Watt’s Happening aims to provide breaking news, sharp analysis, and thoughtful commentary from the cutting edge of the energy sector as this dynamic area of the world continues to expand and grow before our eyes.
Weekly Highlights:
A Red State Dissents
Even some Republicans are not happy with President Trump’s energy policy. Indiana’s Energy and Natural Resources Secretary Suzanne Jaworowski has criticized the state’s lack of standards regarding where green energy sources can and cannot be sited. As a result of devolving this responsibility to county officials, the state is increasingly presenting itself as having the aura of being unfriendly towards business, costing Indiana’s residents critical jobs. Not only that, but this lack of investment in green energy is also interfering with President Trump’s push for the United States to build more AI-centered data centers in order to lead the AI revolution.
A New Office Is Created at the State Department
The House of Representatives, by passing Rep. Young Kim’s (R-CA) bill, has just created a Bureau of Energy Security and Diplomacy at the State Department. Replacing the old Bureau of Energy Resources after it was eliminated as a result of the wave of reorganization at the State Department, the new office will be responsible for a great deal of what the old bureau did: promoting energy exports and managing economic sanctions linked to oil, gas, critical minerals, and other natural resources.
What’s Good for Farmland Is Good for Solar
Largely due to geography and the presence of a very large amount of flat land, over half of Iowa’s electricity comes from wind turbines. However, some individuals are hoping for more: solar. That may be coming soon, as the Iowa Utilities Commission recently approved a project run by MidAmerican Energy that will bring 800 megawatts of energy to the state and power hundreds of thousands of homes. Nor is Iowa a laggard in the field of green energy. As early as 1983, it began to mandate that its utility companies purchase wind-generated power (which now makes up 66.7 percent of the state’s energy portfolio).
Congolese Mining Damages the Environment
Unfortunately, not all is well elsewhere. It is widely known that the minerals that are fueling the green revolution have to be dug out of the ground, often in Africa, and processed, and that this damages both the health of the people who dig it out and the environment around the mines. Indeed, a recent report by PAX discusses the fact that illegal gold mining funded and managed by Chinese companies, with DRC officials looking the other way, in war-torn parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has damaged 155 miles of rivers and streams in Haut-Uélé Province. What makes matters worse is that the province in question was the sight of heavy fighting with Ugandan forces in the recent conflict that just came to an end, and this environmental damage only makes matters worse.
Data Centers Remain Locked in Natural Gas Limbo
While the data centers powering the future are well underway, the power grid that fuels them is not. Indeed, a nonprofit organization called RMI recently did a study and found out that many of the new data centers that are due to come on board are scheduled to be powered by natural gas, not solar or wind. This is a major problem, not only because it has truncated a very positive shift towards green energy in the United States. Indeed, studies have shown that before the AI boom, solar and wind were set to surpass natural gas as the nation’s largest source of electricity generation by 2035. That’s no longer the case. Natural gas is still leading, and it will likely lead for a while longer.
About the Author: Toni Mikec
Toni Mikec is the managing editor for Energy World, a publication of the Center for the National Interest. Before that, he worked as a political consultant for Your Voter Guide in Sacramento and as a senior editor at Eagle Financial Publications in Washington DC. He holds a B.A. in International Relations (summa cum laude) from the University of California, Davis and a M.A. in International Relations and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Image: Shutterstock/Andrii Yalanskyi
