General Fusion laid off at least 25% of its employees last week, just days after hitting a key milestone for its latest fusion demonstration device. CEO Greg Twinney posted an open letter on the company’s website Monday saying that while its new LM26 device had been able to compress a plasma — something necessary for fusion
Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon are all locked in a race to see who can zero out their carbon pollution first. Apple reported on Wednesday that it is more than halfway there. Since 2015, the company says it has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by around 60%. That covers everything from manufacturing and marketing to corporate
Al Gore, Just Climate fund raises $175M from Microsoft and CalSTRS : When it comes to climate-related investments, the lion’s share has gone to companies working in energy and transportation. Most investors overlook actual lions — that is, nature-based solutions like biodiversity tend to get short shrift in the investment world. Just $35 billion was
Coreshell : The electric vehicle transition is really a story about China. There, subsidies have helped juice not just automakers, but the entire battery supply chain behind them. Those incentives, plus decades of industrial policy focused on controlled critical mineral supply chains, has left American and European automakers flat-footed. Take graphite, for example. Every lithium-ion
Google and Muon Space launch a new satellite to battle wildfires. The first satellite of the Google-backed FireSat constellation successfully made it to orbit over the weekend, kicking off what promises to be a new era in wildfire detection and monitoring. The constellation will keep a close eye on wildfires. When fully operational, the constellation’s
For someone who wants solar panels, the question is often: “How many?” And for a heat pump, it’s “how big?” Answering those questions typically requires a contractor to set foot on your property. Yet over the last decade, solar installers have trimmed that time-consuming process considerably. Some, like Tesla, have eliminated it entirely. The secret
Arizona lawmakers are debating a bill that would protect utilities from wildfire-related lawsuits, a move that would likely send shockwaves through the insurance industry. The bill would make it harder to prove that utilities are to blame for wildfires started by faulty or poorly maintained equipment while also limiting damages. In exchange for reduced liability,
Geothermal startup Fervo Energy is reportedly eyeing an initial public offering in the next two years. Driving the consideration is the growing concern over power demand growth from data centers, which could double by 2029. “There’s clearly a huge hunger in the public markets right now to figure out, how are we going to solve
Citibank revealed in court filings on Wednesday that the FBI, the EPA, the EPA inspector general, and the Treasury Department have all requested that the bank freeze accounts of several nonprofits and state government agencies. The accounts were frozen in February, but the new documents make public details that had previously been unknown, including a
Sometimes the smallest of news items can point to bigger trends lurking beneath the surface. Case in point: Google announced late last month that it has installed 100 million lithium-ion cells across its data centers to provide backup power to its servers. On its own, it’s not earth-shattering news. But it shines a light on
