A ballot measure written by a conservative nonprofit could amend the Colorado Constitution to enshrine fossil fuel companies’ right to sell methane gas and possibly force communities that have tried to eliminate gas appliances from new construction to back away from those efforts. Advance Colorado, which wrote the measure and led the effort to gather enough signatures to add the measure to…
Source
Millions of people across the U.S. are angry at their utilities. Electricity costs are rising while CEOs and Wall Street investors salivate over the booming energy demand from data centers. Now, we could be entering a new and ominous stage of utility power: the rise of the corporate mega-utility. On May 18, Florida-based NextEra Energy, owner of the largest electric utility in the U.S.
Source
Americans’ concerns about being able to afford electricity and home heating fuel are elevated since the beginning of the Iran war. But newly released nationwide data shows that even before the war began, these concerns were widespread, long-standing and getting worse faster than the data can reflect. The new information is from preliminary reports based on the Residential Energy Consumption…
Source
“The demand for power and for AI is like nothing I’ve ever seen.” These words were uttered during an October earnings call, not by a wide-eyed tech executive, but by Jeff Miller, the CEO of Halliburton, one of the world’s biggest oilfield services corporations. Like droves of other companies tied to the fracked gas industry, Halliburton is pivoting toward servicing the data center boom…
Source
North Carolina voters have chosen Democrats in three straight elections for governor; the state’s Republican-led legislature has countered by siphoning off some of the powers that traditionally came with the job. These power grabs have had a profound effect on both democracy in the state and on the everyday lives of North Carolina residents, Democrats argue. The changes are “weakening…
Source
Electricity bills for millions of utility customers are skyrocketing across the U.S. while the number of households facing extreme utility debt is mounting. Energy costs are being turbocharged by the AI data center boom, which is prolonging the burning of fossil fuels in the face of intensifying climate chaos. Overseeing all this is a powerful regime of investor-owned utilities that dominate our…
Source