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Huge increases in greenhouse gases from Texas' data center boom

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:43:23 -0500

The frenzied rush to build massive new AI data centers is being led by projects in the Lone Star State. The mind-bogglingly big facilities will need similarly vast amounts of electricity (and water, but that’s another story), and the companies racing against each other in this arms race for AI dominance are clearly unconcerned about the impacts on our ever-more-quickly-warming world. Inside Climate News has the details: Data Center Developers in Texas Plan Massive New Gas Power Projects.

Permitting documents show that just a handful of mega-projects in Texas could emit over 100 million tons per year of greenhouse gases, an enormous amount roughly equal to the annual emissions of a mid-sized industrialized country. These projects are also expected to discharge tens of thousands of tons of other pollutants.

Right at the time that could well be a tipping-point (in a bad way) for global warming – just wait and see how this year’s “supersized” El Niño treats us – here are these companies dashing headlong toward massively worsening and prolonging the crisis.

Even if these projects could produce some unimaginable benefit, like, say, a broad-spectrum cancer cure that would be free for everyone, I still don’t know that this buildout would be worth it. The climate crisis is already killing and displacing so many, and costing so much, and it’s just getting warmed up (sorry). To knowingly worsen it so drastically, and extend by years the time when we could possibly bring greenhouse gasses under control, should be an incredibly high bar to clear.

But of course these projects aren’t in pursuit of anything anywhere near as noble as trying to cure cancer. (Spare me the sci-fi fantasies of, ‘well, maybe AI will cure it someday, if we advance it far enough!' Sure, and if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass a-hoppin’.) This scramble to build as fast as humanly possible is one-hundred-percent in the pursuit of profit (for those that are already the richest) and for AI technology that’s meeting increasing skepticism, to say the least.

It’s not just that these data centers are being built to run on fossil fuels. They’re generating power in some of the worst, least efficient, and most polluting ways available:

Faced with a global backlog of combined-cycle turbine supplies, developers have turned to smaller and dirtier units that can be quickly deployed, the [Global Energy Monitor] report said, including simple-cycle turbines and gas-powered engines.

“Gas turbines and engines are less efficient than combined-cycle plants and carry higher emissions per unit of electricity generated,” the report said.

According to GEM data, engines and simple-cycle gas turbines make up nearly half the generating technology for gas power proposals tied to data centers nationwide.

Letting these projects go ahead like this is madness. Having occasional help drafting an email or saving a little time on internet searches isn’t worth it. Politicians are figuring out how unpopular data center construction is, largely from their constituents' NIMBY reactions. (Fair enough, though as a proponent of building clean energy infrastructure I’m wary of NIMBYism. The opposition should be from everyone, because air pollution and the climate crisis are in everyone’s “backyard”.)

Beware the politicians who are faking their concern and trying to placate voters for now. A prime example is Greg Abbott, governor of my own home state, who claims to be worried and has ordered a “review” of all the data center projects. Conveniently, that review will be done just after the election this November. Will it find that most of the projects – or at least the projects of companies who have poured enough cash into Republican campaign coffers – are okay to advance, after all? Will you be surprised if it does?

Improving boiler efficiency in NYC

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 07:58:45 -0500

Technology and “disruption” don’t always have the best connotations, but according to this article from Canary Media, software from a company called Parity is saving apartment buildings serious money, while also reducing electricity and carbon emissions. Their software optimizes how the building-wide heating and air-conditioning systems run.

The [apartment management] company partnered with startup Parity in 2022 to install indoor temperature sensors across three of its buildings in Midtown Manhattan, and to hook up the buildings’ heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning controls to a digital platform created by Parity. The software takes in data from the sensors, weather forecasts, and other inputs, and uses it to minimize gas and electricity consumption while ensuring individual apartments don’t get too hot or too cold.

The project cost AvalonBay about $280,000 to implement in the three buildings but has saved more than $540,000 in utility costs so far, according to the companies — more than double its initial targets.

There’s a lot of interesting detail in the article about the challenges of managing central heating and cooling without running afoul of what tenants want, and it sounds as if this smarter system would actually improve that in many cases.

As the article points out, gas boilers need to go away entirely, both because we need to stop burning things for heat and because regulations will (eventually) require it. Until then, these kinds of efficiencies can make a big difference.

Texas republicans consider legally forcing more fossil gas

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 13:45:47 -0500

Almost as amazing as it is stupid, Inside Climate News has this story: As Solar and Batteries Dominate in Texas, Republican Lawmakers Consider Natural Gas Minimums . That’s right, solar (plus wind and batteries) are so thoroughly dominating new energy production that the Big Oil bought-and-paid-for politicians in Austin are proposing to require new fossil gas plants.

As new electricity generation skews toward solar and battery storage in Texas, Republican state senators are questioning whether it’s time to impose minimum standards for building gas plants and move away from free trade in the state’s electricity marketplace.

…State Sen. Phil King, a Republican from Weatherford, asked the leaders of ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) at a public hearing last week whether there should be a rule that puts a quota on what share of new generation connecting to the grid comes from fossil fuels.

“Should we say that from a point of interconnection that 50 percent—or some percentage of new generation—has to be dispatchable generation as opposed to just letting the market forces guide that,” King asked, referring to gas plants as “dispatachable” because they can be ramped up or down on demand, unlike intermittent wind and solar power sources.

“That would be a pretty significant policy change to have a requirement like that,” ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas replied at a Senate Committee on Business and Commerce public hearing.

A pretty significant policy change, indeed! To hell with your free market, and to hell with the final shreds of Republicans pretending to be against government “handouts”. Let’s just legislate our donors' businesses back into the black. Madness. Here’s hoping the economics continues to highlight how crazy this is.

Solar's continued US growth

Sun, 03 May 2026 11:00:21 -0500

Short article on a recent forecast from the U.S. Energy Information Administration: Solar generation to rise 17% this summer. Solar’s rise continues, as does coal’s decline. Those are both good news! That news is tempered somewhat by seeing both gas and wind stay steady (we want the former to drop and the latter to climb), but under this anti-clean-energy administration we’ll take what we can get.

Trump can't stop renewable energy

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:32:07 -0500

He’s slowing it, for sure, and that’s tragic, bordering on criminal, in my book. But the switch to clean, renewable energy is unstoppable now. As this Guardian article notes, for the first time, the US generated more power from renewables than gas last month.

Static image of a nice interactive graph that you should click through to see on The Guardian article. I couldn't resist showing that first crossover point where the purple renewables line exceeds the gas line. Go on, graph!

The fight isn’t won yet, of course. Renewables are inevitable eventually, but time is of the essence. Making the switch away from fossil fuels cannot happen quickly enough. The corrupt obstruction of this administration needs to be overcome, and the transition needs to accelerate. But this is still damned good news.

The clean energy industry still has to contend with an uncertain, volatile political environment as well as logjams that delay projects from being connected to a grid that still struggles to move clean power around the country. But fears of Trump-inspired destruction have somewhat receded.

“I’m not nearly as pessimistic as I was last summer,” said Jon Powers, co-founder of CleanCapital, a solar and battery storage company. “The administration way overplayed their hand on this. They are not where the American people are and they’re having to come back to where we are.”