As Data Center Hate Grows, Plans for Gas to Power them are Uncertain

Above, new PBS reporting on how AI Data Centers have become a campaign issue.

Below, the numbers of new gas powered plants needed to power data centers are daunting, but are they real?

Axios (via email):

Stunning stat: The amount of U.S. capacity somewhere in the development pipeline doubled in the first half of 2026, per Global Energy Monitor’s analysis.

  • A whopping 189 gigawatts is planned for on-site data centers through the first half of 2026, roughly doubling (!) the pipeline at year-end 2025.

Driving the news: Overall, the U.S. pipeline has soared to 378 gigawatts, per the nonprofit that closely tracks projects internationally.

  • More concretely, projects under construction climbed 76% in the first half of 2026 to 52 GW, around twice what China is currently building.
  • A gigawatt can power roughly 750,000 U.S. homes.

Reality check: If all the 378 GW on the drawing board become reality, the U.S. fleet would grow by two-thirds. 

  • But the report tracks everything from construction to projects in much earlier stages that may or may not ultimately happen.
  • “Pre-construction” and “announced” projects together account for about 86% of the U.S. pipeline. 

State of play: The report highlights big questions. For instance, two-thirds of the capacity in development globally hasn’t yet named a turbine or engine manufacturer.

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Solar Saves Euro Grid as Heat Batters Nukes, Coal

Conventional power generation has vulnerabilities, particularly at times of extreme cold or heat – just the moment it is most needed.
This summer, newly built solar capacity helped the European grid ride out periods of extreme heat.
Solar can’t do it alone, but as storage gets added, heat waves that are becoming more severe will see solar plus storage fill in some glaring gaps.
Ultimately perhaps, modular nuclear may have a role, particularly for winter extremes, but my dark horse is advanced Geothermal.
Neither of those options will be available at scale til the late 2030s, at best. Rapid deployment of renewables and storage is the only course for now.

Ember:

Europe’s increasingly frequent heatwaves are placing severe stress on electricity grids. Record solar output is helping to meet high demand, but increased flexibility will be needed to future-proof grids.

In June and July 2026, successive heatwaves pushed temperatures above 40°C in many parts of Europe, driving up electricity demand as air conditioning use soared, while disrupting nuclear, gas, coal and hydropower generation.

Fortunately for Europe’s grid stability, record solar output helped cover increased demand during daylight hours, with high prices and supply scarcity most pronounced in the evenings. As extreme heat becomes more common, governments and regulators will need to make greater use of proven solutions, including battery storage and demand response.

The effects of extreme heat on power systems go beyond increased demand. Every type of power generation is impacted, potentially constraining supplies. Grid equipment also has thermal limits. Overhead power lines, for example, can transmit less electricity when the ambient temperature is high, and other equipment, such as grid transformers, can overheat.

The consequences for consumers can be severe. Extreme temperatures caused a grid failure and blackout in the Northeast US in 2003. In June this year, an overheated transformer was responsible for the temporary disconnection of 70,000 consumers in Brittany, France. Fortunately, however, despite extremely challenging conditions, Europe avoided a major disruption to its power supplies.

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Warming Glaciers Contribute to Himalayan Disaster

You may have already seen this footage.
Looks like Sci Fi.

Very much like an event last year, this one was worse.

Associated Press:

UDIN DHUNGA, Nepal (AP) — Massive flash floods in Nepal on Wednesday killed at least 22 people and left hundreds of tourists, workers and others missing while causing widespread damage to villages and infrastructure.

The same regions affected by Wednesday’s disaster saw flash floods similar to those in August last year, when a glacial lake in neighboring Tibet overflowed because of high temperatures in the mountain region. Nine people were killed, and critical infrastructure, including a bridge connecting Nepal and China, was damaged at the time.

Climate experts at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development say an avalanche from a glacier likely caused Wednesday’s flash flood.

The Lhende Khola River, a tributary of the Bhotekoshi River, witnessed maximum flooding Wednesday, they said.

“The Lhende Khola has flooded twice in fourteen months, this time triggered by an ice rock avalanche from a glacier on the Nepal side that blocked the river and released a sudden surge downstream,” said Saswata Sanyal, a disaster risk reduction specialist at the climate research group.

“In a warming Himalaya, early warning is the first line of adaptation,” he added.

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Senator Slotkin on Climate, Wildfires and Canada

Caught a local meeting today with Senator Elissa Slotkin, who we hope will soon be Michigan’s senior Senator.
First question, from a local Citizen’s Climate Lobby leader, was about wildfire smoke, which has bedeviled the Upper Midwest now for several years, and I fear, many to come.
The Senator started out talking about first responders she just came back from visiting in northern Michigan, where they have been dealing with unprecedented smoke, ice storms, flooding and record rains on a more and more frequent basis.

War and Weather Could Bring Food Crisis, JP Morgan Warns

Start a war for Oil in a region where critical fertilizers and ag inputs are sourced, keep it going as we head into an historic and destructive weather cycle.
Yup, that ought to do it.

This is how climate change is a chaos multiplier.

Yahoo Finance:

When it comes to food security, things may get worse before they get better. And as Howard Jones sang in his 1985 hit, “Things Can Only Get Better,” he “won’t stop and falter.”

That’s a fitting attitude for Americans staring down the possibility of even higher grocery bills. A new report from JPMorgan, Food Security is National Security: A Compounding Storm, warns that global food costs could climb 5% in the first half of 2027. That’s up from the current US food inflation rate of 3% — a number that’s already putting pressure on household budgets.

The U.S. isn’t among the countries most likely to be directly hit by the food-security threats JPMorgan forecasts. But that doesn’t mean Americans will be sheltered from them.

America relies on imports for many of its staple foods, including coffee, cocoa and sugar. All of these goods are generally supplied to the US by the countries that are most likely to be directly impacted.

Here’s what’s putting global food access at risk and why some countries are better prepared than others.

El Niño, Iran War and fertilizer shortages

There are two prongs to JPMorgan’s predicted food deficits: a fertilizer shortage and a monumental weather event.

And the Strait of Hormuz’s closure wasn’t just bad for gasoline prices. The strait also sees about a third of the world’s nitrogen fertilizer — an essential form of fertilizer for around half of the world’s crops.

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How Fossil Gas will Drive Up Your Electric Bill

Financial Times:

According to RMI, a sustainability think-tank formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute, some utilities are making large investment decisions before determining, through system-wide planning, what combination of generation, storage and transmission would be the most cost-effective in meeting new demand. RMI estimates that over-investment in gas resources could raise the power bills of an average US household by $94 to $118 a year, worsening affordability for Americans who are already struggling with soaring electricity costs.
“As data centres’ requests come online really fast, the utilities and sometimes the large load customers themselves are proposing very large individual plants to serve that demand, and that is a bit different from doing a system-wide planning portfolio approach,” said Jesse Cohen, a senior associate at RMI.

“The speed at which things are happening is breaking the traditional planning process,” he added. The scale of this build-out has made the US the international leader in gas-fired capacity development, surpassing China for the first time, according to Global Energy Monitor. Entergy Louisiana plans to build 10 gas-fired plants to support Meta’s data centres in the state.

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Study: Changing Atmosphere Impacting Human Bodies

Illustration: Ocean2climate.com

Science Daily:

Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may already be influencing human biology. New research has identified long-term changes in blood chemistry that appear to track rising atmospheric CO2, raising concerns that an important blood marker could approach the upper end of its healthy range within the next several decades.

The findings may be particularly important for children and teenagers. Because their bodies are still developing, younger generations are expected to experience the greatest lifetime exposure to elevated atmospheric CO2.

In a study published in Air Quality, Atmosphere and Health, scientists from The Kids Research Institute Australia, Curtin University and The Australian National University (ANU) examined more than 20 years of U.S. population health data. They found persistent changes in several measures of blood chemistry that closely followed the upward trend in atmospheric CO2.

The researchers used information from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), analyzing blood test results from roughly 7,000 people at two-year intervals between 1999 and 2020.

Since 1999, average serum bicarbonate levels have increased by about 7 percent. Bicarbonate is a blood marker closely associated with carbon dioxide in the body. During the same period, average levels of calcium and phosphorus decreased.

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