Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

Republicans have been facing a problem with voters over high gasoline prices for months — but the economic pain from near-record diesel fuel prices looks set to hit at the worst possible time for them.
The war in Iran, disruptions in Russian production and refining bottlenecks have sent the price of diesel fuel rising faster than that of gasoline or crude oil, and it’s now grinding toward an all-time record just two months ahead of the midterms. That matters for Republicans in particular because diesel prices hit first — and hardest — in rural areas and affect blue-collar businesses like farming and trucking before spreading to suburban dinner tables and the rest of the economy.

That new reality has political leaders across North America and Europe rushing to stave off spiking power prices with an urgency unimaginable even a year ago.

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Andy Burnham eliminated a tax on electricity shortly after walking through the doors of 10 Downing Street. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s right-wing National Rally, wants to slash power levies too — and exit Europe’s electricity market. And in the United States, voter anger over data centers’ potential impact on power bills has led governors like Pennsylvania Democrat Josh Shapiro and Texas Republican Greg Abbott to suddenly impose restrictions on the energy-hungry facilities they once championed.

The blast of earth, water and ice that rushed through a region of Nepal knocked out more than a tenth of the country’s hydropower capacity within minutes, striking at an industry Nepal has made central to its economic future.

The floods in the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli valleys damaged or destroyed 14 hydroelectric projects, including six under construction. After the deluge on Wednesday, 431 megawatts of generating capacity had gone dark, according to the Nepal Electricity Authority — more than 12 percent of the country’s total capacity.

The toll was far greater when including projects under construction. Counting those plants, now halted or in some cases swept away, would roughly double the capacity lost. Among them was the Trishuli-1 project, where 63 Indians were rescued from a construction tunnel and more than 100 workers remain unaccounted for.

Six months after US-Israeli strikes disrupted Middle Eastern fossil fuel production and turned the Strait of Hormuz into a naval battleground, the world is getting a fuller picture of how the Iran war has reshaped the economics of energy.

A handful of new reports show how, by dramatically raising fossil-fuel prices, the conflict has also been pushing governments, companies and consumers towards renewable energy, with a clear set of winners and losers emerging.

Global fossil fuel importers have paid more than $330 billion in extra costs — an amount equal to Finland’s 2025 gross domestic product — since the war began on Feb. 28, according to data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Helsinki-based nonprofit. Meanwhile, higher energy prices have been a boon to a handful of oil- and-gas producing countries outside the war zone.

Amazon.com Inc. signed long-term accords to buy electricity from four wind farms in Sweden to help meet power demand as the company expands capacity at its data centers in the Nordic nation.

The deals add almost 200 megawatts of electricity, and once fully operational Amazon will have nearly 1 gigawatt of supply in Sweden, it said in emailed comments. The four farms are developed by Eolus AB and OX2 AB, which is owned by private equity firm EQT AB.

WINDBER, Pa.—Standing on the rocky banks of Paint Creek in western Pennsylvania, Jim Panaro pointed out the colors of contamination. The orange staining the boulders is from iron, he explained, and the milky-white pools stagnating at the surface are aluminum. Likely lurking beneath the surface are other metals—copper, cadmium, arsenic—toxic to both aquatic life and humans.

Towering behind Panaro is the source: a mountainside’s worth of coal waste at Windber Mine 37, near the city of Johnstown, one of hundreds of such piles across Pennsylvania discarded during the fuel’s heyday. Often referred to by environmental advocates as waste coal and by industry groups as refuse, “gob” or “boney,” this coal simply didn’t contain enough carbon to burn, and what was there was mixed in with too many other constituents to be efficient or economical as fuel.

In the latest salvo in California’s ongoing environmental battle with the White House, the state on Friday sued the Trump administration over its attempt to kill offshore wind farms.

Mr. Trump has long despised offshore wind power, falsely saying that it does not work and kills whales. This spring, his administration struck deals with energy companies. In exchange for refunds for what they paid for offshore wind leases, the companies agreed to use the money on oil and gas projects.

One of the deals involved a company called Golden State Wind, which was in the early stages of building a floating wind farm near Morro Bay, along California’s Central Coast. Under the agreement, the U.S. Department of the Interior said it would return $120 million the company had paid for the offshore lease in 2022, to be used on fossil-fuel projects.

Rob Bonta, the state attorney general, and the California Energy Commission on Friday sued the Trump administration and Golden State Wind, saying their agreement to forgo the wind farm jeopardized thousands of jobs and the state’s investments in the offshore wind industry.

An analysis of renewable energy siting bills across the U.S. during 2026 legislative sessions found the majority of introduced bills were aimed at restricting renewable energy infrastructure, though most of the enacted bills were permissive to the industry. 

Researchers who worked on the report with the Siting Solutions Project, a nonpartisan initiative focused on energy siting and permitting, said in a webinar Wednesday they anticipate data center growth and continued concerns around energy affordability will make 2027 the “biggest year yet” for state bills related to energy siting. 

The policy analysts anticipate Iowa renewable energy advocates will have to take a defensive position on siting policy at the Statehouse in 2027.

What hasn’t been previously reported is that the stake is being purchased from a private equity fund run by Australian billionaire Michael Dorrell, who owns a mansion on a private island near Mar-a-Lago and has boasted of socializing with President Donald Trump’s inner circle at the club. Dorrell personally gave $926,300 to the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee two weeks after Trump was elected for a second term in late 2024 and another $73,700 a few weeks later, according to federal filings.

“If you want a data center in your community, it’s your choice,” he continued. “I’m from a state where we have several major data centers, and we are seeing tremendous benefits from them.”

In fact, Scalise said, increased tax revenue from Meta’s $50 billion data center has led to every teacher in Louisiana’s rural Richland Parish getting a $50,000 bonus. And in Loudoun County, Virginia, he noted that increased revenue from data centers has led to a 30 percent decrease in property taxes.

“There are tremendous benefits for communities who embrace data centers … They’re good customers, they’re good neighbors and studies prove that they don’t add to the cost of the grid,” Scalise said. “They’re paying their own way.”