Over two decades ago, Ormat Technologies began a big experiment on a swath of rugged land near the Hot Springs Mountains in western Nevada. The geothermal company was already producing electricity there, using the heat found naturally in hot water and steam trapped beneath the earth’s surface. But in 2002, Ormat and…

America’s offshore wind farms have already shown their ability to keep electricity flowing during brutal winter storms. Now, the clean energy resource has proved it can also bolster the grid during major heat waves. Earlier this month, as dangerously hot and humid temperatures settled over the eastern United States,…

Earlier this month, as a historic heat dome smothered the U.S. Midwest and Atlantic Coast, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked residents to set their air conditioners to 78 degrees Fahrenheit to protect the city’s severely strained grid. “Let's ease demand — and get through the heat — together,” he posted on X…

Southern California’s landmark rule to slash emissions from industrial heating sources just notched a major victory in court. The region has some of the worst air quality in the U.S., and the gas-fueled boilers and water heaters that serve its factories and large buildings are a key culprit. In 2024, air quality…

Startup Quaise Energy has raised $134 million to advance its first superhot geothermal power plant in central Oregon. On Tuesday, the Houston-based company announced the first tranche of its Series B financing round, which brings the firm’s total funding to $230 million. Quaise is developing a 50-megawatt plant near…

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — When the startup Electra Research launched four years ago, its founders set out to hook more batteries up to the electric grid. Energy storage is key to balancing the coming and going of wind and solar power, and it can help reduce strain on the electricity system during the busiest hours. But with…

NEW YORK CITY — Manhattan is teeming with skyscrapers that seem to reach into the clouds. But a gleaming commercial building near the Hudson River is more impressive for how it stretches down into the dirt. Beneath the floors of 555 Greenwich St. are 68 geothermal energy piles that run nearly 120 feet deep, dodging…

A year ago this month, Japan’s Nippon Steel acquired U.S. Steel, promising to plow $14 billion into America’s legendary but long-declining steel industry. The hard-fought deal was controversial and highly politicized . But for residents in historic steel communities, like those in northwest Indiana, the foreign…

On a drizzly March day last year at the White House, President Donald J. Trump stood behind a podium to make a “beautiful announcement.” Hyundai, the Korean industrial giant, was investing nearly $6 billion in a new steel plant in Louisiana, which would supply domestic metal to the company’s auto plants in Alabama…

Mikal Løvik began his career in Norway’s offshore oil and gas industry, where he noticed a big but largely hidden source of energy waste: electric heating cables. Service vessels and drilling rigs used the cables to prevent equipment from freezing, but they always ran on full blast, even when it wasn’t necessary to…

The startup Eavor Technologies hit a crucial milestone late last year when its flagship geothermal project — a novel closed-loop system — started sending electricity to Germany’s grid. The company had completed the first of four planned loops, and it expected to start construction on its second loop earlier this…

Energy developer Invenergy is joining America’s race to build next-generation geothermal — and it plans to do so with the controversial new refund the Trump administration is giving it for abandoning offshore wind projects. On Wednesday, the Chicago-based company struck an agreement with the Trump administration to…

A power-hungry aluminum smelter planned in Oklahoma is facing a new legal challenge that aims to stop the massive project in its tracks. Last week, Oklahoma’s attorney general sued to block Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) and Century Aluminum from building the $4 billion facility, which is slated to more than double…

The U.S. House just approved a bipartisan package of bills to accelerate geothermal energy as the nation clamors for more around-the-clock clean electricity. The Geothermal Energy Advancement Act, or H.R. 5631, passed with broad support on Tuesday. The legislation — led by U.S. Reps. Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.) and Susie…

New York and six other Democratic-led states are challenging the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to pay private energy firms to abandon their U.S. offshore wind projects. On Tuesday, the coalition of blue states sued the U.S. Department of the Interior over its March agreement with French oil giant…

A giant energy-storage project in South Dakota will soon turn cheap wind energy into clean industrial steam for a neighboring biofuels facility. The startup Antora Energy said it recently began booting up a 5-gigawatt-hour thermal energy storage system at Poet ’s ethanol-production plant near Big Stone City, close…