GreenTech

Two years ago, oil and gas company Occidental bought carbon capture startup Carbon Engineering. The transaction was hailed as a win-win: A climate tech company scored a significant exit, and a fossil fuel company gained a foothold in a sector that could be worth up to $150 billion by 2050. Now we have a better

Renewable electricity is cheap and clean, but also less predictable than firing up a gas turbine. Turns out that’s both a problem and an opportunity. Most solutions to the problem of intermittency involve pairing solar panels and wind turbines with batteries, which store the power for use when the sun sets or the wind dies

The U.S. invested a record-breaking $338 billion in the energy transition last year, according to a new report, but it wasn’t quite enough to lessen the country’s overall carbon emissions. Solar took the lead, adding 49 gigawatts of new electrical generating capacity in 2024, far more than any other technology. Solar and wind together now

Companies developing small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) have raised more than $1.5 billion in the past year, as tech companies hunger for power to train AI models and governments decide to commit to the industry. For example, X-energy raised $700 million this month, and Paris-based Newcleo raised $151 million last year, and one would be

Renewable electricity is cheap and clean, but also less predictable than firing up a gas turbine. Turns out that’s both a problem and an opportunity. Most solutions to the problem of intermittency involve pairing solar panels and wind turbines with batteries, which store the power for use when the sun sets or the wind dies

Amazon, Exxon, and Microsoft have joined a new task force to burnish the image of scandal-plagued voluntary carbon markets. The task force, organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, is hoping to improve credibility of voluntary carbon markets, studying the status quo and drafting “policy recommendations for how the federal government can promote fair,

This month, the Trump administration instituted sweeping cuts within the federal agencies in charge of power from hydroelectric dams, raising fears of grid instabilities in key data center markets. The recent layoffs slashed between 13% to 20% of the four Power Marketing Administrations’ workforces, affecting everyone from linemen to the teams that direct power on

Industry, data centers, and air conditioning are all expected to drive some of the fastest growth in electricity demand in years, according to International Energy Agency forecasts. The agency predicts in a forecast released Friday the world will need 4% more electricity annually through 2027. Meeting that demand will require adding more generating capacity than

Few fans would associate Formula 1 racing with sustainability, but perhaps incongruously for a sport that glorifies combustion, the league has a goal to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. For F1 teams, it’s not as simple as burning sustainable fuels in their race cars’ engines. In fact, the cars are responsible for less than

Tech companies, data center developers, and power utilities have been panicking over the prospect of runaway demand for electricity in the U.S. in the face of unprecedented growth in AI. Amidst all the hand wringing, a new paper published this week suggests the situation might not be so dire if data center operators and other

Nature-based carbon removal startup Chestnut Carbon has raised $160 million in Series B financing, the company told TechCrunch. The startup buys marginal and degraded farmland, plants them with native trees, and harvests the resulting carbon credits. Carbon credits have become a hot commodity, especially among tech companies looking to offset skyrocketing emissions caused in part

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot platform, may not be as power-hungry as once assumed. But its appetite largely depends on how ChatGPT is being used and the AI models that are answering the queries, according to a new study. A recent analysis by Epoch AI, a nonprofit AI research institute, attempted to calculate how much energy a

Microsoft has added another 389 megawatts of renewable power to its portfolio as the tech giant scrambles to meet the power demands required to match its AI ambitions.  The additional renewable power spans three solar projects developed by EDP Renewables North America — two in southern Illinois and one outside Austin, Texas. Microsoft is buying

Nuclear startup X-Energy has added $200 million to an existing $500 million Series C round. The small module reactor specialist previously announced a deal with Amazon in October, which included an investment and development agreements to build 300 megawatts’ worth of nuclear power plants in the Pacific Northwest. New investors in the round include Ares

A group of more than 100 organizations has published an open letter calling on the AI industry and regulators to mitigate the tech’s harmful environmental impacts just days before leading industry CEOs, heads of state, academics, and nonprofits descend on Paris for a major AI conference. The letter, which bears the signatures of prominent advocacy

Charging an electric vehicle in public can be the best of times or the worst of times.  An EV driver can be charged and back on the road in a smooth 20 minutes, but they might also encounter broken chargers, unresponsive touchscreens, and blocked stalls, all of which can make for a frustrating experience. It can

Jen Keane’s claim to fame is that she grew a shoe using bacteria, coaxing the microbes to deposit their nanocellulosic materials in the shape of a sneaker. But she’s kind of over that. “I feel like that sort of misses the point,” she told TechCrunch. “The fiber produced by bacteria — like, that’s not a

September 11 left a lasting impression on Stephen Beaton, and like many others of his generation, he joined the military. But at the U.S. Air Force Academy, his journey took a bit of a turn. There, his chemistry studies deepened his interest in liquid fuels. “As a product of September 11, seeing the spike in

Renewables notched another win as Amazon signed contracts to buy 476 megawatts of wind and solar on the Iberian Peninsula.  The power purchase agreements with multinational utility Iberdrola should help Amazon feed new data centers it has planned in the region. Last May, the company said it would invest $17 billion in infrastructure projects, including

Last year wind and solar energy overtook fossil fuels to provide 30% of the EU’s electricity. With that in the background, startups in the solar space have been riding a generational change in how we get our power. In 2022 we covered how a small B2C European startup planned to bring solar to homes via

Tech companies may be vocal about their love of advanced nuclear power — the flashy trend that’s been sweeping the energy sector — but they continue to add renewable capacity. Meta recently signed a deal with Spanish renewable developer Zelestra for 595 megawatts of solar power in Texas, just two weeks after signing a separate

Microsoft announced Thursday that it’s buying over 7 million tons of carbon credits from Chestnut Carbon. The 25-year deal would enable Chestnut Carbon to reforest 60,000 acres of land across Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, Axios reported. Recently, the tech company has struggled to rein in its carbon emissions as AI has driven a surge in

Martin Fengler knows a lot about the weather. Fengler got his Ph.D. in mathematics, focused on numerical weather prediction, before working for Meteomedia AG, a network of weather stations in Switzerland and Germany. But while he knew a lot about weather forecasting from the prediction side, he realized the gaps that remained on the consumption

Climate change increased the likelihood of the recent Southern California wildfires by 35%, according to a new study published by World Weather Attribution, a decade-old international group of climate scientists and other experts.  The study comes as Los Angeles residents start to rebuild their lives in the wake of catastrophic fires that erupted earlier this

When Edoardo Dellepiane and Raffaele Sertorio founded Niko Energy in 2023, they saw ample opportunity in Mexico’s underdeveloped solar market. Despite the fact that many parts of the country are bathed in sunlight, it has strikingly few solar installations. After more than a year of helping solar installers sell, plan, and finance panels for residential

Few fusion startups have been as closely watched as Helion. The 12-year-old company is backed by Sam Altman, rumored to be in talks with OpenAI, and has a deal to supply Microsoft with electricity by 2028 — years earlier than its competitors.  The company’s unorthodox approach to fusion power and relative secrecy has earned it

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek stunned the world with the release of its R1 model, which appears to perform nearly as well as leading models from Google and OpenAI, despite the company’s claim that it used a relatively modest number of GPUs to train it. DeepSeek’s relative efficiency has experts and investors questioning whether AI really

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The massive $100 billion Stargate joint venture will reportedly be powered, at least in part, by solar and batteries. The renewable power installations will be built by SoftBank-backed SB Energy, according to a report from Bloomberg, though they’re unlikely to be the venture’s sole source of energy. Stargate is a partnership between OpenAI, Oracle, and

Oil and gas isn’t the only source of energy lurking under our feet. Drill deep enough and the Earth’s temperature stays consistent enough that it can be a source of heating and cooling for homes, offices, and data centers. But in many regions, geothermal wells today bottom out at around 500 feet, a limitation that