some kind to backstop the private sector,” Hart told Tech Brew. “Helping people rebuild exactly as they were before, that’s not always the best thing in the long run.”

Update 03/13/25: This story has been updated to correct a quote in which a source misspoke.

Planet Earth in the shape of a shield representing climate resilency