The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing has dramatically increased global data center energy consumption, challenging existing low-carbon infrastructure development. This study addresses a crucial gap by comparing the Levelized Cost of Electricity for wind, solar, solar plus battery storage, nuclear, and natural gas technologies tailored explicitly for meeting Meta’s data center energy demands through 2030. Our custom model incorporates detailed capital and operational costs, capacity factors, site-specific data, and sensitivity analyses of key variables.

Extreme heat is one of the world’s most dangerous climate challenges, threatening health, livelihoods, and infrastructure. This new resource provides practical tools for national and local authorities to strengthen coordination, planning, and investment to protect people and systems from escalating heat impacts.

Plastic products are everywhere in daily life in the United States. Yet the economic, environmental and health costs of plastic to society reach up to $1.1 trillion per year—and that’s likely an underestimate.

In the United States, the current system for interconnecting large electric loads, like data centers, to the grid has left all sides frustrated. Data center developers are mired in slow interconnection processes. Meanwhile, electricity customers face rising rates and threats to grid reliability as the nation’s grid operators struggle to interconnect new power plants and batteries to the system quickly enough to meet rising demand. This brief outlines policy considerations for FERC to evaluate and highlights processes and mechanisms that grid operators would need to develop in order to maximize the benefits of load flexibility for electricity consumers. FERC has docketed the DOE Advanced Notice Of Proposed Rulemaking (RM26-4) and requested an initial round of comments by November 14, 2025, and reply comments by November 28, 2025. UPDATE: FERC has extended the initial comment period to November 21, 2025, with reply comments due by December 5, 2025.

A central challenge in the global transition to cleaner energy is how governments can design policies that deliver large social benefits while facing trade-offs in energy security, fiscal costs, and household adoption frictions. The authors studied this question in urban Nepal, where cooking is dominated by imported liquid petroleum gas (LPG), but abundant hydropower makes both large-scale electrification and improved energy security feasible. 

The authors estimate the marginal willingness to pay (WTP) for improved electricity service reliability in a nationally representative sample 1,047 grid or mini-grid connected households in Sierra Leone, using two complementary valuation approaches. Analyzing data from a discrete choice experiment, they find that, on average, households exhibit strong preferences for shorter outages; fewer daytime and evening outages, compared to nighttime outages; and prior notification, though there is heterogeneity in the relative weights ascribed to each of these attributes.

In this study, the authors conduct an implementation science analysis of Phase I of the “Promotion of Bio-Ethanol as Alternative Clean Fuel for Cooking in the United Republic of Tanzania” project, describing the roll-out of this market-based bioethanol stove program. Leveraging program administrative data, individual interviews, and focus group discussions, we apply the RE-AIM framework to evaluate the successes and limitations of the project.

The interactions—including conflict and competition—between coastal small-scale fishing (SSF) communities and large-scale, distant-water fishing (DWF) fleets have garnered increasing attention in recent decades. Coastal states, such as Liberia, employ a variety of access arrangements to license foreign fishing vessels to access fisheries resources within their exclusive economic zones. This paper contributes a case study that assesses the socioeconomic impacts of distant-water trawl vessels on Liberia’s SSF and fisheries-dependent coastal communities.

As temperatures rise and extreme weather events become more frequent and more severe, communities across the United States are searching for trusted institutions that can provide both immediate relief and long-term resilience strategies. Faith communities, with their deep theological foundations, established community networks, and physical infrastructure, are uniquely positioned to serve as centers for climate resilience.

To make good decisions, researchers and practitioners need high-quality, consistent, and accessible forest data. Pilot forest accounts are one of the first steps in tracking ecosystems services, demonstrating how accounts can be created using available data and determining what questions they can help answer.