But in the small Bavarian town of Geretsried, near Munich, a new geothermal plant is quietly signalling a paradigm shift for the industry, as recent technological advances have opened up new territories, enabling the production of clean, baseload power.

Calgary-based Eavor Technologies, a pioneer in what’s being called “next-generation” or “advanced” geothermal, is part of a small pool of start-ups that is borrowing technical expertise gleaned from the oil and gas industry to drill for heat far below the earth’s surface and send it back up as a source of low-carbon energy.

“It has one of the smallest footprints for power generation of any technology,” says Steve Grasby, president of Geothermal Canada, a non-profit that supports research and development of geothermal projects. “It’s also highly reliable; the power is always there. And it’s easy to ramp up and down as needed, unlike nuclear, which needs to run all the time.”

Eavor’s latest milestone was achieved on December 4, 2025, when it became the first geothermal company to deliver electricity to a commercial power grid at its Geretsried facility, demonstrating that its “closed loop” system is capable of supplying emission-free power at scale. For this project representing the culmination of a decade’s worth of research and development, Eavor bored sealed pipes nearly 4.5 kilometres into the earth, connecting more than 300 kilometres of boreholes underground. Now completed, the eight-megawatt electric and 64-megawatt thermal project produces enough electricity for 8,000 homes and enough heat for 120,000 homes. Another Eavor project is in the works in the Netherlands.

If geothermal is ever going to scale, it has to be a repeatable process you can do over and over. We think we’ve got the best way to do that.

– John Redfern, CEO, Eavor Technologies

The U.S. Air Force has also shown interest in advanced geothermal energy supply. In 2023, the Air Force began planning for two prototype-level geothermal projects at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho and Joint Base San Antonio in Texas, awarding the Texas base project to Eavor.

Eavor believes its technology has the potential to generate power almost anywhere, and the firm has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital with the promise of truly ubiquitous, dispatchable renewable energy. The venture capital arms of BP and Chevron have invested some US$40 million in Eavor, and, through the Canada Growth Fund, the federal government has funnelled $90 million to the company. Eavor has used investors’ capital on research and development to continue to scale up the number and size of its projects and trim costs.

Eavor is not the only player in the hydrothermal sector that is exploring new ways to dig for heat. Texas is a hub of innovation in next-generation geothermal power. Prominent start-ups, such as Sage and Fervo Energy, are based in Houston, which shouldn’t be surprising given that energy demand is surging in Texas, where Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft are building huge data centres.

In general, geothermal is becoming a growth sector as new drilling capabilities and other advances now enable projects to be developed across a much wider range of geologic settings than ever before.

What is geothermal energy and how does it work?

For more than a century, people have been using steam generated by deep underground water reservoirs that are heated by the earth’s mantle to power generators. Iceland and New Zealand get about 20% of their electricity from geothermal thanks to their volcanic landscapes, which host shallow, highly permeable underground heat reservoirs. Only a few sites on the planet, however, contain the geological conditions to support a geothermal system at scale, and geothermal contributes only a very small share of the world’s overall supply – approximately 16 gigawatts, representing less than 1% of total capacity installed worldwide. (The only commercial geothermal power plant in Canada is in Alberta, the Swan Hills Geothermal Power Project.) By comparison, wind and solar together supplied 17.6% of global electricity in the first three quarters of 2025, pushing the total share of low-carbon energy sources to 43%.

With the rise of next-generation technologies, geothermal could significantly raise its contribution to the world’s supply of renewable power. Key to both “enhanced” geothermal and “advanced” geothermal systems is that neither requires natural underground reservoirs. All that is required is the heat of the earth, which is available nearly everywhere.

Enhanced geothermal uses the fracking techniques of the oil and gas sector to drill into hot rock and create permeability.

Eavor’s advanced geothermal system forgoes fracking in favour of a closed-loop system. Started by veterans of the oil sector, Eavor has designed a kind of underground radiator where fluid is circulated through a closed loop of vertical pipes that connect a network of horizontal pipes deep within the earth. Absorbing heat from the rock, the temperature of the working fluid rises and is then pumped up to ground level to generate heat and power.

“If geothermal is ever going to scale,” Eavor’s chief executive, John Redfern, told The New York Times in 2023, “it has to be a repeatable process you can do over and over. We think we’ve got the best way to do that.”

Low risk, high rewards

Besides the scarcity of suitable locations, geothermal has long been hampered by its high capital costs, the bulk of which are spent on drilling, which can eat as much as half the cost of a project.

Still, as greater efficiencies are realized, costs are coming down – by an impressive 22% from 2021 to 2022 alone. Some systems are even cost-competitive with gas plants and cheaper than coal. Moreover, once built, geothermal is much cheaper to operate than other dispatchable sources like coal, gas and nuclear.

While some experts believe it possible to create geothermal energy almost anywhere, Grasby does offer a caveat. “You can’t really do this just anywhere. In some places, you may have to drill much deeper to get to the heat you need. Rocks vary in thermal connectivity; some rocks have high connectivity and others are low in connectivity. You need a certain temperature to make the system work.”

In Canada, as well, permitting and regulatory regimes have yet to catch up to the latest developments in the geothermal world. According to Grasby, only three provinces currently regulate geothermal energy production: Alberta, British Columbia and Nova Scotia.

Updates to regulatory frameworks may yet emerge should the momentum behind geothermal continue, especially given that hydrothermal offers round-the-clock, on-demand power, unlike wind and solar.

New analysis from the International Energy Agency forecasts next-generation geothermal as representing up to 800 gigawatts of clean electricity capacity by 2050 – roughly 50 times the world’s current geothermal capacity of around 16 gigawatts.

Analysts at Ember, a U.K.-based energy think tank, anticipate that geothermal will quickly accelerate, reporting that by 2030, nearly 1.5 gigawatts of new capacity is expected to come online each year globally, three times the level added in 2024. By 2050, geothermal could meet up to 15% of the growth in the world’s demand for clean power.

As a net-zero economy looks increasingly precarious, the latest geothermal breakthroughs offer a solution to the supply of firm, low-emission energy thanks in large part to the tools and expertise that originated in the oil field.

Victoria Foote is a writer and editor who specializes in clean energy and climate.

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Green hydrogen skeptics correctly observe that the sector has shifted, but they misread what that shift represents. Green hydrogen is moving from early-stage hype to disciplined execution, as capital markets and policymakers concentrate on projects with bankable fundamentals and credible buyers. That winnowing process is not evidence of collapse; it is how clean-energy sectors mature.

Pointing to the cancellation or redesign of a single wind-to-hydrogen project as proof the sector was a fad misses how large infrastructure markets evolve. Projects routinely shift as financing conditions, regulation and demand signals mature, while other proponents continue advancing through permitting, engineering and offtake negotiations. It also overlooks the policy architecture Canada and its trading partners have built to integrate renewable hydrogen into industrial decarbonization, heavy transport and export value chains.

As the sector moves from headlines to creditworthy grid-integrated projects, simplistic narratives risk misleading communities and investors.

Momentum across Canada

Across Atlantic Canada, green hydrogen projects are progressing in a more measured, credible way than early hype suggested. These initiatives are grounded in strong wind resources, proximity to export markets, and provincial strategies that explicitly tie hydrogen to industrial decarbonization and rural economic development.​

Nova Scotia’s Department of Environment and Climate Change has already approved two large‑scale green hydrogen and ammonia projects along the Strait of Canso, designed to use onshore wind power for exports to Europe.​ EverWind and Membertou are also advancing Nova Scotia’s largest wind buildout (more than 650 megawatts) and a multibillion‑dollar export complex, supported by Germany’s interest in Atlantic Canadian green ammonia. These developments signal that serious international buyers still see this region as strategically important.​

Newfoundland and Labrador has selected multiple proponents – including EverWind, Abraxas Power, Toqlukuti’k Wind and Hydrogen, and North Atlantic Refining Limited (NARL) – for multi‑phase green hydrogen and ammonia export projects, underpinned by a dedicated Hydrogen Development Action Plan that positions the province as a “clean energy centre of excellence.”​

Most recently, EverWind secured a major strategic investment of $240 million to advance its Nova Scotia wind portfolio and green fuels platform, reinforcing that capital is still flowing to credible Atlantic Canadian projects.

Quebec alone has mobilized nearly $10 billion in public and private investment over the coming decade, with major projects including TES Canada’s multibillion-dollar green hydrogen facility, Air Liquide’s 20-megawatt PEM (proton exchange membrane) electrolyzer in Bécancour, StormFisher’s Varennes e-methanol plant, and Enbridge’s 20-megawatt Gatineau project injecting hydrogen into the gas grid. The province’s hydrogen road map and “Vallée de la transition énergétique” are anchoring multiple industrial deployments in existing clean-power assets.

Elsewhere, Ontario’s Niagara Hydrogen Centre (Atura Power) will link a 20-megawatt electrolyzer to the Sir Adam Beck hydro station, while federally supported projects – such as Air Products’ net-zero hydrogen energy complex in Edmonton and AVL Fuel Cell Canada’s research and development facility in Burnaby – underscore that hydrogen development is advancing across multiple provinces under coordinated strategies.

International market signals

Globally, the sector’s trajectory is clear: low-carbon hydrogen production is up roughly 60% since 2021, installed electrolyzer capacity has grown ninefold, and investment in electrolyzers and carbon capture has expanded from about $500 million in 2021 to nearly $8 billion in 2025.

At the same time, the European Hydrogen Bank is translating policy into real demand: its first auction awarded roughly €720 million in production-linked support to projects in Spain, Portugal, Finland and Norway, while its second round was four times oversubscribed – 61 bids seeking €4.8 billion against a €1.2 billion budget – supporting plans for 6.3 gigawatts of electrolyzers and 7.3 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen over 10 years.

Moreover, in January 2026, the European Commission approved €200 million in German state aid for Canadian-produced renewable hydrogen exports to the EU: a clear demand signal for Canadian green hydrogen.

Together, these successes make clear that global hydrogen markets are not retreating; they are institutionalizing long-term demand through scaled capital deployment and binding policy frameworks, creating tangible export opportunities for credible Canadian projects.

What serious hydrogen development looks like

Yes, interest in green hydrogen has cooled since the early-2020s hype, and some capital has pulled back. But policy frameworks, climate mandates and declining technology costs continue to underpin long-term demand growth toward 2030 and beyond. To be clear: Canada’s approach is built on that multi-decade horizon – not a short boom cycle.

Green hydrogen will not succeed everywhere, nor should it. Project cancellations are a sign of market discipline, not collapse. What’s actually happening in the green hydrogen sector is a shift from hype-driven, “anywhere, at any cost” projects toward fewer, better-sited hubs that align cheap renewables, strong grids and real customers. Countries that move early in this more disciplined phase will shape future clean-energy trade. Canada has the assets to compete – if it stays the course.

David Billedeau is president and CEO of the Canadian Hydrogen Association. Derek Estabrook is executive director of the Atlantic Hydrogen Alliance. Michèle Landry is directrice générale of Hydrogène Québec.

The post Market discipline, not market failure, is shaping Canada’s green hydrogen sector appeared first on Corporate Knights.

This story was originally published by Canary Media. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style.

In its efforts to block U.S. offshore wind development, the Trump administration has halted project construction, rolled back tax credits and spread misinformation. Now, in the latest manoeuvre, the administration is paying a global energy giant nearly US$1 billion to walk away from its plans to install turbines off the east coast.

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Cubans have been navigating chronic blackouts for years. A routine built around flickering light has created a sort of collective muscle memory for the country’s inhabitants. “They turn the electricity on at 7 a.m., and they turn it off at 1 p.m.,” says Ramon, a vegetable delivery worker who lives in Güira de Melena, 50 kilometres from Havana. “They turn it back on until 10 p.m… It’s a fixed cycle.”  

This power-supply free fall has also expedited the energy transition. In the midst of a crisis, the renewables lifeline appears, albeit incrementally.

The stranglehold on oil shipments has placed renewed emphasis on a plan to transition to renewable energy. At the start of 2025, just 4% of Cuba’s electricity came from renewables. By the end of this year, that is supposed to jump to 17%, according to Ramses Montes, director of national energy policy and strategy at the Cuban Ministry of Energy and Mines. China has been donating thousands of solar panels to Cuba, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. Brazil sent 300 solar panel kits in 2025, and a new activist-led campaign is raising funds to install the equipment in schools. 

In March, Cuba’s Communist Party announced via Granma, its official newspaper, that it would soon begin installing 5,000 panels donated by China, following another major blackout that plunged two-thirds of the country into darkness. Half of the panels will head to maternity homes, seniors’ centres, hospitals, banks, radio stations and other public infrastructure.  

There are about 30 solar fields in operation now on the island, with plans to add 92 more by 2028 with the help of China. But for the average Cuban, who earns around $16 a month if employed by the state, the options are slim. Many people rely on coal or firewood to cook and stay warm. Most Cubans can’t afford to install solar panels, which can cost thousands of dollars. Electric power generators that run on fuel are a more affordable option, but they are noisy and still cost-prohibitive. A 4,600-watt generator uses about 15 litres of gasoline every 12 hours, with each litre of gas costing as much as US$8 on the informal market.  

Christa Hernández is among the privileged few who were able to install solar panels last year. At that point, the scheduled blackouts were between two and six hours in Havana. But Hernández, who owns the hostel Kerida and the Cimarrón dance school, could see that the power situation was going to make or break her business. Gasoline generators were too loud. She looked into buying solar panels on Amazon, but her credit card kept getting blocked. Finally, she connected with a friend living in the United States who purchased the panels for her, and then she hired a company in Miami that packed them up and delivered them to her doorstep in Cuba. All the equipment, including batteries and shipping, cost US$12,000.  

Our workers come in from their homes already tired, because they weren’t able to sleep, because there is no electricity, there is no water, there is nothing.

— Christa Hernández, business owner in Havana

“We made the switch just in time, because soon after, travel agencies stopped working with hostels that did not have that safety net,” Hernández says. “We’re one of the few privileged people who can invest in this,” she adds. If you don’t have a business, or family who live outside the country, it’s impossible to make the investment.  

“The neighbourhood is very dark. When you look outside, you see how few people have light,” she says. “Life is not the same. You go out into a darkened Cuba, where the cost of everything goes up and there is suffering.”  

“Our workers come in from their homes already tired, because they weren’t able to sleep, because there is no electricity, there is no water, there is nothing.”  

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. Berta Reventós is a Buenos Aires-based Latin America correspondent who works for Spanish media and reported from Cuba.

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One place to watch is Nova Scotia, which has big plans to kick-start its offshore wind industry in order to meet electricity demand at home and beyond. Initially, the province is aiming for some 5,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity.

“There is a lot of interest among developers,” says Elisa Obermann, executive director of Marine Renewables Canada, in an interview. “They’re looking for a country that has a stable regulatory environment and very predictable processes for their auctions and procurement.”

In January, the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Energy Regulator concluded a pre-qualification process for companies interested in participating in an upcoming call for bids. So far, Q Energy France, a division of South Korea’s Hanwha Group, has confirmed its interest and has publicly committed to investing in the province’s offshore workforce.

While total energy-transition investment rose in the U.S. last year, changes in U.S. climate policy are contributing to market uncertainty, and market uncertainty makes it difficult for companies and investors to plan ahead. The result is energy-transition investors start to consider putting their money elsewhere, outside of the U.S.

– Joanna Klimczak, Northern Light Capital Partners

But the federal and provincial governments will need to coordinate their efforts to ensure that heightened interest translates into tangible investment. Nova Scotia has a small domestic power market and is looking for federal support to build transmission to other provinces – and, possibly, the United States – in order to persuade offshore wind developers there will be a market for their power.

A nation-scale opportunity

On February 26, Canada’s energy minister, Timothy Hodgson, travelled to Nova Scotia to announce a $5-million federal support for a feasibility study into a proposed transmission project dubbed Wind West, which would deliver offshore wind power to markets beyond the province.

Nova Scotia “has an exceptional wind resource,” Hodgson told reporters. “The main constraint on [Wind West] is not the wind; the wind is there and it blows a lot,” he said. “The constraint would be where is the power going to go and how are we going to move it, so that’s what this is about today.”

The Nova Scotia effort is just one example of Canada’s surging interest in the energy transition. Across the country, federal, provincial and territorial governments are promoting investment in the sector to support the electrification of the economy and construction of new data centres. That includes renewable power, battery and long-duration storage, energy efficiency and electric vehicle infrastructure. Ontario is also pursuing nuclear, including the country’s first small modular reactor.

“There is no shortage of attractive opportunities for Canada to seize the moment,” says Joanna Klimczak, Montreal-based chief executive at Northern Light Capital Partners. “While total energy-transition investment rose in the U.S. last year, changes in U.S. climate policy are contributing to market uncertainty, and market uncertainty makes it difficult for companies and investors to plan ahead,” she says. “The result is energy-transition investors start to consider putting their money elsewhere, outside of the U.S.”

A front door for investment

Klimczak is a finance veteran who works with global asset owners on strategies to capitalize the energy transition. She recently co-convened a meeting between Energy Minister Hodgson and industry CEOs and executives. To secure foreign investment in clean-energy projects, Canada should have a “central front door” where global asset managers can go to track and access the investment opportunities across the country, she says. “Governments at all levels should consider to work together to centralize an entry point and market it highly, because the more investment capital Canada has to choose from and work with, the stronger our economy will be for all Canadians.”

In the United States, the Trump administration has rejected the scientific evidence of a mounting climate crisis and doubled down on fossil energy production while attacking the renewable sector. After record instalments in the third quarter of last year, the U.S. industry is anticipating a slowdown in the United States in 2026, the American Clean Power Association said in an end-of-year report: “Projects are facing heightened regulatory burdens and policy uncertainty, putting the future trajectory of clean power project deployments at risk.”

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All told, cancellations of clean-energy projects in the U.S. – including renewable power, storage and electric vehicle manufacturing – far outpaced new investment announcements in the U.S., according to the business coalition Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), in a report released February 13. E2 recorded US$35 billion worth of investments abandoned last year, compared to US$12 billion of new investments that were announced. In 2024, the United States saw US$16 billion in clean-energy investments announced and only US$2.5 billion abandoned.

Canada’s renewable sector has seen setbacks, too, but the outlook remains bullish. The country’s wind, solar and electricity storage capacity grew by 56% over the past five years to 25 gigawatts, according to the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA). That’s equivalent to the capacity of 25 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactors.

Virtually every province or territory has some renewable-energy procurement underway. Over the next decade, CanREA forecasts that investment in new wind, solar and storage will be some $200 billion. CanRea doesn’t include nuclear or large-scale hydro in its forecast, but there, too, provinces are investing in new non-GHG-emitting power projects.

The missing piece: private suppliers

The growth rates would be even greater if provincial governments would unleash private-sector suppliers to meet surging demand without having to sell through government-controlled utilities. Alberta is the sole province with a market in which electricity producers can sell directly to industrial customers through power-purchase agreements. However, Premier Danielle Smith slammed the door on that option when her government ordered a moratorium on new renewable power projects.

Canada can quickly unlock much more corporate investment in renewables

In 2024, companies signed deals for more than 1,000 megawatts of renewable power, virtually all in Alberta, according to figures from the Business Renewables Centre (BRC) Canada, which advises companies on renewable power procurement. That market has since dried up except for some small activity through a Nova Scotia program.

BRC Canada director Jorden Dye says Canada could attract far more investment from multinational corporations that remain committed to meeting climate targets if provinces would relax their exclusive grip on power markets. The centre’s advisory council includes some of the world’s largest companies, including Amazon, Starbucks and Marriott International. “When you start seeing policy churn and policy uncertainty, companies start looking at whether there are opportunities to decarbonize other aspects of the business in other jurisdictions,” Dye says. “And Canada has definitely come up as a factor for that.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney has vowed to make Canada a clean-energy superpower, and both he and Energy Minister Hodgson have pointed to the need for electrification to make that happen. Trump’s war on renewables could prove a boon to Canadian clean-energy ambitions, but only if governments can create the necessary conditions to drive investment.

Shawn McCarthy is an Ottawa-based writer.

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Oil prices shot up on Monday as disruptions related to the war in Iran sent shockwaves through financial markets, underscoring the risks for countries that have been slow to diversify beyond fossil fuels.

Brent crude oil, the benchmark for a majority of the world, surged to nearly US$120 per barrel, the highest it had been since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Prices for West Texas Intermediate crude oil, the U.S. benchmark, rose to about $100, also the highest since 2022.

As Iran has faced attacks from the United States and Israel, it has responded in part by threatening oil tankers travelling through the Strait of Hormuz. Some producers have reduced or paused their output in response to this risk, according to the International Energy Agency.

“This shock is being driven by geopolitics and physical supply risk, so prices are moving quickly through global markets,” says Jan Rosenow, professor of energy and climate policy at the University of Oxford, in an email. “That makes it feel sudden and hard to control.” Countries with more renewables in their power mix are less exposed to the price spikes, which reduces the inflation they will see compared with past oil crises, he says.

Gernot Wagner, an economist at Columbia Business School, says the price spike provides a familiar warning for policymakers. “The biggest lesson: Oil – much like coal and gas – is a commodity. Its price will always fluctuate based on geopolitical whims,” he said in an email. “Solar, batteries, heat pumps, induction stoves are technologies. They can only get better and cheaper over time.”

President Donald Trump acknowledged high oil prices on Sunday, posting the following on Truth Social: “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY! President DJT.”

The U.S. average price for regular gasoline is $3.48 today, according to AAA, an increase from $3 a week ago.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday during a CNN interview that tanker traffic will soon resume on the Strait of Hormuz. Asked about rising gasoline prices, he said the increase many consumers saw over the weekend is likely to be short-lived. “We want it back below $3 per gallon, and it will be again before too long,” he said. Wright said this will take “weeks” and is not a “months thing.”

Some observers have drawn parallels between the current price shock and the one that followed the 1979 Iranian revolution. But Rosenow notes some big differences: “The key difference from the 1970s is that we now have credible alternatives.” He adds, “Each price shock reinforces the same lesson: energy security and climate strategy are aligned. Cutting dependence on imported fossil fuels is not only about emissions; it is about reducing structural economic risk.”

Dan Gearino covers the business and policy of renewable energy and utilities, often with an emphasis on the midwestern United States. 

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But in 2022, a controlled fusion reaction conducted in a California laboratory produced – for a fraction of a second – net-positive energy, thus turning the dream of endless, carbon-free energy into a possibility. A handful of start-ups intend to capitalize on that possibility, including B.C.-based General Fusion. After more than two decades of research, General Fusion says its “first of a kind” fusion power plant will be generating electricity by 2035.

Venture capital has responded enthusiastically to the new arrivals, with money surging into the space. In 2025, fusion start-ups raised $2.6 billion (all values in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted) according to the Fusion Industry Association.

Earlier this year, General Fusion announced that it will go public as part of an intended merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The B.C. company has raised more than $400 million to date, including support from governments in Canada, the United States and Britain. General Fusion was valued at $600 million prior to the transaction; the deal with Spring Valley would provide it with up to $335 million in additional funding.

Fusion is the most exciting form of energy because it is abundant and would mean that everyone would have access to affordable electricity. However, fusion is monumentally difficult to do at a commercial scale.

– Jason Donev, physics professor, University of Calgary

Founded in 2002 by physicist Michel Laberge, the 117-person firm is in the process of developing a commercially viable fusion energy system. Currently, there are no operating commercial-scale nuclear fusion reactors. General Fusion’s chief strategy officer, Megan Wilson, is pumped. “Right now, the market is seeing interest in clean energy, and this has dovetailed with major advancements in fusion,” she says. “This is an exciting time for us.”

Donev echoes Wilson’s observation that there is a heightened sense of urgency in the energy market. Electricity consumption, he notes, had been levelling off worldwide until the introduction of AI and data centres, which have driven a surge in energy demand. The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook for 2025 confirms that anticipated spike, estimating that demand for electricity will grow between 40% and 50% in less than 10 years. The U.S. Department of Energy has predicted that the total energy use from data centres alone will double or even triple by 2028.

The market heats up

Even Trump Media & Technology Group, whose core business until now has been the president’s social media platform Truth Social, is embracing fusion. Last December, the firm revealed it was merging with TAE Technologies, an energy company with plans to begin construction on the first utility-scale fusion power plant this year. The transaction values TAE at approximately $3 billion.

Likewise, Microsoft and Google, billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, and the oil company Chevron have all started investing heavily in fusion energy companies, including TAE.

In France, a multinational coalition is building an enormous fusion reactor called ITER (the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) at an estimated cost of €13 billion ($21 billion Canadian). ITER will use 50 megawatts of heating power to generate 500 megawatts of electricity – theoretically enough to power some 250,000 homes. ITER is tracking to be operational in the late 2030s, although for demonstration purposes only.

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The biggest player in the United States is Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has raised more than $2 billion since its founding in 2018, more than any other fusion start-up. Upon completion of its demonstration machine, SPARC, Commonwealth says its next machine will generate electricity for paying customers as soon as the early 2030s.

The provincial government of Ontario is getting in on the action as well with a new Centre for Fusion Energy, announced late last year. The federal government and Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. have committed CAD$33 million to the centre, with an additional $19.5 million from the Ontario government and $39 million from fusion start-up Stellarex Group Ltd.

What is nuclear fusion?

For all the buzz, there are more than a few skeptics. And it’s not hard to understand why when you consider the cost and complexity of trying to create a star here on Earth.

Fusion energy is different from the nuclear energy that was developed in the 1940s in which energy is generated by splitting atoms. Fusion energy creates energy by forcing atoms together, specifically very light hydrogen atoms. When hydrogen atoms fuse, they form helium and, in the process, release an immense amount of energy. The sun and stars are essentially giant balls of hydrogen and helium gases. As the atoms merge, they enter a different state of matter: plasma. The high-energy particles that blast out of the plasma are turbulent and highly unstable. “Holding plasma in place is kind of like juggling jello with elastic bands,” Donev says.

Inside the sun, gravity holds the plasma together. In most reactors, immensely powerful magnets or lasers do the work. Lately, fusion power start-ups have been experimenting with cheaper, easier approaches. General Fusion, for instance, uses pistons to hold plasma together, not unlike the pistons in a car engine.

Speaking to The New York Times in 2024, Earl Marmar, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that the latest reactors have yet to generate more energy (in a commercially relevant way) than they consume. “But, you know, good luck. I hope something works soon, for sure.”

Even a giant reactor like ITER has encountered setbacks. Construction on ITER began in 2007 amid lofty declarations that net-positive energy would be produced by about 2020. Since then, ITER has suffered repeated delays, while the estimated cost of $5.45 billion has quadrupled.

“Fusion is the most exciting form of energy because it is abundant and would mean that everyone would have access to affordable electricity,” Donev says. “However, fusion is monumentally difficult to do at a commercial scale. The problem is [that] it takes so much energy to produce, you can’t get energy back – yet.”

So, is fusion the future?

Wilson with General Fusion predicts that fusion energy will be a trillion-dollar market by 2050, and her optimism is shared. Future Markets reports that the fusion energy sector could reach $40 to $80 billion by 2036 and possibly exceed $350 billion by 2050 “if technological milestones are achieved.”

General Fusion is bullish on its practical and cost-effective methods and confident in its timelines.

While Donev doubts that a fusion energy plant will be dispatching energy to consumers within the next 10 years, he espouses the critical role this power source will likely play in the transition to a clean-energy economy. “It’s such a careful balance with fusion, because it is a good-news story,” he says. “But it’s a very long story. Investors who want to do this need to recognize they’re in for a very long game, albeit a potentially very lucrative one.”

Victoria Foote is a writer and editorwho specializes in clean energy and climate.

The post With investment flowing, fusion energy’s long shot has become a gold rush appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“With this new partnership, we will not stop until the goals of Atmanirbhar Bharat and Canada Strong are reached,” Carney said, citing the Hindi term for “self-reliant India.”

The agreement will see Saskatoon-based Camemco deliver nearly 22 million pounds of uranium fuel between 2027 and 2035, CBC reports. India currently has 25 nuclear reactors in operation, eight under construction, and plans to boost its nuclear capacity from 8.7 to 100 gigawatts by 2047, the national broadcaster adds.

A wide-ranging joint statement issued by Carney’s office also puts liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), crude oil and refined petroleum products at the centre of the expanded trade relationship.

Carney “framed this new course as not just a return to how things were but rather an ambitious revisioning of what the two Commonwealth countries can do together in an uncertain era marked by instability,” CBC writes. Just prior to his meeting with Modi, Carney said he hoped to secure a wider free trade agreement with India by the end of the year, possibly in time for a signing at this year’s G20 summit at a Trump property in Miami. The two leaders affirmed that timing after their one-on-one.

“With India positioned to be the largest contributor to incremental global energy demand growth over the next two decades, beyond its current position as the world’s third-largest oil consumer and fourth-largest LNG importer, both sides acknowledged the significant potential to further expand bilateral energy trade,” the joint statement declares. “This includes increased oil and LNG imports by India from Canada, as well as the supply of refined petroleum products from India to Canada. In this context, Canada reaffirmed its plans to expand heavy oil export infrastructure and supplies of LNG to the Indo-Pacific market through Canada’s stated goal of producing 50 million tonnes of LNG per year by 2030 and up to 100 million tonnes by 2040.”

The statement calls for broader cooperation “across clean energy and climate-related value chains, including renewable energy, hydrogen and its derivatives, biofuels, sustainable aviation fuel, battery storage, and electricity systems modernization, recognizing the central role of these sectors in advancing shared climate objectives and energy transition goals.” It says the two leaders also “underscored solutions for carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) as a key area of cooperation, offering a significant opportunity for the sustainable production of energy and critical minerals.”

And it celebrates a “comprehensive institutional framework to advance bilateral collaboration across solar, wind, bioenergy, small hydro, energy storage, and capacity-building” while recognizing India’s “leadership and capacity in large-scale solar and grid-level energy storage technologies along with scalable models in rooftop solar and other forms of distributed renewable energy solutions.”

CBC has a list of smaller deals that were announced or re-announced this week, including a 1.2-million-tonne coal export contract for British Columbia–based Elk Valley Resources, valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Canada will also join the 112-member International Solar Alliance, first conceived by India in 2015 and launched by India and France in 2017.

News coverage of the announcement has focused extensively on the warming of relations after the former Justin Trudeau government concluded and the Modi government denied that India had conducted foreign interference in Canada. “Touting an approach he calls ‘values-based realism,’” The Globe and Mail writes, Carney “has largely sidestepped questions over meddling by New Delhi in Canada, including the allegations it was behind the 2023 murder of a Canadian Sikh activist. Last year, a public inquiry report flagged India as the ‘second most active country engaging in electoral foreign interference in Canada’ after China.”

“But, with Carney at the helm, the relationship has become friendlier with much more diplomatic dialogue – with even more to come after the prime minister invited Modi to visit Canada sometime soon,” CBC reports.

Uranium sale has ‘implications’

Just ahead of Carney’s visit, India’s high commissioner to Canada, Dinesh Patnaik, said the country would be open to buying Canadian nuclear technology or taking an ownership stake in the country’s uranium mines. “We are willing to take whatever,” he told CBC. “Nuclear is a huge field in which we want to work together.”

The Canadian Press says Saskatchewan is the only province that exports uranium. And in New Delhi Monday, Premier Scott Moe declared it a “great day” for his province. “Saskatchewan’s always a big winner when it comes to export deals,” he said. “Saskatchewan will certainly benefit from the agreement signed today, but all Canadians benefit as well. I think that’s important for us to remember.”

In a Globe and Mail opinion piece in December, Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, and Erika Simpson, president of the Canadian Peace Research Association, raised the prospect that the uranium deal – then valued at $3.94 billion – would make it easier for India to divert some of its existing nuclear fuel stockpile for military use.

“India is not a routine customer,” they wrote. “It is a nuclear-armed state that has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the agreement meant to anchor global efforts against the spread of nuclear weapons. In selling it uranium, Canada appears willing to extend to India the kinds of benefits normally reserved for states that accept international inspections on all nuclear facilities and abide by NPT treaty obligations.”

With “one of the world’s largest stockpiles of civilian plutonium, separated from spent reactor fuel,” India could already produce as many as 2,686 nuclear weapons if it chose to redesignate the material for military use, Edwards and Simpson say. “Doing so would require only a political decision. The risk is not hypothetical. It sits just outside the boundaries of our public policy discussion.”

Mitchell Beer is publisher of The Energy Mix, a non-profit community news site and e-digest on climate change, energy and the shift off carbon. This article first appeared on The Energy Mix. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here.

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And it’s all happening so fast that these energy-guzzling data centres have shattered forecast patterns of energy growth, accelerating demand for fossil fuels at just the wrong time, and requiring untold quantities of scarce, clean water for cooling.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. The computer industry has made great strides in reducing the energy required to process data. But then generative AI happened, demanding massive clusters of computing power that run hot and need powerful cooling technologies. A traditional enterprise rack of computing power, sufficient to run major corporations or browse Facebook, could get by on five to 10 kilowatts. By comparison, a rack of AI servers needs 30 to 100 kilowatts. But the real crunch comes from the timing of our new AI era. Where new power infrastructure generally takes five to 10 years to plan and build, AI has taken off in less than three.

Millions of farmers are trying to grow more food from shrinking, polluted, or disappearing water sources. Without rapid transitions toward water-smart agriculture, water bankruptcy will spread rapidly.

– Global Water Bankruptcy report

The result: the rapid growth of AI data centres has created a debilitating free-for-all in crucial energy and water systems. Competition for electricity in some U.S. states has resulted in higher electricity prices, costly upgrading projects, and conflicts over new transmission lines. In West London, the allocation of power to a new cluster of data centres has created an electricity shortage that has delayed new housing and commercial projects by as much as 10 to years.

Many tech firms intended to power their new data centres with renewable energy, but existing wind and solar supplies can’t keep up with demand. So now Microsoft, once a clean-energy leader, is tapping natural gas to fuel its showpiece data centres in Wisconsin, and Meta will use gas-fired turbines at its Hyperion project in Louisiana. The Washington Post recently counted 220 new gas projects in the United States, largely driven by AI.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, recently announced what it called “landmark agreements” to expand the operation of three nuclear power plants and “boost the development of new advanced nuclear technology.”

Most tellingly, Microsoft is reviving Pennsylvania’s notorious Three Mile Island generating station – mothballed since its 1979 meltdown – to power its AI and cloud computing operations.

AI’s thirst trap

One way to reduce the energy needs of data centres is to use more water – which is 20 times more efficient than air at dissipating heat. But in the heated rivalry over AI, two-thirds of the U.S. data centres built since 2022 have been located in water-stressed areas such as Texas and Arizona. From Phoenix to the Netherlands, authorities are having increasing trouble balancing the needs of data centres, agriculture and new homeowners.

A recent investigation by The Guardian and SourceMaterial, a public-interest journalism project, found that Amazon, Microsoft and Google are operating 38 data centres in some of the world’s driest settings – including northern Spain and Maricopa County, Arizona – and plan to build 24 more. One Meta data centre in the drought-stricken community of Mesa, Arizona, consumes as much water as 10,000 homes.

While skeptics keep sounding the alarm over a potential AI bubble, Goldman Sachs predicts that investment in new data centres will grow 165% over the next five years. Data centres currently consume 1.5% of all energy on Earth, but by 2035 that share could triple.

A recent CBC report noted that one large AI training run can evaporate hundreds of thousands of litres of water. Unfortunately, data centres compete with people and wildlife for scarce water supplies because they need fresh, filtered water for cooling, and their equipment works best in low-humidity environments.

Even in Canada, water consumption matters. The Alberta government has announced its intention to woo new data centres, even though most of Alberta’s water comes from the seasonal Rocky Mountain snowpack.

Giant investments in data centres are giving renewables an opening to outcompete gas

The Wonder Valley data centre in Alberta would erase two decades of emission reductions

Companies are finding creative ways to use heat from data centres

Some tech companies worsen the situation by shrouding their data operations in mystery. Another recent SourceMaterial investigation found that Amazon globally uses 924 data centres – double most industry estimates. And Microsoft once promised local farmers that a new Netherlands data centre would draw less than 20 million litres of water a year. Dutch journalists later found that plant used 84 million litres in 2021 – even as locals were urged to limit their water use.

A new UN study reminds us that human intelligence has a bad track record of managing its water supply. The report, Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era, says many societies are depleting their water systems, drawing not just from their rivers and lakes, but from longer-term, irreplaceable sources such as aquifers, glaciers and wetlands. “Millions of farmers are trying to grow more food from shrinking, polluted, or disappearing water sources,” the report notes. “Without rapid transitions toward water-smart agriculture, water bankruptcy will spread rapidly.”

The authors hope their use of the term “bankruptcy” will provoke real change in water-management patterns. In particular, they encourage countries to reduce their dependence on “water-intensive” industries such as “water-hungry extractive industries and thirsty data centres.” Better, says the report, to embrace “water-dependent sectors, including knowledge-based services, manufacturing with low water footprints, and water-friendly renewable energy technologies.”

As confirmation, we posed a question to ChatGPT: “Which is more important: preserving water supplies, or cooling data centres?” Its response: “Both are important – but preserving water supplies is more fundamental, especially long-term. Water security underpins everything else – including technology infrastructure.”

Rick Spence is the editor-at-large at Corporate Knights. He is based in Toronto.

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It’s energy efficiency.

Energy efficiency is the cheapest source of new energy because every kilowatt-hour that I save on the grid is one that someone else can use.

Within the world of computers, the price-performance efficiency is even more pronounced. A 2023 iPhone 15 is 60,000 times cheaper than a 1976 Cray-1 supercomputer. It’s also 180,000 times more energy efficient and 5,000 times more powerful.

Kevin Weil, chief product officer at OpenAI, says that OpenAI’s models are improving 10-fold every year in energy efficiency. Deferring compute-heavy tasks such as AI training to times when data-centre energy use loads are light and assigning loads across many data centres – in essence adjusting when and where power is used – could have the same benefit of building 200 gigawatts of new capacity, argues Amory Lovins, one of the cofounders of the Rocky Mountain Institute, which is on a mission the transform global energy systems. That’s far more than enough to power all projected new data centres from existing utility assets.

AI driving efficiency in buildings

Computers aren’t the only arena where efficiency is making giant leaps. Buildings represent roughly 40% of global energy consumption and 75% of U.S. electricity use, making them an enormous target for efficiency improvements. Research published in Nature Communications found that AI applications could reduce building energy consumption by 8% to 19% by 2050, and up to 40% when combined with other policies such as retrofits and low-carbon power generation. Building efficiency can free up more electricity use than AI will ever require.

This creates a fascinating dynamic: while AI consumes energy, it also enables efficiency gains across the broader economy. The key is ensuring that AI deployment is strategic and coupled with robust measurement and verification protocols. AI for buildings isn’t theoretical; companies like BrainBox AI and others are already deploying systems that optimize HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning), lighting, and energy storage in real time based on occupancy, weather and grid conditions.

“Artificial intelligence is the latest development in a long-standing megatrend in which information, analysis and innovation have been replacing the waste of energy and materials that characterize the overbuilt technologies of the 20th-century fossil economy,” notes Ralph Torrie, director of research at Corporate Knights. “Of course it uses electricity, but not nearly as much as it displaces.”

There are many examples of rapid, unexpected gains in energy efficiency. In 2021, all the blockchain-based cryptocurrencies combined used somewhere between 190 and 250 terawatt-hours of electricity, which is just about 1% of global electricity demand that year, or roughly the same as Taiwan’s consumption. Critics called blockchain technology fundamentally unsustainable.

Then in September 2022, Ethereum underwent a major transformation it called “The Merge,” shifting its consensus mechanism from “proof of work” to “proof of stake.” This cut the network’s energy consumption by 99.9%. The network’s annual energy use dropped from 80 terawatt-hours – the same amount of electricity that Austria or Finland uses in a year – to just 0.01 terawatt-hours.

Proof of stake achieved these gains by eliminating wasteful competition. Instead of miners racing to solve puzzles, Ethereum now relies on validators who are chosen to create new blocks and confirm transactions based on the amount of Ether (Ethereum’s native currency) they have staked as collateral. This method secures the network through financial commitment rather than raw computational power.

When real limits appear, innovation often accelerates in unexpected ways. Constraints can become the spark for new possibilities.

— Anthony Di Iorio, Ethereum co-founder

The shift to proof of stake also enhanced its security, scalability and environmental sustainability. This landmark move positioned Ethereum as a leader in sustainable blockchain innovation and demonstrated that large-scale decentralized systems can evolve to meet global energy and climate goals without compromising performance or decentralization.

Ethereum co-founder Anthony Di Iorio says that Ethereum’s massive efficiency gain is part of a broader pattern of disruptive innovation across technologies: “When real limits appear, innovation often accelerates in unexpected ways. Constraints can become the spark for new possibilities.”

For Di Iorio, the key lesson is that “fundamental architectural redesign beats incremental optimization. When you eliminate structural inefficiency rather than just making a system slightly less inefficient, you unlock orders-of-magnitude improvements.”

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, also showed that algorithmic innovation can cut costs – in its case by 97% even under severe hardware constraints. Meanwhile, SETI@home coordinated millions of personal computers to create a huge virtual supercomputer to power its search for extra terrestrial intelligence.

Better orchestration, multi-tenant GPU sharing (in which multiple users share computational resources) and carbon-aware scheduling could push AI infrastructure use from today’s 25% to 40% to 55% to 60%, effectively doubling capacity without building any new facilities.

“The question isn’t whether AI will consume catastrophic amounts of energy,” Di Iorio notes. “The question is whether we will apply what we’ve already learned about radical efficiency gains.” That means implementing the measurement and transparency frameworks that enable market discipline and establishing the policy guardrails that ensure that efficiency serves sustainability rather than just enabling endless expansion.

The path forward: Three essential actions

Three near-term actions could save 15 to 70 terawatt-hours by 2028:

Default to efficiency. Major cloud platforms and AI frameworks should make lean, right-sized models the default choice rather than requiring developers to opt in. When efficiency becomes the path of least resistance rather than an extra step, adoption accelerates dramatically.

Focus on hardware use. Better workload-management software can increase effective use from today’s 40% to 55 to 60%.

Mandate transparency. Energy consumption per task should be as visible as price and latency. When enterprises and governments demand kilowatt-hours-per-million-tokens disclosure in their AI procurement, providers will compete on efficiency. Market mechanisms work, but they require information.

The projections of AI’s looming energy crisis aren’t wrong if we assume nothing changes. But stasis isn’t how technology works when talented people face hard constraints with clear incentives to solve them.

Jim Harris is a #1 international bestselling author writing on AI, disruption and innovation. He speaks at 50+ events a year.

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