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Forbes
3 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Red States–And AI–Are Big Losers From Trump's Clean Energy Massacre
P resident Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act – assuming the version Senate Republicans passed on Tuesday becomes law–would cut the legs out from under the renewable energy industry. The biggest hit: The bill would quickly phase out federal tax credits that have for years enabled wind and solar developers to offset 30% or more of project costs. Yes, it could have been even worse. At the last minute, the Senate's Republican leadership ditched a proposed excise tax on wind and solar projects using Chinese components which could have added 20% to the cost of many projects. But it left in a fast phase-out of the tax credits. Moreover, there are lots of other anti-green, pro-fossil fuel bullets the industry didn't dodge. The bill would open more federal lands to oil and gas leasing at lower royalty rates; end tax credits and other subsidies for electric vehicles; and refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. There's also a new tax break to incentivize mining metallurgical coal, now to be considered a strategic mineral. Uncertainty, and the looming end of federally subsidized tax equity financing, could plunge renewables investing into a deep freeze, says Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of Houston-based EDP Renewables North America (which operates wind and solar plants). 'It severely hamstrings the U.S. ability to meet skyrocketing power demands and dilutes its economic competitiveness on the global stage,' she says. Ironically, the impact will hit especially hard in Republican areas–a fact that Forbes (and others) thought last November might protect the industry from such savage cuts. A map (below) created by Michael Thomas, founder of Cleanview, shows that 78% of renewable energy projects underway are located in Red districts. Why is Trump so determined to kibosh economic growth in Texas, where last Saturday afternoon solar power met 31% of the grid's 77 gigawatts of power demand and wind power provided 15%? Sure, gas-fired generation still led with 35%, but coal provides merely 13% of the state's electricity needs. The trend is clear: Growing, power-hungry states like Texas and states where the sun shines or the wind blows, have been increasingly relying on solar and wind power. The How Green Is Your State? map makes clear that geography matters more than ideology when it comes to the adoption of green energy. Windy, sparsely populated and Republican South Dakota (Trump won 63% of the vote in 2024) gets an enormous portion of its retail electricity from renewable sources. Tiny, densely populated Delaware, Joe Biden's home state, gets almost none of its retail electricity from green sources. Complaints about the bill's assault on green energy have come from all quarters. Elon Musk calls the energy components of the bill 'insane and destructive,' saying they will destroy millions of jobs. Sean McGarvey, president of North America's Building Trades Unions, compares the impact to 'terminating 1,000 Keystone XL' pipelines (Biden, of course, terminated just the one). The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a statement said 'taxing energy production is never good policy.' But that hasn't swayed Trump, who in an interview last weekend with Fox's Maria Bartiromo made clear his determination to undo the Green New Deal aspects of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. His dislike for both Biden's legacy, and wind and solar energy in particular, seems almost visceral. 'We're doing coal,' Trump declared. 'I don't want windmills destroying our place. I don't want these solar things where they go for miles and they cover up half a mountain and they're ugly as hell.' And, he said, 'They're made in China.' So get ready to pay more for electricity, and to compete with big tech and artificial intelligence for the power supply. Recent growth in electricity demand from data centers has been stunning. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab data shows that in 2018 data centers used 76 terawatt hours (TWh), or 1.9% of domestic electricity; they project that will hit at least 325 TWhs (6.7% of the total) by 2028. Consultancy Rystad Energy eyes a 16% rise in overall U.S. power demand by 2035. But without affordable renewables (or rapid breakthroughs in nuclear fusion) the electricity to feed all those AI data centers may not arrive in time. Most are integrated energy projects. Meta, for its Sucre data center in Louisiana, is partnering with Entergy to invest $3.2 billion in gas turbines to provide reliable electricity for its computers, and another $1.5 billion into wind and solar–to reduce its carbon footprint. In Abilene, Texas, the Stargate consortium of OpenAI, Oracle and Microsoft is erecting its first data-gigacenter for its proximity to plentiful wind power, yet for redundancy they are also erecting 10 onsite gas turbines from GE Vernova. But 'more natural gas' is not the answer that Trump might think it is. That's because, while the U.S. is rich in gas, there's a shortage of gas turbines. Get on the waiting list for a new gas turbine now and you'll be lucky to get it in five years. 'We see many facilities that are slated to enter service in 2028, but newly built turbines are not going to be delivered until 2030,' says Zack Krause, an analyst at East Daley Analytics. 'Without growth in rapidly deployed solar, the U.S. economy will grind to a halt,' warns Ed Hirs, a lecturer in energy economics at the University of Houston. Last year, 81% of new power projects nationwide were solar and batteries. A third of that solar build out, some 11 gigawatts, was in Texas, to power data centers. California and Florida each installed about 5 GW. 'Humans are already competing against AI and crypto for electricity,' says Hirs, who credits crypto miners with raising Texas' wholesale power prices by 5% in 2023. Data centers like Stargate have so far been welcomed to rural Texas with compliant permitting and tax abatement packages. But it won't take much more than a heat wave or two to spark a showdown between AI's needs for reliable power and humans' desire that their air-conditioning not go out in the middle of summer. The pushback has already begun, with a new Texas law (S.B. 6) set to allow grid managers to disconnect data centers when electric demand is high. That makes it a good time to own irreplaceable power plant assets in Texas, like Constellation Energy and Vistra Corp., do. The Senate bill's excise tax was dropped after Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski–the last holdout needed for the 51 to 50 passage (with Vice President J.D. Vance voting)— called it 'just entirely punitive to the wind and solar industry.' She had joined Iowa's Republican Senators, Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley, in pushing an amendment designed to protect green credits for longer, which never got a vote. It's no mystery why Ernst and Grassley led the effort; Iowa gets an outsized 83% of its electricity from wind and solar. In the latest version, it appears that developers will need to start their wind or solar projects within 12 months of the bill's enactment in order to get full tax credits with no deadlines. Projects starting later must be completed by year end 2027 in order to claim credits before they sunset. Other unintended victims of Trump's demolition of Biden's green energy incentives could be the so-called Southeast Battery Belt across the Carolinas and Georgia. Large scale battery storage deployments nearly doubled last year to 30 gigawatts nationwide due to demand from solar projects to balance intermittent loads. But if this bill goes through as expected, there could be less demand than expected for Toyota's $13 billion lithium ion battery plant under construction in North Carolina and Hyundai's $8 billion combination battery and car factory in Georgia. The Big Beautiful Bill does support advanced nuclear power, including $125 million to develop small modular reactors for military use. The AI industry loves the low-carbon, small-footprint potential of nuclear fusion, with billionaires Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates and Sam Altman (and even Secretary of Energy Chris Wright) all startup investors. Not all of them are happy with the shifting sands. Houston energy trading billionaire John Arnold has invested heavily in long-distance transmission lines as well as geothermal, lithium and fusion startup Helion. Arnold reflected the energy industry's collective consciousness when he tweeted Monday about Trump's Big Beautiful Bill: 'Reversing which fuels get subsidies and which get penalized every time control of Washington shifts is about the stupidest way to run an energy system that needs long term planning and stable supply chains.' More from Forbes Forbes How An Unassuming Geologist Cracked The Global Fertilizer Cartel By Christopher Helman Forbes Gold To Top Bitcoin And Silver On Way To $4K Per Oz, Says Goldman Sachs By Christopher Helman Forbes Meet The Tiny Startup Building Stargate, OpenAI's $500 Billion Data Center Moonshot By Christopher Helman
E&E News
5 days ago
- Business
- E&E News
Agencies roll out plans to pare down NEPA reviews
The Trump administration advanced its deregulatory drive Monday as government agencies announced plans to renege on the country's linchpin environmental law. At issue is the National Environmental Policy Act, designed to require the federal government to consider environmental impacts for permit applications and management of public lands. The 1970 law has been under threat since President Donald Trump's return as he has rallied to build pipelines, ports and other energy infrastructure to boost domestic production of fossil fuels without environmental reviews. The Department of Energy issued an interim final rule that rescinded all of its NEPA regulations while releasing guidance or 'implementing procedures' in their place. Advertisement Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Trump promised to speed up the permitting process for massive infrastructure projects.
Washington Post
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Louisiana is latest state to redefine natural gas -- a planet-warming fossil fuel -- as green energy
Louisiana is the latest state to redefine natural gas as green energy under a new law the Republican governor signed this week, even though it's a fossil fuel that emits planet-warming greenhouse gases. Three other states led by Republicans— Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee— have passed similar legislation. In some Democratic-led states, there have been efforts to phase out natural gas. New York and California cities like San Francisco and Berkeley have moved to ban natural gas hookups in new buildings, though some of these policies have been successfully challenged in court. President Donald Trump has signed a spate of executive orders promoting oil, gas and coal , which all warm the planet when burned to produce electricity. The European Union previously designated natural gas and nuclear as sustainable , a move that Greenpeace and the Austrian government are suing over . Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a major booster of the state's petrochemical industry, says the new law 'sets the tone for the future' and will help the state 'pursue energy independence and dominance.' Environmental groups say these new laws are part of a broader push by petrochemical industry-backed groups to rebrand fossil fuel as climate friendly and head off efforts to shift electric grids to renewables, such as solar and wind. It's 'pure Orwellian greenwashing,' said Tim Donaghy, research director of Greenpeace USA. Globally, the term green energy is used to refer to energy derived from natural sources that do not pollute — solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal energy. Louisiana's law could enable funds slated for state clean energy initiatives to be used to support natural gas. Natural gas has been the top source of electricity generation in the United States for about a decade, since surpassing coal. Coal and natural gas both produce carbon dioxide that warms the planet when burned, but coal produces over twice as much . Switching from coal to natural gas lowers carbon dioxide emissions, but it can increase emissions of methane. The primary component of natural gas, methane is an extraordinarily powerful greenhouse gas, more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide and responsible for about 30% of today's global warming. Besides coal, everything else is better than gas for the planet, said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist. Building new gas plants locks in fossil fuel emissions for decades, he added. Louisiana's law orders state agencies and utilities regulators to 'prioritize' natural gas, along with nuclear power, on the grounds that it will improve the affordability and reliability of the state's electricity. The law's author, Republican Rep. Jacob Landry, runs an oil and gas industry consulting firm. 'I don't think it's anything crippling to wind or solar, but you got to realize the wind don't blow all the time and the sun don't shine every day,' Landry said. The legislation 'is saying we need to prioritize what keeps the grid energized,' he added. Landry told The Associated Press that he used a model bill by the American Legislative Exchange Council as a template. ALEC is a conservative think tank with ties to the oil and gas industry's billionaire Koch family . ALEC helped shape Ohio's 2023 law to legally redefine natural gas as a source of green energy, according to documents obtained by watchdog group Energy and Policy Institute and first reported by the Washington Post. Ohio's legislation was also heavily influenced by an advocacy group led by Republican megadonor Tom Rastin, a now retired gas industry executive. According to Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute, these laws are part of a long-running disinformation campaign by the gas industry to cast their product as clean to protect their businesses and prevent a shift to renewable energy sources that will address the climate crisis. 'The goal is to elbow out competition from renewables from wind and solar, and in some cases preempt localities' ability to choose to pursue 100% truly clean energy,' Anderson said, adding that ALEC's legislation makes natural gas 'eligible for state and local clean energy standards and funding.' Gov. Landry and other proponents of the new law said they want to make sure that residents and businesses have a reliable electric grid. Nearly 80% of Louisiana's grid is already powered by natural gas. Landry said that businesses will come to Louisiana if they know they can count on the state's electric grid. He highlighted Meta's plan to build a massive AI data center powered by three natural gas plants. Louisiana's law orders utilities providers to prioritize nuclear energy as well. Nuclear power does not emit greenhouse gases while producing electricity. However, critics say it is more expensive than solar and wind and the U.S. does not have a sufficient long-term solution for storing the waste. Consumer advocates say states do not need to embrace natural gas at the expense of wind, solar and other technologies to have a reliable grid. Legally mandating that utilities prioritize natural gas is 'blind to innovation, market evolution, and the practical demands of modern electric systems,' Jeffrey Clark, president of the Advanced Power Alliance, a renewable energy advocacy group, wrote in a statement opposing Louisiana's law. It's unclear to what extent Louisiana's utilities regulators will act on the order to prioritize natural gas over renewable energy. While Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis, a Democrat, called the law 'unenforceable' and pledged to ignore it, his Republican counterpart Jean-Paul Coussan said promoting natural gas 'aligns well' with the state's economic growth. ___ McDermott reported from Providence, Rhode Island. ___ Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI runs on dirty power — and the public pays the price
The data center boom is driving utilities to torpedo renewable energy goals and rely on fossil fuels, pushing data centers' expected air-pollution-related public health costs to between $5.7 billion and $9.2 billion annually, a Business Insider investigation found. As Big Tech bets on generative AI, electricity demand for data centers far outstrips what renewable power can currently provide. Utility companies say fossil fuels generate cheaper, more reliable electricity to keep the ever-growing number of data centers running around the clock. Developers filed permits for 1,240 data centers in the US as of 2024 — roughly quadruple the level in 2010. The resulting surge in electricity demand is already one of the most significant since the outbreak of World War II, said Julie Cohn, a research historian at the Center for Public History at the University of Houston. If every permitted facility comes online, their electricity demand could reach between 149.6 terawatt-hours and 239.3 terawatt-hours annually, Business Insider found. The low end of Business Insider's estimate is roughly equivalent to the state of Ohio's electricity needs in 2023, and on the high end, is nearly as much power as the entire state of Florida used that same year. A 2024 federal report projects demand could reach levels at the higher end of Business Insider's estimates by 2026. Communities already overburdened by pollution are bearing the brunt of the impact. Tech companies say their electricity use is driven by consumer demand. They also say the industry is directly incentivized to use electricity efficiently since power is data centers' most significant operating cost. The tech giants have emphasized clean energy commitments when talking about their data center building spree. Amazon announced last year that it had invested billions of dollars into more than 500 solar and wind projects globally to power its data centers and other operations. Microsoft announced a deal estimated at $10 billion to build green energy infrastructure for its data centers. Google pledged $20 billion in a deal to do the same. Despite such efforts, these cutting-edge computer farms are often powered by old-school energy sources that churn out pollution, Business Insider found. If all data centers that have received permits are brought online, Business Insider estimates electricity generation for data centers could reach between $5.7 to $9.2 billion in public health costs. Expected health impacts include between 190,000 and 300,000 asthma symptom cases — wheezing, chest tightness, or coughing — and between 370 and 595 premature deaths each year. To calculate these impacts, Business Insider used data from the backup generator permits for the 1,240 data centers it identified, including the amount of power and the maximum amount of pollutant emissions the generators could produce, an approach inspired in part by research from Julie Bolthouse at the Piedmont Environmental Council, who examined air permits in Virginia. (See more on Business Insider's methodology here.) Guided by expert estimates on data center electricity consumption, Business Insider used the permit data to assess what share of emissions generated by power plants on their electrical grids were attributable to the data centers. Business Insider then estimated the public health burden from those emissions using an Environmental Protection Agency tool that assesses the costs to avoid outcomes like premature deaths, asthma attacks, heart attacks, and missed school or work days. Amazon's 177 data centers are on pace to command the highest electricity demand at between 30 and 48 terawatt-hours a year, with the midpoint of the range about as much electricity as 3.6 million US homes based on average use. Microsoft's 44 data centers would consume about half that. A Microsoft spokesperson said that the company's reliance on fossil fuels was tied to their use by utilities, and that it invests significantly in carbon-free electricity wherever it operates. An Amazon spokesperson stressed the company's commitment to increasing the availability of renewable power sources, but didn't address Business Insider's estimates of public health costs or provide figures for electricity consumption. Another Amazon spokesperson said Business Insider's methodology for estimating consumption "oversimplifies complex data center operations and is based on assumptions that do not account for important differences in how companies build and operate data centers." Google and Meta did not respond to Business Insider's queries about our approach to estimating data center power use, and QTS declined to comment. A Microsoft spokesperson acknowledged that its data centers "do not always run at 100% of their installed capacity." Data centers' backup generators provide occasional emergency power and are tested monthly, usually for less than an hour. Permits show that these generators emit harmful air pollutants that can trigger asthma diagnoses, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations. A report last year for the Virginia legislature said that in 2023, data center generators in the state emitted 7% of the pollutant totals allowed in their permits. Based on that, Business Insider estimated that if all existing and planned generators nationwide emitted at similar rates, they would collectively emit about 2,500 tons of nitrogen oxides a year. That's equivalent to over 2 million passenger cars making round-trip drives between New York and California. Using the EPA tool, Business Insider calculated that data center generators alone could trigger nearly 20,000 asthma symptom cases a year and cost $385 million in annual public health burden. Spokespeople for Google and QTS said Business Insider's generator emission methodology relied on assumptions that overstate backup generator use. Microsoft told Business Insider its backup generators run "significantly fewer hours per year than the industry-wide average used in the EPA estimates." Amazon said further research was needed to validate Business Insider's findings. A representative from the Data Center Coalition, an industry interest group, said data centers were "actively evaluating alternatives that can provide similar reliability, fuel availability, siting flexibility, and workplace safety protections" as traditional, diesel-powered generators. The amounts of individual pollutants emitted annually by different generator models vary. QTS estimated in one air permit that a facility's generators would annually emit as low as 2% of permit limits for sulfur dioxide and as high as 32% of permit limits for nitrogen oxides. More than 230 data centers nationwide — nearly one in five — are in communities already highly overburdened by environmental pollutants, according to a Business Insider analysis that mapped all 1,240 data center locations onto a separate EPA tool. The tool combines census demographic data with data on 13 tracked pollutants present within a mile radius. Increased pollution burdens on these communities can have devastating effects: Children there are found to have asthma at higher rates. Mothers experience more preterm births. Amazon has the most such data centers, with 29 locations in areas with extremely high pollution burdens. Cogent, a rapidly expanding developer with 13 permitted centers by Business Insider's count, sited nearly half of its facilities in overburdened communities; Google and QTS each located nearly one in five of their centers in overburdened communities. An Amazon spokesperson said Business Insider's analysis was based on a defunct tool, pointing to its removal from the EPA website under the Trump administration. QTS said its facilities were designed to meet international green building certification standards. Cogent and Google declined to comment on the specifics of Business Insider's reporting. By 2028, data centers are expected to account for at least 6.7% — and as much as 12% — of all electricity used in the United States, up from 4.4% in 2023 and less than 2% in 2018, according to the 2024 federal report. The US electricity grid sources 60% of its power from fossil-fuel-fired plants, per federal data. To offset their impact, big data center developers are committing to invest heavily in renewable projects such as solar plants and wind farms, and funding the development of more nuclear power. Last year, Amazon invested more than $500 million to develop nuclear power with power purchase agreements in Virginia and Washington state, and Microsoft plans to purchase 100% of the power generated by Three Mile Island should regulators approve that shuttered nuclear plant's revival. In all, the amount of carbon-free power capacity that Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google contracted to use grew 69% in the 12 months that ended in February, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Big Tech companies also buy renewable energy certificates, which involve compensating someone else for each megawatt of electricity they deliver to the grid using renewable sources. "Data center owners and operators stand out for their leadership and commitment to decarbonization through clean energy," Aaron Tinjum, an energy policy official at the Data Center Coalition, told Virginia regulators last year. At the same time, data centers' demand is causing utilities and regulators to scrap planned renewable projects — and instead keep using coal power plants and building more natural gas power plants. In 2024, Dominion Energy, Virginia's largest electricity utility company, told regulators that transitioning entirely to renewable electricity generation, as mandated by state law, was "infeasible" and instead proposed using increasing amounts of fossil-fuel-fired power alongside additional renewable energy sources to meet power demand driven primarily by data centers. Aaron Ruby, a Dominion Energy spokesperson, told Business Insider that the utility's proposals to meet historic power demand were compliant with state law and that the utility was still working to increase clean energy. In Louisiana, Entergy, the state's largest electricity utility, told regulators in late 2024 it would need to build three natural gas plants to serve power demands from a recently announced Meta data center. Similarly, representatives of Mississippi Power told regulators early this year that data center demand would necessitate the continued use of the state's largest coal power plant, previously scheduled to close in 2028. A single Amazon data center in Mississippi, once fully online, is expected to demand 2 to 3.3 terawatt-hours a year, according to Business Insider's estimate. On average, that's the same amount of electricity used by 240,000 US homes. A Meta spokesperson told Business Insider that it had over 15 gigawatts of new renewable energy under contract. An Amazon spokesperson said the company was committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions across all operations by 2040. Entergy and Southern Company, the parent of Georgia Power and Mississippi Power, didn't respond to queries. River ecologists and urban planners warn that even before data centers go online, their construction imperils habitats for vulnerable species. Last year, an environmental impact report performed by Virginia's Department of Housing and Community Development determined a proposed 11-building Amazon data center campus would permanently affect nearly 6 acres of wetlands. An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider the company would conduct a wildlife management study and planned to explore opportunities to limit impact on wetlands and species of concern. In 2022, the National Parks Conservation Association commissioned a report that estimated the construction-related soil erosion from two data centers set to be built in Virginia would cause up to 1,350 tons of sediment to be dumped into Quantico Creek, a Potomac River tributary, clogging fish gills and reducing their disease resistance. Sediment increase would risk changing the waterway itself, the report said, potentially disrupting habitats and harming amphibians, turtles, and other aquatic species. The report also raised concerns about data centers' discharge of massive amounts of contaminated water used for cooling. That discharge, the report said, would risk increasing concentrations of metals, petroleum-based chemicals, pesticides, and herbicides, which could cause deformities and sores in aquatic wildlife. Business Insider identified 56 civil penalties totaling at least $1.4 million issued by state and federal environmental regulators to data centers across nine states over the past 20 years. These included violations of the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act resulting in fines of $100,000 or more. CyrusOne and Equinix, which run so-called colocation data centers that lease computing power to other firms, top the list with seven and six penalties, respectively, followed by QTS with four and Amazon with three. One of the biggest colocators, Digital Realty, engendered the largest dollar amount of penalties in Business Insider's review. In 2018, a Virginia environmental inspector found nine unpermitted emergency generators at a Loudoun County Digital Realty data center. The inspector noted in an enforcement recommendation plan that data center developers "have an economic incentive to construct facilities quickly" and said that by installing generators without a permit, Digital Realty "made a business decision and enjoyed the economic benefit." After additional violations for exceeding permitted generator limits and unauthorized generator use during peak pollution periods, the company eventually agreed to pay $317,913 in 2020 to resolve all violations. Digital Realty declined to comment on Business Insider's reporting. Meanwhile, water contamination risks persist. In 2023, a QTS data center in New Jersey's industrial "Chemical Belt" paid $179,000 to settle claims of failing to adequately monitor pollutants discharged into Ambrose Brook. During the winter, the facility continuously releases water containing corrosive antibacterials, chemical descalers, and algaecides. QTS settled with no admission of fault. A QTS spokesperson said the Piscataway data center was in full compliance with all monitoring requirements and the permit issued by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The spokesperson added that QTS addressed three other environmental regulation violations at data centers and was in full compliance with the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. The Amazon spokesperson said the company has a track record of complying with environmental regulations. A spokesperson for CyrusOne told Business Insider it complies with environmental regulations and is committed to environmental responsibility. An Equinix spokesperson told Business Insider that in limited circumstances, the company hadn't fully complied with requirements related to permitting, timing and tracking, and emissions, but that "we aggressively work to ensure that our facilities are in full compliance with all applicable regulations." About the data: Business Insider used air permits issued to data center backup generators to identify facility location and ownership, and estimate facility power use. We received permits from all but four states, plus Washington, DC. BI also used 2020 US census data and data from the Environmental Protection Agency's COBRA, AVERT, and EJSCREEN tools. Read more about how we investigated the impact of data center growth here. Reporting: Hannah Beckler, Dakin Campbell, Daniel Geiger, Rosemarie Ho, Narimes Parakul, Adam Rogers, Ellen Thomas Editing: Jeffrey Cane, Rosalie Chan, Jason Dean, Esther Kaplan, Jake Swearingen Research: Darren Ankrom, Schuyler Mitchell, Trey Strange, Yuheng Zhan Design and visuals: Dan DeLorenzo, Isabel Fernandez-Pujol, Jinpeng Li, Kim Nguyen, Randy Yeip, Rebecca Zisser Photography: Kendrick Brinson, John David-Richardson, Greg Kahn, Brian Palmer, Jesse Rieser Video: Robert Leslie, Gary Moon, Marco Secci Copy editing: Mark Abadi, Kevin Kaplan Read the original article on Business Insider
The Independent
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Greenpeace condemns Equinor-funded computer game aimed at UK schoolchildren
Greenpeace has condemned an Equinor-funded computer game for school children that tells young players renewable energy is 'less reliable'. EnergyTown, aimed at children aged nine to 14, encourages players to build a city that will survive until 2050 by balancing energy, economy, environment and population wellbeing demands. The game shows fossil fuels as part of a clean future energy mix, while players who start the game with a heavy reliance on renewable energy often fail to reach the mid-century milestone. It comes as part of a school education programme launched in October 2023 by Equinor called Wonderverse, with the firm saying it has reached more than 81,400 UK pupils by the following July. The deadline for schools to enter the 2025 nationwide EnergyTown competition is on Friday. The Norwegian oil major, which is seeking to develop the controversial Rosebank oil field in the UK North Sea, has previously denied that the game is part of a lobbying campaign but rather the firm's ambitions to make young people curious about science and technology. Greenpeace has fiercely criticised the game, claiming the fossil fuel company's support for the project is a 'cynical PR ploy'. The PA News Agency has contacted Equinor for comment. Mel Evans, head of Greenpeace UK's climate team, said: 'We know many young children know a lot about the climate crisis and what's driving it. 'If Equinor wants to win young hearts and minds, it should get serious about ditching fossil fuels and shifting to clean energy.' Greenpeace highlighted a Wonderverse webpage that tells players how to improve their scores if their city fails before the mid-century mark. While it says that players should think about phasing out non-renewable energy resources as the game progresses to improve its green score, they are also advised to invest in 'more reliable' fossil fuels, nuclear and hydrogen to power their cities. It notes: 'If you're relying on electricity from renewable energy resources like wind and solar power, you may have less electricity due to these energy resources being less reliable. 'Therefore, your other facilities (such as the businesses and recreational tiles) may struggle to run.' The page later adds: 'You should invest in a more reliable way to generate electricity, such as nuclear, oil, natural gas or hydrogen. 'It is important to consider that this may negatively impact your green score,' it adds. 'You should think about how you can phase out non-renewable energy resources as you progress later in the game.' Last July, the nationwide EnergyTown competition saw 160 children take part and an 11-year-old boy in Walmley Junior School, Birmingham, win the primary school level contest. In a statement at the time, Sue Falch-Lovesey, Equinor's UK Head of Social Value, said the competition 'showed a good level of understanding of the variety of energy sources our cities of the future will need'. Greenpeace highlighted how Birmingham was hit by flash floods a week after the energy firm published the press release on its website. Ms Evans said: 'Thanks to companies like Equinor, these children are living in homes with higher energy bills; living through summers of wildfires and droughts, and winters of increasingly worse flooding. 'The UK government should stop Rosebank, and should instead invest in the wind industry in the regions where workers and communities need to transition.' After the regulator granted approval for Equinor to develop Rosebank in 2023, the Scottish Court of Session ruled the decision as unlawful in January this year. Equinor is expected to reapply for its consent to drill at Rosebank once the Government's revised guidance on emissions produced by burning oil and gas is released. EnergyTown was developed for the Equinor programme by the marketing agency We Are Futures, which has worked for other high-emitting firms like BP.
