Free Republic

The space environment would provide natural radiative cooling, as well as unlimited solar energy. With the generative AI boom in full force, scientists have warned of the immense power requirements of data centers used to train and utilize these systems. Now, a team of researchers from NTU Singapore has joined the call to place data centers in space. Doing so would pave the way for sustainable computing, the claim. According to the team, space data centers would be powered by round-the-clock solar energy and would harness free cooling. Crucially, all of this is possible using existing technologies. Sending AI infrastructure...

Maria Bartiromo gives ‘Mornings with Maria’ viewers an inside look at the Permian Basin — the beating heart of America’s oil and gas revival — as President Donald Trump’s policies drive a powerful new era of U.S. energy independence.

The nuclear plant at Gundremmingen once produced a quarter of all the power generated in Bavaria. That was before we shut down its reactors in 2017 and 2021, in the course of our insane and totally purposeless nuclear phaseout. In theory anyway, we could have reactivated Gundremmingen in as little as four years. Instead, yesterday at noon exactly, we detonated the plant’s cooling towers. As the ecologically-minded Bayerischer Rundfunk reminds us, we can be grateful that light rain kept the dust pollution to a minimum. RWE, Gundremmingen’s erstwhile operators, have all kinds of plans for the site. When they finally...

I have long been a proponent of the deep exploitation of nuclear power, and watched this video today from Bill Whittle titled: LINK: It’s Atom-Splitting Time! that tipped me off to what is afoot on this front, and it is the first IV Generation Nuclear Power plant scheduled to be built and operated in the United States by 2026...next year! I would like to hear opinions here on Free Republic from our members who have experience in the field, are interested, or simply wish to comment, since I believe this is our path forward. I don't advocate this for "green"...

The European Union will phase out all Russian oil imports by January 1, 2028. New contracts will be prohibited after January 2026; existing short-term contracts must cease by June 2026 and long-term contracts by January 2028. The EU still believes it can target 45% renewable energy by 2030 and reduce its reliance on fossil fuel entirely. These conditions are perfect for inflationary price spikes and bottlenecks leading to extreme volatility. Europe has dismantled its economy to support Ukraine. Cutting Russian gas imports reroutes the flow of capital across Europe and the globe. Alternative sources must be developed, infrastructure must be...

Ukraine may import gas worth around $2 billion from Europe, the United States, and Azerbaijan this winter, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, after its gas infrastructure was severely damaged by Russian attacks. He did not specify how much gas Ukraine planned to purchase. Kyiv had expected to import 4.6 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas before a series of Russian strikes hit Ukraine's gas sector earlier this autumn. Due to the damage, energy minister Svitlana Hrynchuk said imports would need to be increased by 30%, while analysts estimated total gas import requirements at no less than 6.3 bcm. "We expect that...

EU energy ministers on Monday backed a proposal to phase out Russian oil and gas imports to the bloc by January 2028, the Council of the European Union said. The ministers approved the plans, which would phase out new Russian gas import contracts from January 2026, existing short-term contracts from June 2026, and long-term contracts in January 2028, at a meeting in Luxembourg. The law is not yet final. EU countries must negotiate the final rules with the European Parliament, which is still debating its position. The EU wants to phase out Russian energy imports to deprive the Kremlin of...

The economy and the environment hang in the maritime balance.A big, beautiful brouhaha went down between the Trump administration and a globalist initiative by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to impose a tax on the world’s shipping industry. Amid growing doubt about the scientific legitimacy of alarmist claims of human-caused climate change, the same international bodies that have led the charge against carbon dioxide for decades now seek to launch a complex new scheme that will impose huge costs on maritime shipping. Within these machinations were the usual seeds of inflation, control, and a vision for a one-world domination by...

The train was reportedly shorted using jumper cables, causing the train to stop. Since November 17, dozens of anarchists have been camping on the tracks to prevent trains from transporting fracking supplies from the Port of Olympia — however, railroad companies have stated that there were no such shipments scheduled. On Wednesday, Union Pacific Railroad officers were met by 20 to 30 masked protesters as they cleared out the encampment and swept it for bombs. Four of the people who were camping on the tracks refused to leave and were subsequently arrested, as were eight others on suspicion of obstructing...

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said he aims to end Iraq’s $4-billion dependence on Iranian gas by early 2028, outlining a plan to recover flared gas and attract foreign investment during an interview with CNBC published Tuesday."We developed a clear vision to address this structural imbalance that affects our ability to generate and produce electricity and provide it to citizens," Sudani told CNBC’s Dan Murphy in Baghdad.Via AFPHe said Iraq had signed investment deals with TotalEnergies, Chinese, and Emirati companies to capture and process gas currently burned off at oil sites. "For the first time in Iraq’s history, there...

A shuttered plant is reimagined as Manresa Wilds, an example of an old facility repurposed to solve a new century’s problems. The hike up to the roof involved Escher-like flights of metal stairs and grated catwalks like high wires, dangling above a spectacular abyss of rusted machinery. The ’60s-era control room, straight out of “Apollo 13,” opened onto a turbine hall the size of the concourse at Grand Central.I was blown away. The plant has been shuttered since 2013 and parts of it look like workers walked out one day and left everything as it was. Suburban Connecticut is not...

Pennsylvania was supposed to be the energy state that got it right.Thanks to the Marcellus Shale formation, natural gas made Pennsylvania a net exporter of electricity. Fracking enabled Pennsylvania to power homes and industry not just here, but across the entire Mid-Atlantic. The state’s natural gas built modern power plants, attracted investment, and helped America move toward energy independence.So how is it that Pennsylvanians are still paying more for electricity every year?Over the past five years, electricity prices in Pennsylvania have risen 45%. It is a tick lower than the national average of a 46% price increase. However, that is...

The Derry Township Supervisors on Tuesday approved a permit for a proposed solar farm along Newhouse Road after hearing objections to the project from several neighboring residents. The supervisors indicated they aren’t any more pleased about the proposed 27-acre solar array than residents are. But they said they are issuing the permit because the plan for installing 11,000 solar panels meets the requirements of a related township ordinance. “I’m like you,” Supervisor Don Kepple told solar farm opponents attending the township meeting. “I wouldn’t want this in my backyard. How can you say ‘no’ when everything is done right down...

The U.S. Energy Department under President Donald Trump and Secretary Chris Wright is committed to saving taxpayers' money. In an Oct. 1 press release, the Energy Department announced that it had axed 321 awards which were to fund 223 different projects. The sheer scope and size of our federal government is mind-blowing. And with the national debt nearing $38 trillion, it has never been so important to cut federal spending, which is why the work of the Trump administration to reduce federal bloat is a massive win. Altogether, the Department of Energy (DOE) clarified, ending those projects saved American taxpayers...

Here in the U.S., ever since the push to “de-carbonize” the energy system to “save the planet” from global warming got going in a big way 20 or so years ago, there has always been a critical mass of skeptics strongly pushing back. I count myself among them. Another prominent example is the CO2 Coalition, an organization of about 200 scientists and intellectuals who dissent from the climate orthodoxy. Large portions of our Republican Party — recently approaching near unanimity — have also joined the dissent from climate orthodoxy. But over in Europe, the same has not been true at...

Oct 3 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Joe Biden exceeded his authority by withdrawing large areas along U.S. coastlines from future offshore oil and gas development, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled on Thursday.U.S. District Judge James Cain in Lake Charles, Louisiana, sided with Republican states and oil and gas industry groups that sued to block Biden's move to protect all federal waters off the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the northern Bering Sea in Alaska.Biden, on one of his final days in office, used his authority under the 70-year-old Outer Continental Shelf...

The Trump administration will expand coal mine leasing on federal lands and provide hundreds of millions of dollars to support more coal-fired power generation, officials said on Monday. The plan is part of a broader effort by the administration to reverse the decline of coal use in the U.S., a fossil fuel that has been hard hit by environmental regulation and competition from natural gas in recent years. At a press conference in Washington, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said his department would open 13.1 million acres (5.3 million hectares) of federal land for coal leasing. The area opened up, in...

Researchers have found that the carbon footprint of generative AI-based tools that can turn text prompts into images and videos is far worse than we previously thought. As detailed in a new paper, researchers from the open-source AI platform Hugging Face found that the energy demands of text-to-video generators quadruple when the length of a generated video doubles — indicating that the power required for increasingly sophisticated generations doesn’t scale linearly. For instance, a six-second AI video clip consumes four times as much energy as a three-second clip.

The partially taxpayer-funded Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert is set to shut down in 2026 due to inefficiency in generating solar energy, according to the New York Post. The $2.2 billion plant, which features three 459-foot towers, was greenlit in 2010 and completed in 2014. According to the New York Post the closure stems from the site being “outpaced by solar photovoltaic technology” and proving both inefficient and costly. The shutter of the site comes more than a decade ahead of its original 2039 end date, according to the Associated Press. Speculation about Ivanpah’s early closure began...

Seen from the sky, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert resembles a futuristic dream. Viewed from the bottom line, however, Ivanpah is anything but. The solar power plant, which features three 459-foot towers and thousands of computer-controlled mirrors known as heliostats, cost some $2.2 billion to build. Construction began in 2010 and was completed in 2014. Now, it’s set to close in 2026 after failing to efficiently generate solar energy. In 2011, the US Department of Energy under former President Barack Obama issued $1.6 billion in three federal loan guarantees for the project and the Secretary of...