4 shiny spots in local weather information in 2025

Again in 2015, the battery storage trade had put in solely a fraction of a gigawatt of battery storage capability throughout the US. That 12 months, it set a seemingly daring goal of including 35 gigawatts by 2035. The sector handed that aim a decade early this 12 months after which hit 40 gigawatts a few months later. 

Prices are nonetheless falling, which might assist keep the momentum for the know-how’s deployment. This 12 months, battery costs for EVs and stationary storage fell but once more, reaching a report low, in keeping with information from BloombergNEF. Battery packs particularly used for grid storage noticed costs fall even sooner than the common; they price 45% lower than final 12 months.

We’re beginning to see what occurs on grids with a lot of battery capability, too: in California and Texas, batteries are already serving to meet demand within the evenings, lowering the necessity to run natural-gas vegetation. The outcome: a cleaner, extra secure grid.

AI’s vitality funding inflow

The AI increase is sophisticated for our vitality system, as we lined at size this 12 months. Electrical energy demand is ticking up: the quantity of energy utilities provided to US information facilities jumped 22% this 12 months and can greater than double by 2030.

However a minimum of one constructive shift is popping out of AI’s affect on vitality: It’s driving renewed curiosity and funding in next-generation vitality applied sciences.

Within the close to time period, a lot of the vitality wanted for information facilities, together with people who energy AI, will possible come from fossil fuels, particularly new natural-gas energy vegetation. However tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Meta all have objectives on the books to cut back their greenhouse-gas emissions, so that they’re searching for options.

Meta signed a deal with XGS Power in June to buy as much as 150 megawatts of electrical energy from a geothermal plant. In October, Google signed an settlement that can assist reopen Duane Arnold Power Heart in Iowa, a beforehand shuttered nuclear energy plant.

Geothermal and nuclear could possibly be key items of the grid of the long run, as they’ll present fixed energy in a means that wind and photo voltaic don’t. There’s a protracted approach to go for lots of the new variations of the tech, however extra money and curiosity from massive, highly effective gamers can’t damage.