What a major battery fire means for the future of energy storage

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

A few weeks ago, a fire broke out at the Moss Landing Power Plant in California, the world’s largest collection of batteries on the grid. Although the flames were extinguished in a few days, the metaphorical smoke is still clearing.

Some residents in the area have reported health issues that they claim are related to the fire, and some environmental tests revealed pollutants in the water and ground near where the fire burned. One group has filed a lawsuit against the company that owns the site.

In the wake of high-profile fires like Moss Landing, there are very understandable concerns about battery safety. At the same time, as more wind, solar power, and other variable electricity sources come online, large energy storage installations will be even more crucial for the grid. 

Let’s catch up on what happened in this fire, what the lingering concerns are, and what comes next for the energy storage industry.

The Moss Landing fire was spotted in the afternoon on January 16, according to local news reports. It started small but quickly spread to a huge chunk of batteries at the plant. Over 1,000 residents were evacuated, nearby roads were closed, and a wider emergency alert warned those nearby to stay indoors.

The fire hit the oldest group of batteries installed at Moss Landing, a 300-megawatt array that came online in 2020. Additional installations bring the total capacity at the site to about 750 megawatts, meaning it can deliver as much energy to the grid as a standard coal-fired power plant for a few hours at a time.

According to a statement that site owner Vistra Energy gave to the New York Times, most of the batteries inside the affected building (the one that houses the 300MW array) burned. However, the company doesn’t have an exact tally, because crews are still prohibited from going inside to do a visual inspection.

This isn’t the first time that batteries at Moss Landing have caught fire—there have been several incidents at the plant since it opened. However, this event was “much more significant” than previous fires, says Dustin Mulvaney, a professor of environmental studies at San Jose State University, who’s studied the plant.

Residents are worried about the potential consequences.The US Environmental Protection Agency monitored the nearby air for hydrogen fluoride, a dangerous gas that can be produced in lithium-ion battery fires, and didn’t detect levels higher than California’s standards. But some early tests detected elevated levels of metals including cobalt, nickel, copper, and manganese in soil around the plant. Tests also detected metals in local drinking water, though at levels considered to be safe.

Citing some of those tests, a group of residents filed a lawsuit against Vistra last week, alleging that the company (along with a few other named defendants) failed to implement adequate safety measures despite previous incidents at the facility. The suit’s legal team includes Erin Brockovich, the activist famous for her work on a 1990s case against Pacific Gas & Electric Company involving contaminated groundwater from oil and gas equipment in California.

The lawsuit, and Brockovich’s involvement in particular, raises a point that I think is worth recognizing here: Technologies that help us address climate change still have the potential to cause harm, and taking that seriously is crucial. 

The oil and gas industry has a long history of damaging local environments and putting people in harm’s way. That’s evident in local accidents and long-term pollution, and in the sense that burning fossil fuels drives climate change, which has widespread effects around the world. 

Low-carbon energy sources like wind, solar, and batteries don’t add to the global problem of climate change. But many of these projects are industrial sites, and their effects can still be felt by local communities, especially when things go wrong as they did in the Moss Landing fire. 

The question now is whether those concerns and lawsuits will affect the industry more broadly. In a news conference, one local official called the fire “a Three Mile Island event for this industry,” referring to the infamous 1979 accident at a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant. That was a turning point for nuclear power, after which public support declined sharply. 

With the growing number of electric vehicles and batteries for energy storage on the grid, more high-profile fires have hit the news, like last year’s truck fire in LA, the spate of e-bike battery fires in New York City, or one at a French recycling plant last year. 

“Battery energy storage systems are complex machines,” Mulvaney says. “Complex systems have a lot of potential failures.” 

When it comes to large grid-scale installations, battery safety has already improved since Moss Landing was built in 2020, as Canary Media’s Julian Spector points out in a recent story. One reason is that many newer sites use a different chemistry that’s considered safer. Newer energy storage facilities also tend to isolate batteries better, so small fires won’t spread as dramatically as they did in this case. 

There’s still a lot we don’t know about this fire, particularly when it comes to how it started.  Learning from the results of the ongoing investigations will be important, because we can only expect to see more batteries coming online in the years ahead. 

In 2023, there were roughly 54 gigawatts’ worth of utility-scale batteries on the grid globally. If countries follow through on stated plans for renewables, that number could increase tenfold by the end of the decade. 

Energy storage is a key tool in transforming our grid and meeting our climate goals, and the industry is moving quickly. Safety measures need to keep up. 

Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

E-bike battery fires, including ones started by delivery drivers’ vehicles, have plagued New York City. A battery-swapping system could help address the problem. 

Insulating materials layered inside EV batteries could help reduce fire risk. A company making them just got a big boost in the form of a loan from the US Department of Energy. 

New chemistries, like iron-air batteries, promise safer energy storage. Read our profile of Form Energy, which we named one of our 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch in 2024. 

Keeping up with climate

Data centers are expected to be a major source of growth in electricity demand. Being flexible may help utilities meet that demand, according to a new study. (Inside Climate News)

The world’s first lab-grown meat for pets just went on sale in the UK. Meatly is selling limited quantities of its treats, which are a blend of plant-based ingredients and cultivated chicken cells. (The Verge)

Kore Power scrapped plans for a $1.2 billion battery plant in Arizona, but the company isn’t giving up just yet. The new CEO said the new plan is to look for an existing factory that can be transformed into a battery manufacturing facility. (Canary Media)

The auto industry is facing a conundrum: Customers in the US want bigger vehicles, but massive EVs might not make much economic sense. New extended-range electric vehicles that combine batteries and a gas-powered engine that acts as a generator could be the answer. (Heatmap)

Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were told to search grants for words related to climate change. It’s not clear what comes next. (Axios)

It might be officially time to call it on the 1.5 °C target. Two new studies suggest that the world has already entered into the runway to surpass the point where global temperatures increase 1.5 °C over preindustrial levels. (Bloomberg)

States are confused over a Trump administration order to freeze funding for EV chargers. Some have halted work on projects under the $5 billion program, while others are forging on. (New York Times)

Cold weather can affect the EV batteries. Criticisms likely portray something way worse than the reality, but in any case, here’s how to make the most of your EV in the winter. (Canary Media)

What a return to supersonic flight could mean for climate change

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

As I’ve admitted in this newsletter before, I love few things more than getting on an airplane. I know, it’s a bold statement from a climate reporter because of all the associated emissions, but it’s true. So I’m as intrigued as the next person by efforts to revive supersonic flight.  

Last week, Boom Supersonic completed its first supersonic test flight of the XB-1 test aircraft. I watched the broadcast live, and the vibe was infectious, watching the hosts’ anticipation during takeoff and acceleration, and then their celebration once it was clear the aircraft had broken the sound barrier.

And yet, knowing what I know about the climate, the promise of a return to supersonic flight is a little tarnished. We’re in a spot with climate change where we need to drastically cut emissions, and supersonic flight would likely take us in the wrong direction. The whole thing has me wondering how fast is fast enough. 

The aviation industry is responsible for about 4% of global warming to date. And right now only about 10% of the global population flies on an airplane in any given year. As incomes rise and flight becomes more accessible to more people, we can expect air travel to pick up, and the associated greenhouse gas emissions to rise with it. 

If business continues as usual, emissions from aviation could double by 2050, according to a 2019 report from the International Civil Aviation Organization. 

Supersonic flight could very well contribute to this trend, because flying faster requires a whole lot more energy—and consequently, fuel. Depending on the estimate, on a per-passenger basis, a supersonic plane will use somewhere between two and nine times as much fuel as a commercial jet today. (The most optimistic of those numbers comes from Boom, and it compares the company’s own planes to first-class cabins.)

In addition to the greenhouse gas emissions from increased fuel use, additional potential climate effects may be caused by pollutants like nitrogen oxides, sulfur, and black carbon being released at the higher altitudes common in supersonic flight. For more details, check out my latest story.

Boom points to sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) as the solution to this problem. After all, these alternative fuels could potentially cut out all the greenhouse gases associated with burning jet fuel.

The problem is, the market for SAFs is practically embryonic. They made up less than 1% of the jet fuel supply in 2024, and they’re still several times more expensive than fossil fuels. And currently available SAFs tend to cut emissions between 50% and 70%—still a long way from net-zero.

Things will (hopefully) progress in the time it takes Boom to make progress on reviving supersonic flight—the company plans to begin building its full-scale plane, Overture, sometime next year. But experts are skeptical that SAF will be as available, or as cheap, as it’ll need to be to decarbonize our current aviation industry, not to mention to supply an entirely new class of airplanes that burn even more fuel to go the same distance.

The Concorde supersonic jet, which flew from 1969 to 2003, could get from New York to London in a little over three hours. I’d love to experience that flight—moving faster than the speed of sound is a wild novelty, and a quicker flight across the pond could open new options for travel. 

One expert I spoke to for my story, after we talked about supersonic flight and how it’ll affect the climate, mentioned that he’s actually trying to convince the industry that planes should actually be slowing down a little bit. By flying just 10% slower, planes could see outsized reductions in emissions. 

Technology can make our lives better. But sometimes, there’s a clear tradeoff between how technology can improve comfort and convenience for a select group of people and how it will contribute to the global crisis that is climate change. 

I’m not a Luddite, and I certainly fly more than the average person. But I do feel like, maybe we should all figure out how to slow down, or at least not tear toward the worst impacts of climate change faster. 

Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

We named sustainable aviation fuel as one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies this year. 

The world of alternative fuels can be complicated. Here’s everything you need to know about the wide range of SAFs. 

Rerouting planes could help reduce contrails—and aviation’s climate impacts. Read more in this story from James Temple.  

SARAH ROGERS / MITTR | PHOTO GETTY

Another thing

DeepSeek has crashed onto the scene, upending established ideas about the AI industry. One common claim is that the company’s model could drastically reduce the energy needed for AI. But the story is more complicated than that, as my colleague James O’Donnell covered in this sharp analysis. 

Keeping up with climate

Donald Trump announced a 10% tariff on goods from China. Plans for tariffs on Mexico and Canada were announced, then quickly paused, this week as well. Here’s more on what it could mean for folks in the US. (NPR)
→ China quickly hit back with mineral export curbs on materials including tellurium, a key ingredient in some alternative solar panels. (Mining.com)
→ If the tariffs on Mexico and Canada go into effect, they’d hit supply chains for the auto industry, hard. (Heatmap News)

Researchers are scrambling to archive publicly available data from agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Trump administration has directed federal agencies to remove references to climate change. (Inside Climate News)
→ As of Wednesday morning, it appears that live data that tracks carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is no longer accessible on NOAA’s website. (Try for yourself here)

Staffers with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” entered the NOAA offices on Wednesday morning, inciting concerns about plans for the agency. (The Guardian)

The National Science Foundation, one of the US’s leading funders of science and engineering research, is reportedly planning to lay off between 25% and 50% of its staff. (Politico)

Our roads aren’t built for the conditions being driven by climate change. Warming temperatures and changing weather patterns are hammering roads, driving up maintenance costs. (Bloomberg)

Researchers created a new strain of rice that produces much less methane when grown in flooded fields. The variant was made with traditional crossbreeding. (New Scientist)

Oat milk maker Oatly is trying to ditch fossil fuels in its production process with industrial heat pumps and other electrified technology. But getting away from gas in food and beverage production isn’t easy. (Canary Media)

A new 3D study of the Greenland Ice Sheet reveals that crevasses are expanding faster than previously thought. (Inside Climate News)

In other ice news, an Arctic geoengineering project shut down over concerns for wildlife. The nonprofit project was experimenting with using glass beads to slow melting, but results showed it was a threat to food chains. (New Scientist)

Three questions about the future of US climate tech under Trump

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Donald Trump has officially been in office for just over a week, and the new administration has hit the ground running with a blizzard of executive orders and memos.

Some of the moves could have major effects for climate change and climate technologies—for example, one of the first orders Trump signed signaled his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the major international climate treaty.

The road map for withdrawing from the Paris agreement is clear, but not all the effects of these orders are quite so obvious. There’s a whole lot of speculation about how far these actions reach, which ones might get overturned, and generally what comes next. Here are some of the crucial threads that I’m going to be following.

Will states be able to set their own rules on electric vehicles? 

It’s clear that Donald Trump isn’t a fan of electric vehicles. One of the executive orders issued on his first day in office promised to eliminate the “electric vehicle (EV) mandate.” 

The federal government under Biden didn’t actually have an EV mandate in place—rather, Trump is targeting national support programs, including subsidies that lower the cost of EVs for drivers and support building public chargers. But that’s just the beginning, because the executive order will go after states that have set their own rules on EVs. 

While the US Environmental Protection Agency does set some rules around EVs through what are called tailpipe standards, last year California was granted a waiver that allows the state to set its own, stricter rules. The state now requires that all vehicles sold there must be zero-emissions by 2035. More than a dozen states quickly followed suit, setting a target to transition to zero-emissions vehicles within the next decade. That commitment was a major signal to automakers that there will be demand for EVs, and a lot of it, soon.

Trump appears to be coming after that waiver, and with it California’s right to set its own targets on EVs. We’ll likely see court battles over this, and experts aren’t sure how it’s going to shake out.

What will happen to wind projects?

Wind energy was one of the most explicit targets for Trump on the campaign trail and during his first few days in office. In one memo, the new administration paused all federal permits, leases, and loans for all offshore and onshore wind projects.

This doesn’t just affect projects on federal lands or waters—nearly all wind projects typically require federal permits, so this could have a wide effect.

Even if the order is temporary or doesn’t hold up in court, it could be enough to chill investment in a sector that’s already been on shaky ground. As I reported last year, rising costs and slow timelines were already throwing offshore wind projects off track in the US. Investment has slowed since I published that story, and now, with growing political opposition, things could get even rockier.

One major question is how much this will slow down existing projects, like the Lava Ridge Wind Project in Idaho, which got the green light from the Biden administration before he left office. As one source told the Washington Post, the new administration may try to go after leases and permits that have already been issued, but “there may be insufficient authority to do so.”

What about the money?

In an executive order last week, the Trump administration called for a pause on handing out the funds that are legally set aside under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. That includes hundreds of billions of dollars for climate research and infrastructure.

This week, a memo from the White House called for a wider pause on federal grants and loans. This goes way beyond climate spending and could affect programs like Medicaid. There’s been chaos since that was first reported; nobody seems to agree on what exactly will be affected or how long the pause was supposed to last, and as of Tuesday evening, a federal judge had blocked that order.

In any case, all these efforts to pause, slow, or stop federal spending will be a major source of fighting going forward. As for effects on climate technology, I think the biggest question is how far the new administration can and will go to block spending that’s already been designated by Congress. There could be political consequences—most funds from the Inflation Reduction Act have gone to conservative-leaning states.  

As I wrote just after the election in November, Donald Trump’s return to office means a sharp turn for the US on climate policy, and we’re seeing that start to play out very quickly. I’ll be following it all, but I’d love to hear from you. What do you most want to know more about? What questions do you have? If you work in the climate sector, how are you seeing your job affected? You can email me at casey.crownhart@technologyreview.com, message me on Bluesky, or reach me on Signal: @casey.131.

Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

EVs are mostly set for solid growth this year, but what happens in the US is still yet to be seen, as my colleague James Temple covered in a recent story. 

The Inflation Reduction Act set aside hundreds of billions of dollars for climate spending. Here’s how the law made a difference, two years in.

For more on Trump’s first week in office, check out this news segment from Science Friday (featuring yours truly). 

STEPHANIE ARNETT/ MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW | RAWPIXEL

Another thing

DeepSeek has stormed onto the AI scene. The company released a new reasoning model, called DeepSeek R1, which it claims can surpass the performance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT o1. The model appears to be incredibly efficient, which upends the idea that huge amounts of computing power, and energy, are needed to drive the AI revolution. 

For more, check out this story on the company and its model from my colleague Caiwei Chen, and this look at what it means for the AI industry and its energy claims from James O’Donnell. 

Keeping up with climate

A huge surge in clean energy caused China’s carbon emissions to level off in 2024. Whether the country’s emissions peak and begin to fall for good depends on what wins in a race between clean-energy additions and growth in energy demand. (Carbon Brief)

In a bit of good news, heat pumps just keep getting hotter. The appliances outsold gas furnaces in the US last year by a bigger margin than ever. (Canary Media)
→ Here’s everything you need to know about heat pumps and how they work. (MIT Technology Review)

People are seeking refuge from floods in Kentucky’s old mountaintop mines. Decades ago, the mines were a cheap source of resources but devastated local ecosystems. Now people are moving in. (New York Times)

An Australian company just raised $20 million to use AI to search for key minerals. Earth AI has already discovered significant deposits of palladium, gold, and molybdenum. (Heatmap News)

Some research suggests a key ocean current system is slowing down, but a new study adds to the case that there’s no cause to panic … yet. The new work suggests that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, hasn’t shown long-term weakening over the past 60 years. (Washington Post)
→ Efforts to observe and understand the currents have shown they’re weirder and more unpredictable than expected. (MIT Technology Review)

Floating solar panels could be a major resource in US energy. A new report finds that federal reservoirs could hold enough floating solar to produce nearly 1,500 terawatt-hours of electricity, enough to power 100 million homes each year. (Canary Media)

What sparked the LA wildfires is still a mystery, but AI is hunting for clues. Better understanding of what causes fires could be key in efforts to stop future blazes. (Grist)

Why the next energy race is for underground hydrogen

It might sound like something straight out of the 19th century, but one of the most cutting-edge areas in energy today involves drilling deep underground to hunt for materials that can be burned for energy. The difference is that this time, instead of looking for fossil fuels, the race is on to find natural deposits of hydrogen.

Hydrogen is already a key ingredient in the chemical industry and could be used as a greener fuel in industries from aviation and transoceanic shipping to steelmaking. Today, the gas needs to be manufactured, but there’s some evidence that there are vast deposits underground.

I’ve been thinking about underground resources a lot this week, since I’ve been reporting a story about a new startup, Addis Energy. The company is looking to use subsurface rocks, and the conditions down there, to produce another useful chemical: ammonia. In an age of lab-produced breakthroughs, it feels like something of a regression to go digging for resources, but looking underground could help meet energy demand while also addressing climate change.

It’s rare that hydrogen turns up in oil and gas operations, and for decades, the conventional wisdom has been that there aren’t large deposits of the gas underground. Hydrogen molecules are tiny, after all, so even if the gas was forming there, the assumption was that it would just leak out.

However, there have been somewhat accidental discoveries of hydrogen over the decades, in abandoned mines or new well sites. There are reports of wells that spewed colorless gas, or flames that burned gold. And as people have looked more intentionally for hydrogen, they’ve started to find it.

As it turns out, hydrogen tends to build up in very different rocks from those that host oil and gas deposits. While fossil-fuel prospecting tends to focus on softer rocks, like organic-rich shale, hydrogen seems most plentiful in iron-rich rocks like olivine. The gas forms when chemical reactions at elevated temperature and pressure underground pull water apart. (There’s also likely another mechanism that forms hydrogen underground, called radiolysis, where radioactive elements emit radiation that can split water.)

Some research has put the potential amount of hydrogen available at around a trillion tons—plenty to feed our demand for centuries, even if we ramp up use of the gas.

The past few years have seen companies spring up around the world to try to locate and tap these resources. There’s an influx in Australia, especially the southern part of the country, which seems to have conditions that are good for making hydrogen. One startup, Koloma, has raised over $350 million to aid its geologic hydrogen exploration.

There are so many open questions for this industry, including how much hydrogen is actually going to be accessible and economical to extract. It’s not even clear how best to look for the gas today; researchers and companies are borrowing techniques and tools from the oil and gas industry, but there could be better ways.

It’s also unknown how this could affect climate change. Hydrogen itself may not warm the planet, but it can contribute indirectly to global warming by extending the lifetime of other greenhouse gases. It’s also often found with methane, a super-powerful greenhouse gas that could do major harm if it leaks out of operations at a significant level.

There’s also the issue of transportation: Hydrogen isn’t very dense, and it can be difficult to store and move around. Deposits that are far away from the final customers could face high costs that might make the whole endeavor uneconomical.  

But this whole area is incredibly exciting, and researchers are working to better understand it. Some are looking to expand the potential pool of resources by pumping water underground to stimulate hydrogen production from rocks that wouldn’t naturally produce the gas.

There’s something fascinating to me about using the playbook of the oil and gas industry to develop an energy source that could actually help humanity combat climate change. It could be a strategic move to address energy demand, since a lot of expertise has accumulated over the roughly 150 years that we’ve been digging up fossil fuels.

After all, it’s not digging that’s the problem—it’s emissions.

Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

This story from Science, published in 2023, is a great deep dive into the world of so-called “gold hydrogen.” Give it a read for more on the history and geology here.

For more on commercial efforts, specifically Koloma, give this piece from Canary Media a read.   

And for all the details on geologic ammonia and Addis Energy, check out my latest story here.

Another thing

Donald Trump officially took office on Monday and signed a flurry of executive orders. Here are a few of the most significant ones for climate:  

Trump announced his intention to once again withdraw from the Paris agreement. After a one-year waiting period, the world’s largest economy will officially leave the major international climate treaty. (New York Times)

The president also signed an order that pauses lease sales for offshore wind power projects in federal waters. It’s not clear how much the office will be able to slow projects that already have their federal permits. (Associated Press)

Another executive order, titled “Unleashing American Energy,” broadly signals a wide range of climate and energy moves. 
→ One section ends the “EV mandate.” The US government doesn’t have any mandates around EVs, but this bit is a signal of the administration’s intent to roll back policies and funding that support adoption of these vehicles. There will almost certainly be court battles. (Wired)
→ Another section pauses the disbursement of tens of billions of dollars for climate and energy. The spending was designated by Congress in two of the landmark laws from the Biden administration, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Again, experts say we can likely expect legal fights. (Canary Media)

Keeping up with climate

The Chinese automaker BYD built more electric vehicles in 2024 than Tesla did. The data signals a global shift to cheaper EVs and the continued dominance of China in the EV market. (Washington Post)

A pair of nuclear reactors in South Carolina could get a second chance at life. Construction halted at the VC Summer plant in 2017, $9 billion into the project. Now the site’s owner wants to sell. (Wall Street Journal)

→ Existing reactors are more in-demand than ever, as I covered in this story about what’s next for nuclear power. (MIT Technology Review)

In California, charging depots for electric trucks are increasingly choosing to cobble together their own power rather than waiting years to connect to the grid. These solar- and wind-powered microgrids could help handle broader electricity demand. (Canary Media)

Wildfires in Southern California are challenging even wildlife that have adapted to frequent blazes. As fires become more frequent and intense, biologists worry about animals like mountain lions. (Inside Climate News)

Experts warn that ash from the California wildfires could be toxic, containing materials like lead and arsenic. (Associated Press)

Burning wood for power isn’t necessary to help the UK meet its decarbonization goals, according to a new analysis. Biomass is a controversial green power source that critics say contributes to air pollution and harms forests. (The Guardian) 

Interest in nuclear power is surging. Is it enough to build new reactors?

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Lately, the vibes have been good for nuclear power. Public support is building, and public and private funding have made the technology more economical in key markets. There’s also a swell of interest from major companies looking to power their data centers. 

These shifts have been great for existing nuclear plants. We’re seeing efforts to boost their power output, extend the lifetime of old reactors, and even reopen facilities that have shut down. That’s good news for climate action, because nuclear power plants produce consistent electricity with very low greenhouse-gas emissions.

I covered all these trends in my latest story, which digs into what’s next for nuclear power in 2025 and beyond. But as I spoke with experts, one central question kept coming up for me: Will all of this be enough to actually get new reactors built?

To zoom in on some of these trends, let’s take a look at the US, which has the largest fleet of nuclear reactors in the world (and the oldest, with an average age of over 42 years).

In recent years we’ve seen a steady improvement in public support for nuclear power in the US. Today, around 56% of Americans support more nuclear power, up from 43% in 2020, according to a Pew Research poll.

The economic landscape has also shifted in favor of the technology. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 includes tax credits specifically for operating nuclear plants, aimed at keeping them online. Qualifying plants can receive up to $15 per megawatt-hour, provided they meet certain labor requirements. (For context, in 2021, its last full year of operation, Palisades in Michigan generated over 7 million megawatt-hours.) 

Big Tech has also provided an economic boost for the industry—tech giants like Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon are all making deals to get in on nuclear.

These developments have made existing (or recently closed) nuclear power plants a hot commodity. Plants that might have been candidates for decommissioning just a few years ago are now candidates for license extension. Plants that have already shut down are seeing a potential second chance at life.

There’s also the potential to milk more power out of existing facilities through changes called uprates, which basically allow existing facilities to produce more energy by tweaking existing instruments and power generation systems. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved uprates totaling six gigawatts over the past two decades. That’s a small but certainly significant fraction of the roughly 97 gigawatts of nuclear on the grid today. 

Any reactors kept online, reopened, or ramped up spell good news for emissions. But expanding the nuclear fleet in the US will require not just making the most of existing assets, but building new reactors. 

We’ll probably also need new reactors just to maintain the current fleet, since so many reactors are scheduled to be retired in the next couple of decades. Will the enthusiasm for keeping old plants running also translate into building new ones? 

In much of the world (China being a notable exception), building new nuclear capacity has historically been expensive and slow. It’s easy to point at Plant Vogtle in the US: The third and fourth reactors at that facility began construction in 2009. They were originally scheduled to start up in 2016 and 2017, at a cost of around $14 billion. They actually came online in 2023 and 2024, and the total cost of the project was north of $30 billion.

Some advanced technology has promised to fix the problems in nuclear power. Small modular reactors could help cut cost and construction times, and next-generation reactors promise safety and efficiency improvements that could translate to cheaper, quicker construction. Realistically, though, getting these first-of-their-kind projects off the ground will still require a lot of money and a sustained commitment to making them happen. “The next four years are make or break for advanced nuclear,” says Jessica Lovering, cofounder at the Good Energy Collective, a policy research organization that advocates for the use of nuclear energy.  

There are a few factors that could help the progress we’ve seen recently in nuclear extend to new builds. For one, public support from the US Department of Energy includes not only tax credits but public loans and grants for demonstration projects, which can be a key stepping stone to commercial plants that generate electricity for the grid. 

Changes to the regulatory process could also help. The Advance Act, passed in 2024, aims at sprucing up the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the hopes of making the approval process more efficient (currently, it can take up to five years to complete). 

“If you can see the NRC really start to modernize toward a more efficient, effective, and predictable regulator, it really helps the case for a lot of these commercial projects, because the NRC will no longer be seen as this barrier to innovation,” says Patrick White, research director at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a nonprofit think tank. We should start to see changes from that legislation this year, though what happens could depend on the Trump administration.

The next few years are crucial for next-generation nuclear technology, and how the industry fares between now and the end of the decade could be very telling when it comes to how big a role this technology plays in our longer-term efforts to decarbonize energy. 

Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

For more on what’s next for nuclear power, check out my latest story.

One key trend I’m following is efforts to reopen shuttered nuclear plants. Here’s how to do it.  

Kairos Power is working to build molten-salt-cooled reactors, and we named the company to our list of 10 Climate Tech Companies to watch in 2024.  

Another thing 

Devastating wildfires have been ravaging Southern California. Here’s a roundup of some key stories about the blazes. 

→ Strong winds have continued this week, bringing with them the threat of new fires. Here’s a page with live updates on the latest. (Washington Post)

→ Officials are scouring the spot where the deadly Palisades fire started to better understand how it was sparked. (New York Times)

→ Climate change didn’t directly start the fires, but global warming did contribute to how intensely they burned and how quickly they spread. (Axios) 

→The LA fires show that controlled burns aren’t a cure-all when it comes to preventing wildfires. (Heatmap News)

→ Seawater is a last resort when it comes to fighting fires, since it’s corrosive and can harm the environment when dumped on a blaze. (Wall Street Journal)

Keeping up with climate  

US emissions cuts stalled last year, despite strong growth in renewables. The cause: After staying flat or falling for two decades, electricity demand is rising. (New York Times)

With Donald Trump set to take office in the US next week, many are looking to state governments as a potential seat of climate action. Here’s what to look for in states including Texas, California, and Massachusetts. (Inside Climate News)

The US could see as many as 80 new gas-fired power plants built by 2030. The surge comes as demand for power from data centers, including those powering AI, is ballooning. (Financial Times)

Global sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids were up 25% in 2024 from the year before. China, the world’s largest EV market, is a major engine behind the growth. (Reuters)

A massive plant to produce low-emissions steel could be in trouble. Steelmaker SSAB has pulled out of talks on federal funding for a plant in Mississippi. (Canary Media)

Some solar panel companies have turned to door-to-door sales. Things aren’t always so sunny for those involved. (Wired)

2025 is a critical year for climate tech

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

I love the fresh start that comes with a new year. And one thing adding a boost to my January is our newest list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies.

In case you haven’t browsed this year’s list or a previous version, it features tech that’s either breaking into prominence or changing society. We typically recognize a range of items running from early-stage research to consumer technologies that folks are getting their hands on now.

As I was looking over the finished list this week, I was struck by something: While there are some entries from other fields that are three or even five years away, all the climate items are either newly commercially available or just about to be. It’s certainly apt, because this year in particular seems to be bringing a new urgency to the fight against climate change. We’re facing global political shifts and entering the second half of the decade. It’s time for these climate technologies to grow up and get out there.

Green steel

Steel is a crucial material for buildings and vehicles, and making it accounts for around 8% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. New manufacturing methods could be a huge part of cleaning up heavy industry, and they’re just on the cusp of breaking into the commercial market.

One company, called Stegra, is close to starting up the world’s first commercial green steel plant, which will make the metal using hydrogen from renewable sources. (You might know this company by its former name, H2 Green Steel, as we included it on our 2023 list of Climate Tech Companies to Watch.)

When I first started following Stegra a few years ago, its plans for a massive green steel plant felt incredibly far away. Now the company says it’s on track to produce steel at the factory by next year.

The biggest challenge in this space is money. Building new steel plants is expensive—Stegra has raised almost $7 billion. And the company’s product will be more expensive than conventional material, so it’ll need to find customers willing to pay up (so far, it has).

There are other efforts to clean up steel that will all face similar challenges around money, including another play in Sweden called Hybrit and startups like Boston Metal and Electra, which use different processes. Read more about green steel, and the potential obstacles it faces as we enter a new phase of commercialization, in this short blurb and in this longer feature about Stegra.

Cow burp remedies

Humans love burgers and steaks and milk and cheese, so we raise a whole bunch of cows. The problem is, these animals are among a group with a funky digestion process that produces a whole lot of methane (a powerful greenhouse gas). A growing number of companies are trying to develop remedies that help cut down on their methane emissions.

This is one of my favorite items on the list this year (and definitely my favorite illustration—at the very least, check out this blurb to enjoy the art).

There’s already a commercially available option right now: a feed additive called Bovaer from DSM-Firmenich that the company says can cut methane emissions by 30% in dairy cattle, and more in beef cattle. Startups are right behind with their own products, some of which could prove even better.

A key challenge all these companies face moving forward is acceptance: from regulatory agencies, farmers, and consumers. Some companies still need to go through lengthy and often expensive tests to show that their products are safe and effective. They’ll also need to persuade farmers to get on board. Some might also face misinformation that’s causing some consumers to protest these new additives.

Cleaner jet fuel

While planes crisscrossing the world are largely powered by fossil fuels, some alternatives are starting to make their appearance in aircraft.

New fuels, today mostly made from waste products like used cooking oil, can cut down emissions from air travel. In 2024, they made up about 0.5% of the fuel supply. But new policies could help these fuels break into new prominence, and new options are helping to widen their supply.

The key challenge here is scale. Global demand for jet fuel was about 100 billion gallons last year, so we’ll need a whole lot of volume from new producers to make a dent in aviation’s emissions.

To illustrate the scope, take LanzaJet’s new plant, opened in 2024. It’s the first commercial-scale facility that can make jet fuel with ethanol, and it has a capacity of about 9 million gallons annually. So we would need about 10,000 of those plants to meet global demand—a somewhat intimidating prospect. Read more in my write-up here.

From cow burps to jet fuel to green steel, there’s a huge range of tech that’s entering a new stage of deployment and will need to face new challenges in the next few years. We’ll be watching it all—thanks for coming along.

Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

Check out our full list of 2025’s Breakthrough Technologies here. There’s also a poll where you can vote for what you think the 11th item should be. I’m not trying to influence anyone’s vote, but I think methane-detecting satellites are pretty interesting—just saying … 

This package is part of our January/February print issue, which also includes stories on: 

• This system that’s tracking early warning signs of infection in wheat crops
• How wind could be a low-tech solution to help clean up shipping
• Efforts to use human waste in agriculture

JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY

Another thing 

EVs are (mostly) set for solid growth in 2025, as my colleague James Temple covers in his newest story. Check it out for more about what’s next for electric vehicles, including what we might expect from a new administration in the US and how China is blowing everyone else out of the water. 

Keeping up with climate  

Winter used to be the one time of year that California didn’t have to worry about wildfires. A rapidly spreading fire in the southern part of the state is showing that’s not the case anymore. (Bloomberg)

Tesla’s annual sales decline for the first time in over a decade. Deliveries were lower than expected for the final quarter of the year. (Associated Press)

Meanwhile, in China, EVs are set to overtake traditional cars in sales years ahead of schedule. Forecasts suggest that EVs could account for 50% of car sales this year. (Financial Times)

KoBold metals raised $537 million in funding to use AI to mine copper. The funding pushes the startup’s valuation to $2.96 billion. (TechCrunch)
→ Read this profile of the company from 2021 for more. (MIT Technology Review)

We finally have the final rules for a tax credit designed to boost hydrogen in the US. The details matter here. (Heatmap)

China just approved the world’s most expensive infrastructure project. The hydroelectric dam could produce enough power for 300 million people, triple the capacity of the current biggest dam. (Economist)

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter installed 32 solar panels on the White House’s roof. Although they came down just a few years later, the panels lived multiple lives afterward. I really enjoyed reading about this small piece of Carter’s legacy in the wake of his passing. (New York Times)

An open pit mine in California is the only one in the US mining and extracting rare earth metals including neodymium and praseodymium. This is a fascinating look at the site. (IEEE Spectrum) 
→ I wrote about efforts to recycle rare earth metals, and what it means for the long-term future of metal supply, in a feature story last year. (MIT Technology Review)