As part of its "Disaster 101" series, Duke Today interviewed emergency managers and Duke experts to try to make sense of layers of governments, regulations and communications involved in emergency response and rebuilding. Although experiences differ, common lessons in community and relationship building emerge in their stories.

To help communities in North Carolina and beyond prepare for a hotter future, Duke’s Heat Policy Innovation Hub will create an interactive tool to assess heat risks in rural and coastal communities and offer officials solutions that fit their local needs and requirements. "What we're finding as we conduct more research is rural and coastal areas to some degree are disproportionately more impacted by extreme heat events," hub director Ashley Ward told the Wilmington Star-News.

Significant electricity load growth can be accommodated without a stampede to new gas generation while propelling the clean energy transition, writes John Quigley of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. One promising approach that Quigley cites is a new study from Duke scholars that finds planned load flexibility at data centers can minimize—or even eliminate—any near-term need to build new gas plants to meet load growth.

Utilities are citing surging demand from data centers as a top reason to make multibillion-dollar investments in new gas plants and pipelines. But new research from Duke University experts casts doubt on the need for expansive new infrastructure to fuel the artificial intelligence boom, reports Port City Daily.

In this virtual briefing, three Duke University experts—Tyler Norris and Dalia Patiño-Echeverri (Nicholas School of the Environment) and Tim Profeta (Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability)—discussed their new national-scale analysis of how the existing U.S. power system can accommodate data centers and other large new loads without requiring major generation and transmission expansion.

Long and Ward, two nationally recognized experts in climate resilience and emergency management, will discuss actionable solutions to help communities prepare for and recover from climate-related disasters. The event will be held Tuesday, Feb. 25, as part of Appalachian State University’s Pathways to Resilience initiative.

Researchers from Duke University have said that integrating more flexibility into U.S. power grids could help provide the energy needed to power future load growth, particularly the electricity needed to support artificial intelligence and data centers, reports POWER. The group discussed the findings of their recent study in a Feb. 19 webinar.

In an op-ed for Utility Dive, energy policy experts Peter Freed and Allison Clements write that rational standardization of large load-side interconnection could help regulators across the country address the challenges and opportunities that new electricity demand poses for customer protection, grid reliability and economic development. Freed and Clements note that new rules may be needed to design opportunities for flexible interconnection subject to curtailment as described in a recent study by Duke scholars.

A new Nicholas Institute report has determined that data center operators could unlock up to 76 GW of new capacity in the United States by curtailing their energy use during periods of grid stress, writes Data Center Dynamics.

North Carolina Wildlife Federation named Nicholas Institute research associate Jin Bai as its Wildlife Volunteer of the Year. The federation recognized Bai for "extraordinary dedication to bird conservation, citizen science and community engagement."