data center energy

Jul 24

Meta abandons clean energy coalition amid natural gas expansion

Meta's departure from the Climate Group's RE100 initiative—which committed signatories to 100% renewable electricity—exposes a gap between tech's public sustainability rhetoric and its actual energy infrastructure choices. The company is prioritizing natural gas as a faster, more reliable power source for data centers running AI workloads. Compute-hungry generative AI is forcing a practical reckoning with renewable energy's intermittency problem. Major tech firms are willing to publicly abandon environmental commitments when operational demands conflict, a move other AI-heavy companies will likely follow.

theme-connected infrastructure costs energy grid upgrade data center energy

May 11

Maryland Ratepayers May Fund Datacenter Infrastructure for Neighboring States

Source: Slashdot: Hardware

PJM Interconnection's $22 billion grid upgrade plan exposes a cost-allocation problem. Datacenters concentrated in Virginia and other states are driving grid-wide investments that Maryland and other regions will partly fund through higher utility bills. The mismatch: state-level utility regulators control rates, but the grid operates across state lines. A few high-demand industries can shift costs across entire service territories without direct consumer input or local benefit.