Latest news with #easternUS
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump administration canceled a $4.9B loan guarantee for a line to deliver green power
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Trump administration on Wednesday canceled a $4.9 billion federal loan guarantee for a new high-voltage transmission line for delivering solar and wind-generated electricity from the Midwest to the eastern U.S. The U.S. Department of Energy declared that it is "not critical for the federal government to have a role' in the first phase of Chicago-based Invenergy's planned Grain Belt Express. The department also questioned whether the $11 billion project could meet the financial conditions required for a loan guarantee. President Donald Trump has repeatedly derided wind and solar energy as 'unreliable' and opposed efforts to combat climate change by moving away from fossil fuels. The Department of Energy also said Wednesday that the conditional commitment to Invenergy in November was among billions of dollars' worth of commitments "rushed out the doors" by former President Joe Biden's administration after Biden lost the election. 'To ensure more responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources, DOE has terminated its conditional commitment,' the agency said in a statement. It wasn't immediately clear how much the department's action would delay or stop the start of construction, which was set to begin next year. The company's representatives didn't immediately respond to emails Wednesday seeking comment The company has said its project would create 4,000 jobs and new efficiencies in delivering power, and that it would save consumers $52 billion over 15 years. The line would deliver electricity from Kansas across Missouri and Illinois and into Indiana, connecting there to the power grid for the eastern U.S. It could deliver up to 5,000 megawatts of electricity. "When electricity demand and consumer power bills are soaring, it's hard to imagine a more backward move,' said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a nonpartisan, Washington-based group supporting renewable energy. Keefe called the Grain Belt Express 'one of the country's most important energy projects' and suggested Trump canceled the loan guarantee 'just because it will bring cleaner energy to more people.' But two prominent Missouri Republicans, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and state Attorney General Andrew Bailey, are vocal critics of the project, describing it as a threat to farmland and land owners' property rights. Bailey called the project a 'scam' and a 'boondoggle.' Hawley said on July 10 that he had secured a pledge from U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright to cancel the loan guarantee in a conversation with him and Trump. Critics like Hawley object to the company's ability to use lawsuits against individual land owners along the line's route to compel them to sell their property, which Hawley called 'an elitist land grab.' Online court records show that the company filed dozens of such lawsuits in Missouri circuit courts in recent years, and the Missouri Farm Bureau's president posted on the social platform X Wednesday that the project threatened to 'sacrifice rural America in the name of progress.' Democrats on the U.S. Senate's energy committee suggested on X that Trump, Wright and Hawley 'just killed" the project, but Invenergy announced in May that it had awarded $1.7 billion in contracts for work on the project. And Bailey suggested in a statement that the project could still go forward with private funding without the loan guarantee, saying, 'If Invenergy still intends to force this project on unwilling landowners, we will continue to fight every step of the way.' John Hanna, The Associated Press Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
CTV News
4 hours ago
- Business
- CTV News
Trump administration cancelled a US$4.9B loan guarantee for a line to deliver green power
TOPEKA, Kan. — The Trump administration on Wednesday cancelled a US$4.9 billion federal loan guarantee for a new high-voltage transmission line for delivering solar and wind-generated electricity from the Midwest to the eastern U.S. The U.S. Department of Energy declared that it is 'not critical for the federal government to have a role' in the first phase of Chicago-based Invenergy's planned Grain Belt Express. The department also questioned whether the US$11 billion project could meet the financial conditions required for a loan guarantee. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly derided wind and solar energy as 'unreliable' and opposed efforts to combat climate change by moving away from fossil fuels. The Department of Energy also said Wednesday that the conditional commitment to Invenergy in November was among billions of dollars' worth of commitments 'rushed out the doors' by former President Joe Biden's administration after Biden lost the election. 'To ensure more responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources, DOE has terminated its conditional commitment,' the agency said in a statement. It wasn't immediately clear how much the department's action would delay or stop the start of construction, which was set to begin next year. The company's representatives didn't immediately respond to emails Wednesday seeking comment The company has said its project would create 4,000 jobs and new efficiencies in delivering power, and that it would save consumers US$52 billion over 15 years. The line would deliver electricity from Kansas across Missouri and Illinois and into Indiana, connecting there to the power grid for the eastern U.S. It could deliver up to 5,000 megawatts of electricity. 'When electricity demand and consumer power bills are soaring, it's hard to imagine a more backward move,' said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a nonpartisan, Washington-based group supporting renewable energy. Keefe called the Grain Belt Express 'one of the country's most important energy projects' and suggested Trump cancelled the loan guarantee 'just because it will bring cleaner energy to more people.' But two prominent Missouri Republicans, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and state Attorney General Andrew Bailey, are vocal critics of the project, describing it as a threat to farmland and land owners' property rights. Bailey called the project a 'scam' and a 'boondoggle.' Hawley said on July 10 that he had secured a pledge from U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright to cancel the loan guarantee in a conversation with him and Trump. Critics like Hawley object to the company's ability to use lawsuits against individual land owners along the line's route to compel them to sell their property, which Hawley called 'an elitist land grab.' Online court records show that the company filed dozens of such lawsuits in Missouri circuit courts in recent years, and the Missouri Farm Bureau's president posted on the social platform X Wednesday that the project threatened to 'sacrifice rural America in the name of progress.' Democrats on the U.S. Senate's energy committee suggested on X that Trump, Wright and Hawley 'just killed' the project, but Invenergy announced in May that it had awarded US$1.7 billion in contracts for work on the project. And Bailey suggested in a statement that the project could still go forward with private funding without the loan guarantee, saying, 'If Invenergy still intends to force this project on unwilling landowners, we will continue to fight every step of the way.' --- John Hanna, The Associated Press
Bloomberg
16-07-2025
- Climate
- Bloomberg
New York Is Set to Swelter, Promoting Electricity and Transit Concerns
By and Naureen S Malik Save New York City and the eastern US will sweat through another round of hot and sticky weather Wednesday and Thursday, a forecast that has prompted an emergency alert from the nation's largest power grid. In Manhattan's Central Park, Wednesday's high is forecast to reach 88F (31C), but when humidity is factored it will feel closer to 95F. That's enough for the National Weather Service to issue a heat advisory there, as well as for Philadelphia and Boston. Air quality in New York is expected to be unhealthy for sensitive groups.
CNET
15-07-2025
- Business
- CNET
Data Centers Are 'AI Factories.' Google and Meta Are Spending Big Bucks to Build Them
Tech giants Google and Meta have a lot riding on the growth and success of AI, and to support those efforts, they're also committing significant sums of money to build the data centers they're going to need to run that power-hungry technology. On Tuesday, Google announced that it plans to invest $25 billion in data centers and other AI infrastructure tied to the PJM Interconnection, the biggest electric grid in the US. The PJM Interconnection reaches across 13 states in the eastern half of the US. The new data centers are expected to be in and around Pennsylvania. To help meet the energy demands of the new data centers, Google also said it will invest $3 billion in hydropower. That use of a renewable energy source fits in with Google's goal to become carbon-free by 2030. (Similarly, Meta is aiming to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030.) "I think there is a race on to co-locate data centers close to reliable, plentiful and inexpensive sources of energy," Ramayya Krishnan, professor of management science and information systems at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College. The advent of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Meta AI are accelerating the demands on data centers, which also support everyday cloud computing tasks like photo sharing and movie streaming. "Data centers are a critical part of the AI production process and its deployment," said Krishnan. "Think of them as AI factories." Google already operates dozens of data centers worldwide. Google's announcement comes on the same day that President Donald Trump is attending an energy summit at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh at which investment in AI is a key topic. On Monday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that his company will invests "hundreds of billions of dollars" in the computing needed to build superintelligence, a lofty aspiration to create AI that surpasses human capabilities. Zuckerberg said that Meta has "several multi-GW clusters" in the works. "We're calling the first one Prometheus and it's coming online in '26. We're also building Hyperion, which will be able to scale up to 5GW over several years." Earlier this year, Zuckerberg introduced one of Meta's newest data centers, a 2GW facility being built in Louisiana. These facilities could be mammoth. In a post on Threads, Zuckerberg showed the outline of a single data center that would cover "a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan." As the big new data centers get built, that could bring both opportunities and stresses to the communities near them In a recent Airedale by Modine survey of 600 Americans, 70% of respondents said they wouldn't mind living near a data center and remained hopeful that the facilities would positively impact their community. Among those who opposed data centers being built near their homes, their top concerns involved increased energy demand, noise pollution and hits to property value. Krishnan noted the potential pluses and minuses. Data centers could raise energy prices for residential customers if the energy supply is limited, and they also use significant amounts of water, which could create environmental concerns. "On the positive side," Krishnan said, "data centers could create an eco-system of partners increasing employment opportunities in the region and [consequential] growth."
The Verge
15-07-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Trump announces billions in investments to make Pennsylvania an AI hub
President Donald Trump helped announce more than $90 billion in investments in AI and energy at an event in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Among those investments include some multi-billion dollar commitments from Google. The company is planning to invest $25 billion to build data centers and AI infrastructure for the electric grid in the eastern US region, according to CNBC, and the company has signed a $3 billion US hydropower deal with Brookfield Asset Management, Reuters reports. CoreWeave, a cloud computing company, announced plans to invest more than $6 billion to build a new data center 'to power the most cutting-edge AI use cases' in Pennsylvania. Meta will invest $2.5 million to 'support startups in rural Pennsylvania communities in addition to community accelerator training for small businesses,' according to a fact sheet. Anthropic will commit $1 million over three years to support a program that provides cybersecurity education and an additional $1 million over three years to 'support energy research at Carnegie Mellon University.' The commitments included investments from some gas companies, too. Enbridge plans to invest $1 billion to 'expand' its gas pipelines 'into Pennsylvania,' per the fact sheet. Equinor is investing $1.6 billion to 'boost natural gas production at Equinor's Pennsylvania facilities and explore opportunities to link gas to flexible power generation for data centers.' The investments were announced as part of the 'inaugural' Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit. Pennsylvania is a leading gas-producing state and an epicenter of the fracking boom in the US. Trump repeated calls to 'drill, baby, drill' during the event.
