Latest news with #Sivaram
Axios
01-07-2025
- Business
- Axios
Nvidia stakes new startup that flips script on data center power
AI giant Nvidia and boldface names in tech and finance are backing a new startup that aims to transform data centers into flexible grid assets instead of liabilities. Why it matters: Emerald AI is emerging from stealth today as the AI surge risks straining grids, and hyperscalers are limited by power availability. Driving the news: Radical Ventures led the $24.5 million seed round with participation from Nvidia, AMPLO and others. Individual backers include ex-climate envoy John Kerry; Kleiner Perkins chair John Doerr; Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, and pioneering AI scientist Fei-Fei Li, to name a few. The founder and CEO is Varun Sivaram, a physicist whose prior stops include Ørsted and serving as a senior Kerry aide. State of play: The software shifts AI computational loads to match regional grids' needs. That eases stress when demand is peaking, and lessens pressure for new generation projects and grid infrastructure. Catch up quick: A recent field test in Phoenix with Oracle, Nvidia, the Electric Power Research Institute and the regional utility Salt River Project put the software through its paces. It showed that Emerald AI can reduce AI workload's power consumption by 25% over three hours during a "grid stress event," while ensuring acceptable performance, Emerald AI and Nvidia said. The big picture:"Imagine a future in which AI data centers become an important solution, if not the most important silver bullet solution to better utilize our existing electricity system, which actually makes rates go down, not up," Sivaram said in an interview. Hyperscalers can avoid waits for interconnection that can stretch five to 10 years, because the software makes new power availability less of a constraint, he said. How it works: Integrating Emerald AI's software with Nvidia chips and data center controls enables instant changes in AI workloads at and between facilities. That can mean redirecting queries away from data centers where local power use is spiking, or briefly slowing workloads, such as the training of large academic models. The intrigue: There's growing interest in data centers' flexibility to lower power use for limited stretches. Duke University's Tyler Norris, lead author of a buzzy recent paper, is among Emerald AI's advisers. How much of this "curtailment-enabled headroom" is available and tapped could affect how much new gas-fired power is built. Sivaram is seeking a "paradigm shift" that lets data centers become "the ultimate virtual power plant." The tech can also help integrate more renewables onto grids, execs say. Variable renewables are "easier to add to a grid if that grid has lots of shock absorbers that can shift with changes in power supply," Ayse Coskun, Emerald AI's chief scientist, said in a statement. "Data centers can become some of those shock absorbers."
Bloomberg
12-04-2025
- Science
- Bloomberg
Putting Mirrors in Space Is a Dangerous Climate Distraction
When it comes to the climate crisis, what's a realistic path forward? Continuing to deploy renewables at breakneck speed? Or relying blindly on technologies to reflect the sun's heat away from the planet? A few prominent voices in the climate space seem to believe the latter choice — solar geoengineering — is now our best option. This interpretation is at best, bleak, and at worst, dangerous. Varun Sivaram, senior fellow for energy and climate at the American think tank Council on Foreign Relations, launched a 'Climate Realism Initiative' earlier this month. In an essay introducing the concept, Sivaram writes that the world's climate targets are unachievable, that the clean-energy transition carries 'serious risks' for US interests and that US emissions don't matter to the trajectory of climate change.
Axios
07-04-2025
- Business
- Axios
"Climate realism" stresses security, mitigation and resilience
An ambitious new effort to reframe the U.S. approach to climate is taking a sledgehammer to shibboleths on the left and the right. Why it matters: The Climate Realism Initiative warns of massive threats to the U.S., while arguing the country's past approach focused on the wrong things. The big picture: The initiative "says two things that almost never get uttered in the same sentence," said Varun Sivaram, director of the new Council on Foreign Relations program. "I think climate is a grave national security threat on the level of all-out war," he said ahead of today's launch. "On the other hand, I don't actually think that spending a trillion dollars on reducing American emissions expensively and not very intelligently is the right policy response." Driving the news: Sivaram, a former top aide to Biden-era U.S. climate diplomat John Kerry (among other gigs), just penned an essay that sets the stage for the seven-figure program. It warns of"fallacies" including: Thinking that Paris temperature targets are achievable. Thinking that cutting U.S. emissions can make a meaningful difference, noting the U.S. will be roughly 5% of future cumulative emissions this century. Believing that climate change poses manageable risks to U.S. prosperity and security. What's next: His piece argues U.S. policymakers should brace for warming of at least 3°C this century. The country must prepare for the migration, security and resilience ramifications. Other parts of the "realism" doctrine that centers U.S. economic and security interests include: Focus on industries where the U.S. will have an edge, like next-gen geothermal, advanced nuclear, and solid-state batteries — and work to disseminate this tech globally. Elevate climate as a top national security priority. Develop and test geoengineering. The doctrine also says advanced economies should use trade tools that penalize nations with large, fast-rising emissions. State of play: It brings together established names in wonk-world, such as David Hart, Lindsay Iversen and Alice Hill. Sivaram tells Axios that the approach isn't pegged to the Trump administration, which largely rejects the problem of climate change. "Tomorrow, the Trump administration is probably not going to make a complete about-face and agree that climate poses deep national security threats to the United States," he said, though he adds that some work will continue quietly. But in the long run — and even within the next couple of years — the initiative's framing can "make climate palatable to administrations of both parties," he said. The bottom line: Sivaram stressed in our interview that he was speaking and writing for himself, and that different scholars taking part will have different views.
