Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

OpenAI has met with representatives of multiple top power companies to discuss methods of securing the electrical grid, the artificial intelligence firm told POLITICO — conversations that occurred amid a continuing series of revelations about its own products’ role in a sprawling cyberattack.

CEO Sam Altman has also offered one possible solution to the cybersecurity risks: OpenAI’s own cyber services.

The energy security discussions, two of which were not previously reported, started July 20. Altman most recently met with electric utility executives Wednesday during the Edison Electric Institute’s annual meeting in Colorado Springs, Colorado, according to OpenAI and the institute.

The disruptive technology that’s plunging the world into an energy race won’t be part of the debate when nearly every country meets in November to discuss climate change.

The artificial intelligence building boom and its attendant forecasts of skyrocketing electricity demand, new natural gas plants and the potential for accelerating greenhouse gases are nowhere on the agenda for the United Nations climate talks in Turkey.

That’s raising questions about the U.N.’s slow motion bureaucracy and whether it’s nimble enough to confront the surging pace of data center construction in the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest sources of climate pollution.

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down an order from the Trump administration that forced a coal plant in Michigan to stay open past its scheduled retirement date — dealing a blow to President Trump’s efforts to promote the coal industry.

For more than a year, the Energy Department has ordered the J.H. Campbell coal plant in West Olive, Michigan, to keep running despite its plans to close in May 2025, citing an “energy emergency.”

On Friday, a three-judge panel at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the administration overstepped in its use of emergency powers.

President Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East for months has thwarted GOP plans to run on pocketbook issues this fall.

Now, with the midterm elections mere weeks away, it’s likely too late to stem the political fallout from the sustained grind of expensive energy bills that threaten to spread to other consumer prices.

Global oil prices reached the highest mark since July on Wednesday, as the Iran war continues to drag on and the U.S. barrels toward the midterm elections.

The price of Brent crude — a key global benchmark for oil — was just over $100 per barrel on Wednesday for the first time in six weeks. The soar in prices comes as Saudi Arabian officials said the Iran-backed Houthi rebel group attacked Saudi Arabian oil facilities and wounded 73 early Tuesday, marking a significant escalation in the conflict between the U.S. and Iran.

From tariffs on solar panels to export controls on critical minerals, countries are dragging the entire electrification supply chain into growing trade tensions. Just last month, President Donald Trump issued broad restrictions on imported grid equipment — a move widely seen as the latest attempt to keep out Chinese-made technology.

Such trade barriers threaten to raise costs for companies, slow economic growth, and complicate ongoing efforts to address climate change and adopt renewable energy technology.

That isn’t a warning from activists; it’s coming from bankers, utilities and grid operators.

President Donald Trump has called solar power “the scam of the century” in his effort to roll back the Biden climate agenda, and brought most of his party along with him — at least in Washington.

But here in Bartow County, where Trump earned three-quarters of the vote in 2024, local Republicans are the most fervent boosters of the nearly mile-long factory opened in June by Hanwha Qcells.

Years after the U.S. forfeited the global solar supply chain to China, the company’s Cartersville factory is making all major components of solar panels — the ingots, wafers, cells and modules.

President Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East for months has thwarted GOP plans to run on pocketbook issues this fall. Now, with the midterm elections a mere weeks away, it’s likely too late to stem the political fallout from the sustained grind of expensive energy bills that threaten to spread to other consumer prices.

EPA paid staffers roughly $200 million to not work last year as part of its effort to ultimately slash the agency’s workforce by thousands of employees. Records obtained by POLITICO reveal the toll of President Donald Trump’s campaign to reduce and reshape the government at EPA, sending workers home, with pay — many for months. That included those who took the “deferred resignation” offer, others who had been assigned environmental justice work, and still more who had signed an open dissent letter critical of the administration.

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey announced major restrictions on data center development, including a requirement that companies procure their own renewable energy supply.

Healey, who is seeking reelection in November, issued an executive order Tuesday mandating that developers invest in their own clean energy generation and obtain local approval before seeking state construction permits, a significant hurdle to additional development. If a developer fails to use renewable energy to meet its electricity needs, it must pay into a new fund that would benefit Massachusetts ratepayers, according to Healey’s order.