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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 1d

Speaking of turning the clock back ... at least 16 GW of old, dirty power plants have had their retirement delayed due to forecasts of rising power demand, including from data centers.
@frontiergroup.bsky.social's Quentin Good and Kylie Hanson name the names here: frontiergroup.org/articles/dat...

Data center energy use is giving old, dirty power plants a new lease on life

The closures of 34 fossil fuel generators at 15 power plants have been postponed, in part to fuel the U.S. data center boom.

frontiergroup.org

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 1d

All the lip gloss being put on the AI boom as somehow good for climate or the energy transition is masking that, at the present moment, it's a disaster.

Not only more gas generation, but the worst, dirtiest, least efficient kind. Turning the clock back 25 years.
heatmap.news/energy/natur...

Data Centers Have Solved Their Speed-to-Power Problem — With Natural Gas

“Old economy” companies like Caterpillar and Williams are cashing in by selling smaller, less-efficient turbines to impatient developers.

heatmap.news

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 1d

Since 2014, we’ve tracked 73 wasteful or damaging highway projects from coast to coast. You can find our freshly updated dashboard here. pirg.org/edfund/resou...

Highway Boondoggles

Year after year, state and local governments propose billions of dollars’ worth of new and expanded highways that often do little to reduce congestion or address real transportation challenges, while ...

pirg.org

Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 1d

Always a pleasure to talk with @usa.streetsblog.org, this time about our newly updated “Highway Boondoggles” dashboard and what it will take to make better transportation investments that solve real problems. usa.streetsblog.org/2025/10/09/a...

America Has a Golden Opportunity to End the 'Highway Boondoggle' Crisis — Streetsblog USA

America's wasteful highway spending has gotten out of control — and if President Trump really wants to promote efficient government, he'll urge Congress to stop it.

usa.streetsblog.org

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 2d

The big challenge here - and one that will likely grow as we electrify more home heating - is winter. Solar has made a surprising difference in reducing gas demand in winter but has obvious limitations. Which is why slowing offshore wind, a highly productive winter resource, is so devastating.

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 2d

No. But among the resources available to us, that’s a big one. We’ve written before about progress on solar. And there are creative people trying to crack the gas home heating puzzle. frontiergroup.org/articles/let...

Let us now praise rooftop solar: A tale from New England

Rooftop solar delivers benefits for the climate, the environment and consumers. New England is a prime example.

frontiergroup.org

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 2d

That’s all true, but the hope would’ve been that the experience/infrastructure built for the first couple of large projects would have carried over to future ones. That’s harder to envision now.

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 3d

The federal government getting out of the way on offshore wind would help tremendously with that. We’ve got other work to do for sure, but it’s harder now.

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 3d

A good day to remember that both the energy and financial maths of near-term direct air capture deployment don’t math, and they math even less today than they did when the IRA was passed as the pace of grid decarbonization slows. frontiergroup.org/resources/ca...

Carbon dioxide removal: The right thing at the wrong time?

We can’t keep digging up and reburying carbon in the ground in a perpetual cycle. Carbon dioxide removal may someday be needed, but it shouldn't be a priority now.

frontiergroup.org

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 3d

Would have to be cheaper/faster/better to increase support for orgs/people/businesses already doing this work than setting up a publicly funded competitor.

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 4d

Much gratitude to the New Englanders who, three decades ago, envisioned a regional grid without polluting coal and pushed to make it a reality. The day has finally arrived.

WBUR @wbur.org · 4d

With Merrimack Station shutting down in New Hampshire, there will no longer be coal burned in New England to power the grid.

New England’s last coal plant has stopped operating, according to its owners

Granite Shore Power, the company that owns the coal plant in Bow, New Hampshire, said they ceased commercial operations Sept. 12, about a year and a half after they announced they would retire their f...

www.wbur.org

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Reposted by Tony Dutzik

Kevin J. CREATURE @kevinjkircher.com · 4d

Has anyone added up the subsidies that the federal government, transmission grid operators, and electric utilities have given to AI companies so far and compared that amount (doubtless > $100 billion) to e.g. the entirety of IRA ten-year funding for clean energy technologies (~$350-400 billion)?

Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 6d

NEW from me:

In his 2nd term, Trump has pursued the largest trade war in modern US history—with 1 glaring omission. Computer imports are almost entirely exempt from tariffs

It's a special carveout that AI companies are now reliant on for their data center buildout🧵
www.apricitas.io/p/the-tariff...

The Tariff Exemption Behind the AI Boom

Data Centers get Tariff-Free Imports. Why Shouldn't we All?

www.apricitas.io

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 4d

Good to hear this project - an old-school "ram a new-build highway through the middle of a neighborhood" type project - is on the ropes. But zombie highway projects can continue to haunt neighborhoods' future prospects for years to come. Time to end it for good.
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2025...

I-49 Threatened To Destroy This Neighborhood for a Decade. Is It Finally Dead? | Strong Towns

The regional government of Northwest Louisiana recently canceled discussions on the I-49 Connector project. But is this highway project really dead?

www.strongtowns.org

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Reposted by Tony Dutzik

Wolfgang Blau @wblau.bsky.social · 7d

But if you have one EV battery catch fire, it seemingly justifies questioning the entire energy transition.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 8d

A fireball lit up the sky across the Los Angeles area on Thursday night after an explosion at a Chevron refinery in El Segundo, alarming nearby residents who said it felt like an earthquake. The cause of the explosion was not clear. No injuries were reported. nyti.ms/42pPCaW

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Reposted by Tony Dutzik

Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social · 9d

"We estimate that 36 percent of Americans over the age of 10 do not or cannot rely on a personal vehicle to meet their daily travel needs..."

Who Doesn’t Have a Car?

A new NRDC map shows car-free living and the factors affecting car usage in United States.

www.nrdc.org

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Reposted by Tony Dutzik

Dr. Jonathan Foley @globalecoguy.bsky.social · 10d

Direct air capture (DAC) continues to be small, slow, and very expensive.

Not because it’s an early stage technology, but because it runs into fundamental thermodynamic challenges that money can’t solve.

This is exactly why it’s not recommended by Project Drawdown.

www.ft.com/content/fa4c...

Direct carbon capture falters as developers’ costs fail to budge

Some experts say the technology is crucial for climate change goals but scaling up is proving hard

www.ft.com

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 11d

Some might call it a "cost shift." One of many ways the broader public is paying the price for data center expansion. Much gratitude to @ucs.org for bringing this issue to public attention in such a clear and compelling way.

blog.ucs.org/mike-jacobs/...

Data Centers Are Already Increasing Your Energy Bills. We Have the Receipts.

Electric bills are going up around the country and some of those increases are due to an outdated practice that requires consumers to pay billions for tech giants’ grid connections. Our new analysis t...

blog.ucs.org

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 13d

Why yes, let’s repackage a broadly popular and historically crucial movement for clean energy - with a long history of policy successes - as being in rhetorical/ideological alignment with whatever this is. Should win hearts and minds.

Neil Renic @ncrenic.bsky.social · 14d

11/10 graffiti

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 14d

I had a conversation a while back with someone who works with grassroots orgs in the Deep South regarding solar that left me ashen-faced in realization that it might already be too late to head off that possibility.

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 14d

One of my grave worries these days - among many - is that clean energy comes to be seen by the country not as a tool of environmental improvement and liberation but rather as a handmaiden of Big Tech domination. Pleading w/my clean energy friends to read the room.

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 14d

Americans are deeply anxious about AI and deeply skeptical of Big Tech. And, in many ways, that anxiety/skepticism is fully justified. www.pewresearch.org/internet/202...

How the U.S. Public and AI Experts View Artificial Intelligence

These groups are far apart in their enthusiasm and predictions for AI, but both want more personal control and worry about too little regulation.

www.pewresearch.org

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 14d

No surprise that data centers attract more vehement opposition than wind/solar. They have tangible local impacts renewables don’t (power/water demand, sometimes air quality/noise) and approximately none of the pro-social “halo” of renewables.

Heatmap News @heatmap.news · 14d

Data centers are the new target of NIMBY backlash, @jael.bsky.social reports in THE FIGHT this week.

"These aggrieved denizens organize grassroots campaigns, many with associated Facebook groups, and then flood city council and county commission hearings."

Data Centers Are the New NIMBY Battleground

Packed hearings. Facebook organizing. Complaints about prime farmland and a disappearing way of life. Sound familiar?

heatmap.news

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Reposted by Tony Dutzik

PM2.5 Kills ~9 Million People Worldwide Annually @tkovach.bsky.social · 15d

"Should EPA remove its regulation of GHGs, it increases the likelihood that environmental non-governmental organizations, advocacygroups, citizen groups, and other parties will seek to bring new tort suits and other litigation totest the bounds of continued CAA displacement of federal common law"

EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194-1136 attachment 1

www.documentcloud.org

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 16d

Agree with your general point but it’s not 100% anymore. Petrochemicals and exports are a bigger part of the picture than previously. Overturning the crude oil export ban was one of the most consequential climate decisions we made that no one ever talks about.

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Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 17d

Def did not have wiping out while riding 2 mph in a straight line in my morning plan. Absolute lawsuit waiting to happen here.

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