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AI reasoning models are even more energy intensive.

They used 30 times more electricity on average than other models according to research by the AI Energy Score project that included responses to 1,000 written prompts. “We should be smarter about the way that we use AI ... Choosing the right model for the right task is important,” Hugging Face research scientist Sasha Luccioni tells Bloomberg.

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Justine Calma
A global roadmap for ditching fossil fuels hangs in the balance.

Negotiators are deadlocked in a tumultuous close to United Nations climate talks. A proposed roadmap for transitioning away from coal, oil, and gas has become a flashpoint. “We’re facing the reality of a no-deal scenario” EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said earlier today.

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Justine Calma
UN climate talks were literally on fire.

A blaze broke out in the conference venue Thursday, just ahead of negotiations scheduled to come to a close today in Brazil.

The new silicon valley (literally)

Is the promise of jobs worth all the water and chemicals it takes to manufacture chips in the Arizona desert?

Justine Calma
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1 in every 25 attendees at the UN climate conference is a fossil fuel lobbyist.

More than 1,600 lobbyists for oil, coal, and gas have crowded into pivotal international climate negotiations going down in Brazil. They outnumber delegations from every country in attendance except for Brazil, according to an analysis by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition.

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Utilities around the world pledged $1 trillion in grid and renewable energy investments by 2030.

The Utilities for Net Zero Alliance made the announcement Friday during the UN climate conference taking place in Brazil. Investment need to grow from $390 billion in 2024 to $670 billion annually between now and 2030 to update power grids, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

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NASA and the European Space Agency launched a satellite to monitor sea levels.

“Sentinel-6B will ensure that we continue to collect the high-precision data needed to understand our changing climate,” ESA’s director of earth observation programmes, Simonetta Cheli said in a press release.

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Disinformation comes to the forefront of UN climate negotiations.

Brazil, Canada, Chile, and at least seven other countries have endorsed a new ‘declaration’ to combat disinformation on climate change. It came together during the United Nations climate conference taking place this month, where more than 200 advocacy groups have called on governments to crack down on misleading content in advertising and online platforms.

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Data centers are already influencing the global forecast for clean energy.

Growing electricity demand for AI and the Trump administration’s love of natural gas have influenced the International Energy Agency’s latest World Energy Outlook, Heatmap reports.

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UN climate talks are getting weirdUN climate talks are getting weird
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Justine Calma
How deep-sea mining could threaten a vital ocean food source

New industry-backed research shows how waste from deep-sea mining could have far-reaching effects on fish and their food.

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A nuclear energy startup and the Silicon Valley and MAGA bigwigs backing it are chipping away at federal oversight of new reactor designs.

“All these nuke bros who know nothing about operating a reactor, they just want a free pass,” Allison Macfarlane, former chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, tells Bloomberg. “They can have their free pass, but then they will have an accident.”

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Energy Star might survive after all.

The US Environmental Protection Agency is considering keeping it alive, following news earlier this year that the Trump administration would shutter the money-saving program as part of its efforts to roll back energy and water efficiency standards.

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Government shutdowns tend to be bad for the air we breathe.

Coal-fired power plants pumped out as much as 20 percent more particle pollution during the last federal government shutdown in 2018 and 2019 as the US Environmental Protection Agency froze inspections.

The current shutdown has lasted nearly a month now, inching closer to the 2018-2019 record for the longest in history.

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One of the world’s most popular forest carbon projects is floundering.

As much as two thirds of the climate benefits the project was supposed to provide for high-profile customers — including Volkswagen, Gucci, and Nestle — never materialized, according to a recent investigation. The failure casts even more doubt over whether sustainability claims companies make about offsetting their emissions are actually legitimate.

Bloomberg

[Majority of Carbon Credits From Tarnished Project Deemed Bogus]

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Apple plans to bring more renewable energy to Europe and China.

It’s supporting new solar and wind farms across Greece, Italy, Latvia, Poland, and Romania that are supposed to add 650 megawatts of renewable energy capacity to local power grids.

The company also shared that its suppliers jointly launched a new $150 million investment fund to support renewable energy infrastructure in China.

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Justine Calma
Trump hit the Environmental Protection Agency again.

With the government still shut down, the Trump administration announced more layoffs across the already decimated federal workforce. That includes EPA employees who worked on battery recycling and safety, plastics reduction, recycling and composting programs, and collecting solid waste data, according to the EPA union.

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Electricity costs are up to 267 percent higher than they used to be in communities near data centers.

That’s according to a recent Bloomberg analysis of wholesale electricity prices across the US, which has more data centers than any other country.