Less than a year after layoffs and a public plea by its CEO for new investments, General Fusion on Thursday announced a $1 billion SPAC agreement to take the fusion energy company public.

Vancouver, B.C.-based General Fusion plans to merge with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III in a transaction that could close by the middle of this year, making it one of the first fusion companies to go public. It expects to be listed on the Nasdaq and trade under the ticker GFUZ. 

“We are completely focused on the future,” Megan Wilson, chief strategy officer for General Fusion, told GeekWire. “The path of any innovative company is not always linear.”

General Fusion is part of the race to produce abundant, clean energy by smashing together light atoms — replicating the reactions that power the sun and stars. The pursuit has become increasingly urgent as artificial intelligence and increased electrification of the economy drives up demand for climate friendly power.

Funding for fusion

Wilson said they explored various funding options, including a traditional IPO, but appreciated Spring Valley’s experience and track record in helping create 17 publicly traded companies to date. Spring Valley previously used a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) to bring NuScale Power, a fission startup, public in 2021.

The deal with General Fusion includes $230 million from the SPAC’s trust, presuming no redemptions, as well as a $100 million private investment in public equity, or PIPE.

The 115-person company previously raised a total of $400 million from investors, industry partners and government grants.

General Fusion’s merger news comes a month after fusion rival TAE Technologies announced its own agreement to go public.

“It’s really great to have competition in the market, and we think that that transaction is just another signal that the public markets are ready for fusion,” Wilson said.

California-based TAE has a $6 billion planned merger with Trump Media & Technology Group, the publicly traded parent company of the social media platform Truth Social. With the merger and new funding, TAE said that it’s aiming to site and begin building a utility-scale fusion plant this year.

Pursuing scientific milestones

Despite the massive investments flowing into the sector, none of the companies have demonstrated the ability to produce excess energy from fusion reactions. But they’re all reporting progress toward that goal, with TAE and Washington’s Helion Energy working on commercial facilities.

General Fusion, which launched in 2002, is currently operating its Lawson Machine 26, a magnetized targeted fusion demonstration device that’s about half the size of its planned commercial‑scale machine.

The new financial support will fund initiatives to hit essential scientific milestones with the device by the middle of 2028. That includes reaching 100 million degrees Celsius — a target it had earlier set for last year — and achieving the conditions needed to create fusion reactions that produce excess energy.

General Fusion hopes to be able to deploy a commercial fusion machine by around 2035.

“This transaction with Spring Valley positions us with the capital we need to be able to continue operating the Lawson Machine 26 as we pursue really transformative technical milestones that will ultimately put us on a path to the first-of-a-kind plant,” Wilson said.

A three-person clean energy team in Seattle is chasing China in pursuit of an increasingly popular alternative to traditional lithium-ion batteries. Emerald Battery Labs, a startup working out of the University of Washington, recently raised just under $1.1 million in a pre-seed round to continue scaling its sodium-ion battery technology.

The burgeoning energy storage option avoids the use of lithium, which is highly sought, difficult to extract and has limited U.S. production. Sodium, by comparison, is much cheaper and comes from the same element that’s in table salt. The sodium-ion batteries also last longer and present fewer fire concerns.

Battery demand is rising rapidly as these systems pair with renewable, intermittent sources like sun and wind; enhance hydro dam capacity; provide backup power for data centers; power drones and defense devices; and work with EV charging stations to reduce grid strain during peak demand.

“As battery chemistries evolve, as technology evolves, people are going to find new ways to use energy storage technology,” said David Bell, Emerald’s co-founder and chief product officer.

Growing interest

A recent Sightline Climate survey of investors and entrepreneurs in climate tech selected sodium-ion batteries as a top-pick for a 2026 breakthrough technology, coming in just behind the use of AI for clean tech materials discovery.

But there’s already a clear leader in the space.

“China, with its powerful EV industry, has led the early push” into sodium-powered batteries, according to MIT Technology Review.

Chinese auto and battery makers Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., or CATL, and BYD are in hot pursuit of the technology, MIT reports. CATL claims to have a sodium-ion battery line operating at scale, while BYD is building its own massive production facility.

U.S. competitors include Peak Energy, Nanode Battery Technologies and Unigrid.

While this alternative chemistry offers numerous benefits, there’s an important trade off: it’s less energy dense — meaning sodium-ion batteries need to be larger than competing technologies to deliver the same amount of power.

Emerald’s path forward

Emerald is operating out of the UW’s CoMotion Labs and using the university’s Clean Energy Testbeds for fabrication work. The startup is scaling production and looking for partners to pilot test its products.

It plans to hire additional employees in the coming year. Emerald’s investors include Seattle-based E8, a network of angel investors that backs clean-tech companies; E8 members who directly invested; and an undisclosed family venture office.

Emerald’s founders bring deep battery experience:

• Bell led product management and customer programs at Group14, which is manufacturing next generation silicon-anode materials for lithium-ion batteries, and worked at Ionic Materials.
• Kjell Schroder, CEO and chief technologist, held leadership roles at Form Energy, Ionic and EnPower.
• Aric Stocks, chief operating officer, is a trained materials engineer and former global business development leader at Group14.

As farmers grapple with extreme weather, supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, Washington state is betting that artificial intelligence could help secure the future of agriculture.

A new initiative called Growing with AI will bring together the state’s tech giants and diverse farming community to tackle the industry’s most pressing challenges. Supporters say this is the perfect place to launch such an effort: uniting the region’s robust agricultural economy with hundreds of different high-value crops in Eastern Washington, with its world-class tech and AI companies on the western side of the state.

“Our farmers are dealing with so many different external forces, mostly beyond their control,” said Melanie Roberts, executive director of the Washington State Academy of Sciences. “So what if Washington can get ahead of this and be intentional about how we use AI in agriculture?”

The initiative, led by the publicly funded Academy of Sciences, kicked off earlier this month with the first of six free informational webinars. The next session is Jan. 23. The effort will culminate in April with an invitation-only workshop where past participants will strategize action items.

There are already a number of AI-driven, ag tech companies based in Washington, including Carbon Robotics, which manufactures autonomous farming machines that zap weeds with lasers. Carbon is based in Seattle but also runs a manufacturing facility on the other side of the state in Richland, Wash.

While geography might separate the state’s tech and ag communities, Carbon CEO and founder Paul Mikesell said the two are natural collaborators.

“Farmers and technologists see the world in similar ways,” Mikesell said. “We can get things done. We tackle problems head on, put in a lot of hard work …. So in a lot of ways, farmers act a lot like engineers because they’re trying to design solutions.”

To be successful in this space, he emphasized the importance of genuinely partnering with farmers to learn their specific challenges rather than coming in with predetermined solutions. Mikesell said entrepreneurs need to develop their technology in the literal field to see firsthand how it performs.

Ananth Kalyanaraman, a computer science professor at Washington State University and expert in ag tech applications, highlighted several potential AI applications:

• weather and climate data analysis and modeling to provide guidance on planting and harvesting schedules and selection of which varietals to use;
• insights into the amount and timing of irrigation, fertilizing and pest control;
• robotics to support tree pruning and crop harvesting;
• automated devices like those provided by Carbon Robotics to remove weeds, damaging insects and rocks.

This is the first time the Academy of Sciences, which educates public leaders on scientific matters, has created a series focused on one issue and incorporated a call to action.

Kalyanaraman noted that federal support of AI in the ag sector has been limited, particularly given the importance of building a more robust food-supply system. Farming hasn’t been made a priority compared to other areas, he added, but the need is urgent and Washington can help lead.

“We should be able to provide an exemplar to the rest of the nation,” Kalyanaraman said, “in terms of how to most effectively and responsibly embrace AI into a complex, decision-driven system like agriculture.”

While artificial intelligence is generating all the buzz, it was Washington state’s climate tech and healthcare innovation that got shoutouts during Gov. Bob Ferguson’s State of the State address on Tuesday.

The speech largely focused on this winter’s epic flooding in Western Washington, the affordability and housing crisis, transportation infrastructure needs and Ferguson’s support for a “millionaire’s tax” targeting the state’s wealthiest residents.

The traditional tech sector — which accounts for roughly 22% of the state economy — was largely absent from the governor’s address. But he did call out groundbreaking innovation happening across Washington.

Ferguson praised Helion Energy’s efforts to build what could become the first commercial fusion reactor — a world-changing accomplishment, provided the device works as planned. Helion, based in Everett, Wash., broke ground on the Orion facility last summer and aims to get the Eastern Washington plant operating by 2028. Microsoft agreed to buy energy from the plant if Helion is successful in harnessing fusion power.

The governor also called out last week’s official launch of the Cascadia Sustainable Aviation Accelerator, an effort to support R&D and build out a marketplace for low-carbon aviation fuels. The event, which was held north of Seattle, brought together Boeing, Amazon, Alaska Airlines and others.

In his speech, Ferguson framed the initiative as “an opportunity for our state to, once again, set an example and set the pace for clean energy investment.”

And he gave a nod to the University of Washington, Fred Hutch Cancer Center and the Allen Institute as “part of a globally recognized ecosystem working on next generation drug discovery and treatments.” The Seattle area is a hub for academics and startups developing AI-driven therapies, with many building on innovations from the UW lab of Nobel Laureate David Baker.

“These are just a few of the reasons why the state of our state is strong, but I am clear eyed,” said Ferguson, who is navigating a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall. “I’m clear eyed about the areas where we must do better, and my first proposed budget is laser focused on those improvements to keep our growth going.”

OCOchem, a clean tech startup turning carbon dioxide into industrial chemicals, has raised $2.15 million and continues signing new partnerships — despite a cooling regulatory environment for sustainability and a decline in climate tech investing.

The Richland, Wash., company’s technology takes water and captured industrial carbon dioxide and runs it through proprietary electrolyzer cells to produce formic acid and formate compounds. This family of chemicals can be converted into clean-burning hydrogen fuel, serve as ingredients for other valuable chemicals, or be used as a relatively safe acid in critical mineral recovery.

The startup is making progress thanks to the abundance of its feedstock and the versatility of formate, said CEO and co-founder Todd Brix. As OCOchem scales up operations, “we’re opening up new vistas” as customers discover the company’s sustainable, affordable solutions for producing chemicals and clean fuels.

With the new funding, the company has now raised $11.2 million from investors and $8.3 million in government grants.

Initiatives underway include:

• An agreement announced in December with the German company b.fab, which feeds formate to microorganisms such as bacteria that biosynthesize proteins, amino acids and other commercially useful compounds.
• A partnership with ADM (Archer-Daniels-Midland) to build a commercial pilot plant at the chemical giant’s Illinois facility, where ADM operates the world’s largest bioethanol refinery. The refinery produces carbon dioxide as a bioproduct of the fermentation process, which will be turned into formate and used in other product lines.
• Fine-tuning processes at its 40,000-square-foot facility in Richland that was commissioned in May. The plant produced and shipped a metric ton of a formate compound for use as a deicing agent by a New York-based customer.

While the Trump administration has rolled back many climate and environmental policies, one recent change helped level the playing field for carbon reuse efforts like OCOchem’s.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act retained the tax credit for carbon capture and increased the credit for processes that reuse carbon in industrial applications, raising it from $60 per ton to $85 — matching the credit provided when carbon is permanently sequestered.

Brix launched OCOchem in 2017 after a nearly two-decade career at Microsoft. The 17-person team includes Chief Technologist Arun Agarwal, who previously spent 12 years in R&D focused on renewable chemicals, energy, oil and gas.

The company faces competition in turning carbon dioxide into formate — particularly in the European Union, which is publicly investing in the technology, as well as at labs operated by Toyota.

But Brix said he’s ready to face his rivals. His company has “built the largest CO2 electrolyzer, worked fast to do that, and is operating at the highest performance today,” Brix said. “And so it’s a little bit of a race, but it’s a good race.”

President Donald Trump pressures Microsoft and Big Tech to cover the costs of powering AI data centers as rising electricity bills spark consumer concerns.

The post Trump Warns Microsoft: Don’t Make Americans Pay for AI Electricity appeared first on TechRepublic.

President Donald Trump pressures Microsoft and Big Tech to cover the costs of powering AI data centers as rising electricity bills spark consumer concerns.

The post Trump Warns Microsoft: Don’t Make Americans Pay for AI Electricity appeared first on TechRepublic.

President Trump was right about Microsoft — but he only leaked part of the story.

Microsoft is changing its approach to building massive data centers for artificial intelligence, unveiling what it calls a “community first” initiative in response to growing opposition from people across the country facing higher electricity bills and dwindling water supplies.

The new plan, announced Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C, includes pledges to pay the company’s full power costs, reject local property tax breaks, replenish more water than it uses, train local workers, and invest in AI education and community programs.

“This sector worked one way in the past, and needs to work in some different ways going forward,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft president and vice chair, in an interview with GeekWire. He later described the shift as “both the right thing to do and the smart thing to do.”

Trump made headlines Monday night with a Truth Social post in advance of the news, saying his administration has been working with tech companies “to secure their commitment to the American People.” He called Microsoft “first up” and said it would “make major changes … to ensure that Americans don’t ‘pick up the tab’ for their POWER consumption.”

Backlash against AI expansion

Microsoft’s rollout comes at a critical juncture for tech. 

Amazon, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and others are betting hundreds of billions of dollars on AI, but those ambitions hinge on their ability to build out the infrastructure to support them — a prospect that depends increasingly on the cooperation of local communities that have grown skeptical of the costs and tradeoffs.

Smith said Microsoft has been developing its initiative since September. He described it as a response to shifting public sentiment — which he witnessed firsthand during visits to his home state of Wisconsin for Microsoft’s data center expansion. Back in 2024, local residents wanted to talk about jobs. By last October, the big topics were electricity prices and water use.

“We saw this catch fire, to a degree, for many other companies in many other places around the country as each month unfolded,” he said. 

In data‑center hubs such as Virginia, Illinois and Ohio, residential power prices jumped 12–16% over the past year — noticeably faster than the U.S. average, according to U.S. government data — as grid operators scrambled to add capacity for large new facilities.

The issue has drawn scrutiny on Capitol Hill. Last month, three Democratic senators launched an investigation into whether tech giants are raising residential power bills, sending letters to Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta. An Amazon-funded study found that the company more than covers the utility costs associated with its electricity use in some regions.

Microsoft’s change of course

Microsoft’s new approach, as outlined in a post by Smith, is a clear departure from its own past practices. The company has accepted tax abatements for data centers in states including Ohio and Iowa, and its identity was kept under wraps in a Michigan township until recently.

In the interview, Smith promised new levels of transparency. 

He acknowledged that the traditional approach in the industry was for companies to buy land under nondisclosure agreements to avoid driving up prices — giving them a competitive edge but leaving communities in the dark about who was moving in and how they would operate.

“That is clearly not the path that’s going to take us forward,” he said. The companies that succeed with data centers in the long run, he added, “will be the companies that have a strong and healthy relationship with local communities.”

Asked if Microsoft hopes to inspire or compel others to follow suit, Smith stopped short of positioning Microsoft as the sole leader, crediting Amazon for “really good and well-executed work in this space” while adding that “the industry is going to need to set a higher bar for itself.”

Microsoft’s plan starts by addressing the electricity issue, pledging to work with utilities and regulators to ensure its electricity costs aren’t passed on to residential customers. Smith cited a new “Very Large Customers” rate structure in Wisconsin as a model, where data centers pay the full cost of the power they use, including grid upgrades required to support them.

The company’s other commitments include:

• A 40% improvement in water efficiency by 2030, plus a pledge to replenish more water than it uses in each district where it operates. (Microsoft cited a recent $25 million investment in water and sewer upgrades in Leesburg, Va., as an example.)
• A new partnership with North America’s Building Trades Unions for apprenticeship programs, and expansion of its Datacenter Academy for operations training.
• Full payment of local property taxes, with no requests for municipal tax breaks.
• AI training through schools, libraries, and chambers of commerce, plus new Community Advisory Boards at major data center sites.

Record spending on AI infrastructure

Microsoft did not say how much it plans to spend on these new initiatives, separate from its broader capital expenditures, which approached $35 billion in its first fiscal quarter. 

Asked if the company would truly be able to follow through on all of these commitments, Smith said, “we have to follow through.” Internally, he said, Microsoft is “bringing some groups together” and “adding resources” to execute the plan, describing it as essential to the company’s long-term business strategy.

As for how Microsoft’s position squares with OpenAI’s push for federal incentives to support large-scale AI infrastructure projects, Smith drew a distinction. He said he supports federal help with permitting and land access, but not electricity subsidies.

“When it comes to things like electricity prices, when it comes to the water system, when it comes to training for local jobs, these are local issues,” he said.

Smith’s post references the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan and pledges to work with the Department of Labor on workforce programs. Microsoft says it will announce specific community partnerships during the first week of July, timed to America’s 250th anniversary.

Bill Gates had a front-row seat for the rise of AI, from his longtime work at Microsoft to early demonstrations of key breakthroughs from OpenAI that illustrated the technology’s potential. Now he’s urging the rest of us to get ready.

Likening the situation to his pre-COVID warnings about pandemic preparedness, Gates writes in his annual “Year Ahead” letter Friday morning that the world needs to act before AI’s disruptions become unmanageable. But he says that AI’s potential to transform healthcare, climate adaptation, and education remains enormous, if we can navigate the risks.

“There is no upper limit on how intelligent AIs will get or on how good robots will get, and I believe the advances will not plateau before exceeding human levels,” Gates writes.

He acknowledges that missed deadlines for artificial general intelligence, or human-level AI, can “create the impression that these things will never happen.” But he warns against reaching that conclusion, arguing that bigger breakthroughs are coming, even if the timing remains uncertain.

He says he’s still optimistic overall. “As hard as last year was, I don’t believe we will slide back into the Dark Ages,” he writes. “I believe that, within the next decade, we will not only get the world back on track but enter a new era of unprecedented progress.”

But he adds that we’ll need to be “deliberate about how this technology is developed, governed, and deployed” — and that governments, not just markets, will have to lead AI implementation.

More takeaways from the letter:

Job disruption is already here. He says AI makes software developers “at least twice as efficient,” and that disruption is spreading. Warehouse work and phone support are next. He suggests the world use 2026 to prepare, citing the potential for changes like a shorter work week.

Bioterrorism is his top AI concern. Gates warns that “an even greater risk than a naturally caused pandemic is that a non-government group will use open source AI tools to design a bioterrorism weapon.”

Climate will cause “enormous suffering” without action. Gates cautions that if we don’t limit climate change, it will join poverty and infectious disease in hitting the world’s poorest people hardest, and even in the best case, temperatures will keep rising.

Child mortality went backward in 2025. Stepping outside AI, Gates calls this the thing he’s “most upset about.” Deaths for children under 5 years old rose from 4.6 million in 2024 to 4.8 million in 2025, the first increase this century, which he traced to cuts in aid from rich countries.

AI could leapfrog rich-world farming. Gates predicts AI will soon give poor farmers “better advice about weather, prices, crop diseases, and soil than even the richest farmers get today.” The Gates Foundation has committed $1.4 billion to help farmers facing extreme weather.

Gates is using AI for his own health. He says he uses AI “to better understand my own health,” and sees a future where high-quality medical advice is available to every patient and provider around the clock.

AI is now the Gates Foundation’s biggest bet in education. Personalized learning powered by AI is “now the biggest focus of the Gates Foundation’s spending on education.” Gates says he’s seen it working firsthand in New Jersey and believes it will be “game changing” at scale.

Read the full letter here.

TerraPower, a Bill Gates-backed next-gen nuclear company, on Friday announced a deal with Meta to build up to eight small modular reactors in the U.S. with the first two coming online as soon as 2032.

Tech companies have been aggressively pursuing new clean energy solutions as they race to build power-hungry data centers that support burgeoning AI services.

TerraPower’s deal with Meta will provide the tech giant with up to 2.8 gigawatts of energy using its Natrium nuclear technology. The facilities include an energy storage system, which can provide shorter-term bursts of power that bring the total output to 4 gigawatts.

The contract with the Bellevue, Wash.-based company marks Meta’s largest single nuclear deal to date.

“To successfully address growing energy demand, we must deploy gigawatts of advanced nuclear energy in the 2030s. This agreement with Meta is designed to support the rapid deployment of our Natrium technology that provides the reliable, flexible, and carbon-free power our country needs,” Chris Levesque, TerraPower president and CEO, said in a statement.

The news is an endorsement of TerraPower’s approach, said Andrew Richards, the company’s vice president of government affairs, in a GeekWire interview. The company landed the deal after participating in Meta’s request for proposal.

“They chose us out of all other advanced reactor developers and said they have strong confidence in our technology,” Richards said.

Meta and Terrapower “are looking all over the country,” to select a location for the first facility containing the dual reactors, he added.. If all are eight are ultimately constructed, the reactors should be operational by 2035.

Meta’s broader nuclear play

Meta’s announcement includes additional partnerships with Vistra and Oklo:

• Vistra operates the Perry and Davis-Besse plants in Ohio and the Beaver Valley plant in Pennsylvania. The arrangement will extend the lifespan of these reactors and increase their energy production. Meta will purchase more than 2.1 gigawatts of electricity from the facilities.
• Oklo is a Sam Altman-backed company developing small modular reactors with a project being built in Pike County, Ohio. The reactors are expected to begin operating as soon as 2030 and contribute up to 1.2 gigawatts to the grid.

Meta in June signed a deal with Constellation that supports the relicensing and extends the operations of its nuclear plant in Illinois.

“Our agreements with Vistra, TerraPower, Oklo, and Constellation make Meta one of the most significant corporate purchasers of nuclear energy in American history,” said Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, in a statement.

The tech sector has faced growing criticism over how its demand for power affects utility customers and the environment. Last month, three Democratic senators launched an investigation into Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and three data center companies, examining whether their energy consumption is driving up residential electricity bills.

Meta addressed these concerns in announcing the new partnerships.

“This work builds on our ongoing collaboration with electric utility companies and power providers to plan for and meet our energy needs years in advance of our data centers becoming operational. We pay the full costs for energy used by our data centers so consumers don’t bear these expenses, and we support the broader grid through our energy agreements,” the company stated.

Amazon and Microsoft are likewise pursuing nuclear energy.

• Amazon is partnering with X-energy and others to build a nuclear facility in Richland, Wash., near the state’s only operational nuclear plant.
• In 2024, Microsoft signed a 20-year deal to restart a nuclear reactor at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island — a facility made infamous by a partial meltdown in 1979.

TerraPower’s progress

TerraPower is currently building its first commercial reactor in Kemmerer, Wyo., and plans to start splitting atoms by 2030. The reactor is located near a retiring coal plant.

In December, the company said it completed a key regulatory milestone, passing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff’s final safety evaluation for its permit. Additional permitting hurdles remain, but the Terra Power hopes to be the first to deploy a utility-scale, next-gen reactor in the U.S.

The company launched in 2006 and is building on technology used in an experimental breeder reactor in Idaho that operated for nearly 30 years before shutting down. Its Natrium reactor includes technology from TerraPower and GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy.

In June TerraPower disclosed $650 million in new funding from Gates, who helped start TerraPower, as well as the venture arm of chip giant NVIDIA. It previously raised more than $1 billion, including investments from Gates as well as South Korea-based SK Inc. and SK Innovation, according to PitchBook. TerraPower has additionally been awarded roughly $2 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy.

MUKILTEO, Wash. — Pacific Northwest leaders on Thursday celebrated the official launch of the Cascadia Sustainable Aviation Accelerator, an initiative that aspires to establish the region as a leader in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

“We have all the pieces in place to ensure this once-in-a-generation economic opportunity is realized, and this accelerator will make that happen,” said Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson.

SAF is widely viewed as the most promising, scalable solution for cutting carbon emissions from aviation. The fuel is typically made from plant-based sources and can be blended with conventional fossil fuels used to power aircraft. But it costs twice as much or more than existing fuels, and the industry has struggled to take off in the U.S. or internationally despite sustainability pledges by airlines and others.

The new accelerator hopes to close that price gap, create a SAF marketplace and boost fuel production. It’s kicking off with $10 million in state funding and a $10 million philanthropic gift.

Guy Palumbo, Amazon’s director of public policy, said the company is a SAF customer, buying 3.7 million gallons of the fuel in 2024 to make a small dent in the carbon impact of its air cargo transportation. And it would buy much more, he added, but the fuel isn’t available.

“This is a systems issue that no one company can solve,” Palumbo said. “You’ve got great companies up here in this room right now that are ready to use this fuel, but we have to make it available.”

The event highlighted the initiative’s public-private partnership by featuring speakers that also included Washington State Department of Commerce Director Joe Nguyen, Washington State University President Elizabeth Cantwell, county and state elected officials, leaders from Alaska Airlines, Boeing, SkyNRG and others.

The accelerator has a multi-pronged strategy that includes:

• Providing R&D resources for startups and other fuel manufacturers, including equipment and expertise.
• Promoting SAF-friendly policies.
• Helping facilitate funding for SAF producers, including purchase agreements with SAF customers.
• Developing feedstock supply chains for the fuel, which can include waste from agriculture and logging, algae, cooking oils, animal fats and manure.
• Supporting infrastructure development for transporting and blending low-carbon fuels with traditional aviation fuels to create SAF.

Establishing the sector is a Herculean task, but supporters argue this region is well-positioned for a SAF hub, citing its status as Boeing’s original home, its robust aviation industry, the availability of feedstocks, its strong environmental policies, and other strengths.

Despite years of work by organizations in Washington and around the globe, SAF comprises less than 1% of the aviation fuel in use today. And geopolitics — most recently including President Trump’s plans to begin cranking up oil production in Venezuela — continue to complicate progress.

“This is going to be a tremendous challenge. It’s going to be hard,” said Sen. Marko Liias of Mulkilteo. But, he added, “we know the rest of the world is going all in on SAF and this is the fuel of the future. There’s no better place than Washington state to catalyze the production of sustainable aviation fuel at scale.”

The need is pressing. Aviation’s impact on carbon emissions is growing as flights serving passenger travel and air cargo increase. There are companies developing sustainable aircraft, such as those powered by batteries and hydrogen fuel cells, but that technology will take decades to scale and its applications are uncertain. SAF, on the other hand, can be used in existing aircraft.

Multiple SAF companies are already operating in the Pacific Northwest:

• SkyNRG is a Dutch company building a SAF facility in Walla Walla, Wash., and will use renewable natural gas that’s captured at landfills and from dairy waste as a feedstock. On Thursday the company announced it has secured key environmental approvals from the state, and plans to start commercial operations in 2030.
• Montana Renewables is manufacturing approximately 30 million gallons of synthetic paraffinic kerosene, or SPK, each year, which is blended with jet fuel to make SAF. The Montana company employs used cooking oils, animal fat from meat production, and plant oils as its feedstock and plans to dramatically increase production.
• NXTClean Fuels has plans to develop two clean fuels facilities in Oregon. Its flagship site, a $3 billion plant at Port Westward on the Columbia River, is in the final stages of federal permitting and could break ground this year, with operations starting in late 2028 at the earliest.
• Twelve is a California-based company that broke ground in 2023 on a SAF facility called AirPlant One in Moses Lake, Wash., and is currently commissioning its facility. It plans to use liquid ethanol produced in the state as its carbon source.

In the coming months, the Cascadia Sustainable Aviation Accelerator is moving temporarily into a commercial space at Everett’s Paine Field airport. Initial funding has been secured to build a new facility, with the hope of completing construction no later than 2029.

The accelerator effort took root two years ago when Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers announced plans for a SAF center and state legislators from the county committed to seek funding for the initiative.

“Washington has been the SAF leader from the beginning,” said SkyNRG executive and former state Sen. Andy Billig. The first commercial test flight using SAF came from a Washington producer and was used on a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400 flying from London to Amsterdam in 2008.

Seattle startup Avalanche Energy is raising new funding to develop its compact fusion energy devices. A new SEC filing reveals a fresh $14.9 million round.

A company spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by GeekWire.

Avalanche and dozens of companies around the world are vying for scientific breakthroughs that would allow them to generate electricity from fusion reactions on a commercially viable scale. The sun and stars are the masters of fusion, smashing together light atoms under high-pressure, super hot conditions to produce energy.

Avalanche is pursuing a different strategy than many of its competitors, building desktop-sized energy devices and working multiple angles for revenue generation. That includes:

• Using its fusion machine to produce neutrons for customers in industries such as advanced materials science, semiconductor manufacturing, nuclear power and specialized medical treatments.
• The company has a Pentagon contract from the Defense Innovation Unit to develop technology for space propulsion and power generation.
• Last year, the startup landed a $10 million grant from the state to launch FusionWERX, a commercial-scale testing facility for fusion technologies in Eastern Washington.

Avalanche had previously raised $50 million from investors that include Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital, Founders Fund, Toyota Ventures, Azolla Ventures and others.

The fusion industry produced surprising headlines shortly before Christmas with the announcement of a $6 billion planned merger between Trump Media & Technology Group and California fusion company TAE Technologies.

The partnership aims to site and begin building what it calls the world’s first utility-scale fusion plant this year, with Trump Media committing $300 million in near-term funding. President Trump is the largest shareholder of Trump Media, the publicly-traded parent company of the social media platform Truth Social.

Avalanche is part of a fusion hub in the Pacific Northwest that includes two additional Seattle-area companies working to harness fusion power.

• Helion Energy in July broke ground on what it says will be the first fusion plant to put power on the grid starting in 2028.
• Zap Energy expects in the near future to commission its fifth fusion device, allowing it to continue testing and optimizing the different systems required by the technology.

By the time we hit Kelso, it was clear my family’s post-Christmas EV adventure was hitting the skids.

After departing from Seattle, we stopped in Olympia for lunch and a little recharge for our recently purchased 2024 Mach-E — the electric Ford Mustang. But the Level 2 charger found via Google Maps offered a paltry boost and we had 115 miles to our Portland destination.

No problem. We’d make a second stop at a Tesla Supercharger in Kelso, a small city off of Interstate 5 formerly known for logging and smelt fishing. The Mach-E sucked up electrons from the DC fast charger, hitting 80% charge in about 20 minutes.

But when we went to unplug, the third-party adapter that allowed us to charge our non-Tesla EV wouldn’t budge. We were trapped, tethered to the station via a high-powered cable, late on a Saturday afternoon. All-knowing YouTube offered a fix: use a really big pair of pliers called channel locks to force the button to give. My husband went off on foot to a nearby farm supply store seeking the device.

Our 17-year-old daughter, in the meantime, had run out of TikToks and patience. She began wrestling the adapter herself and through a combination of finesse, strength and desperation she disengaged the charger. It was a giddy moment — but a brief reprieve as we continued driving south.

Wintry temperatures and dinner in the brilliantly named Portland suburb of Scappoose left the Mustang battery unnervingly low. More map searching near our hotel led us to a nearly empty parking garage that promised charging on the eighth floor. After circling to the roof we found one broken charger and another being used by a couple in an embrace outside their electric truck, inexplicably kissing in the cold.

The charging mishaps had left us tired, frustrated and anxious — with only ourselves to blame.

Falling in love with an EV

Historically, I’ve been largely indifferent toward cars, owning a series of forgettable Toyotas and Hondas — safe, reliable cars that got me from point A to B with reasonable fuel efficiency. I had wanted to go electric in 2017 when shopping for my previous car, but the Chevy Bolt was underwhelming and Tesla too swanky. A Toyota Prius it was.

Then on a sunny afternoon last October, a driver mounted a steep hill in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, failed to brake at a stop sign, and smashed into my Prius. I was rattled but largely unscathed, and so was the other driver and his passenger. Both cars, however, were totaled.

Their insurance covered the loss and we searched for a replacement. My husband genuinely likes cars and took the lead in shopping with my one condition in mind: it had to be an EV.

We landed on the Mach-E, which startled friends and family alike who knew my milquetoast automotive track record. But despite its relative machismo and flash, the Mustang was the practical choice — good real-world range at about 240 miles, great value, and the roomy interior of a crossover-style vehicle.

One spin behind the wheel and I was smitten. I love the car. It handles nicely. It’s comfortable. The fact it can go from zero to 60 in 4 seconds doesn’t really impact my reality, but pleases me all the same. I size up exhaust-spewing muscle cars next to me at stoplights and imagine smoking them.

When the holidays arrived, I was cruising in my Mach-E and imagined that our Portland trip would be as easy as traveling via gas power.

After all, the EV market share had hit more than 20% in Washington in 2024, and charging stations were cropping up at grocery stores and along highways. I didn’t want to spend the time figuring out which of the many available apps was best for finding charging sites. I didn’t want to download and create accounts with the many charging service providers. I just wanted to tap the accelerator.

But that wasn’t realistic. Energy infrastructure takes time to deploy. For decades after the internal combustion engine reigned supreme, drivers still needed to map out gas stops on lengthy road trips. Things improved for EVs in general when Tesla began opening its Supercharger network to non-Tesla drivers in 2023. (A GeekWire story the year before recounted the headaches faced by an electric Mustang road tripper without that access.)

The EV charging network, however, is still lagging and faces new challenges under the Trump administration, which has imposed policies to remove incentives and slow EV infrastructure deployment.

Pro tips for EV newbies

In most ways, I’d found the switch to an EV surprisingly convenient. We’re fortunate to have off-street parking at home, and it’s super satisfying to simply click a Level 1 slow charger into the car and walk away. The device uses a regular outlet in our garage and generally provides the vehicle enough power for work, errands and local day trips.

We drove the Mustang on an overnight trip to Bellingham, Wash., in November and easily found power at clearly marked, city-owned parking spots with free electrons. On a separate outing to hike near the tulip capital of Mount Vernon, I simply plugged in afterwards at an EVgo fast charger near my house to quickly refill.

We were lulled into complacency and unprepared for longer EV travel. After botching Portland, I checked in with Seattle-area experts for charging tips, which left me feeling sheepish for my self-inflicted ignorance.

I got feedback from Matthew Metz, founder of Coltura and CEO of EVQ, a startup supporting EV purchases; Scott Case, founder of the EV data platform Recurrent; and Grace Reamer and Jay Donnaway, who are respectively current and past leaders of the Seattle Electric Vehicle Association, or SEVA.

My takeaways:

• PlugShare is the one-stop source for maps that include information on how many chargers are available at seemingly every possible site at any given moment and include helpful user feedback. We should have turned here first.
• When on a road trip, plan on DC fast charging. Case recommends Tesla as the most numerous and consistently reliable option. Without knowledge of our Kelso fiasco, Donnaway suggested that non-Tesla drivers get an adapter for fast charger plugs and “gain some experience with using it before it’s needed in a tight spot.” 
• Always carry a Level 1 charger for opportunities to use outlets at hotels and retail sites in a pinch.
• Reamer offered battery-saving suggestions, such as following speed limits, slowly accelerating, coasting downhill, drafting behind semi-trucks and using seat heaters in lieu of cabin heat.

EVQ and Recurrent also have their own terrific sources for essential information:

• EVQ/Coltura released EV Chat, a generative AI tool built from a curated library of EV-related information. The chatbot is available for free and found on the Electric For All site and “should be able to answer your questions really well,” Metz said. A quick test proved him right.
• Recurrent has a “great starter resource on charging that everyone should look at when they are just starting out,” Case advised. It covers home and public charging options, charging speeds, costs, diagrams of the different plugs and sockets, and even pointers on public charging etiquette.  

Despite our rookie mistakes, panic and wasted time, we did have a nice trip to Portland (I highly recommend Casa Zoraya for amazing Peruvian food and my body literally aches for a return to Dragontree Spa). To finish the trip and get home to Seattle, we used EVgo fast chargers outside of downtown Portland and in Chehalis, Wash., that worked quickly and without hiccups.

Looking ahead, we’ll undertake our next road trip with a full charge, a better plan and a car I still love.

A few thoughts on the year about to close.

Driving on the Donald J. Trump George Washington Memorial Parkway the other day, I was impressed by the progress in the reconstruction of this vital artery. The contractors and the Trump National Park Service planned well, and the road has remained reasonably passable over the past couple of years. Now the trip to the Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has gotten easier. Ditto for trips to the Donald J. Trump Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

I’ve always liked where the Parkway runs close to the Trump Potomac River. You can see across to Trump Washington Monument and the Trump Tidal Basin. But, stately as the nation’s capital appears, change and lots of chaos have marked the calendar year about to end.

But seriously, looking at the D.C. skyline, one wonders about the real state of the republic.

If you search “trump timeline,” you’ll find timelines from many interest groups, most of whom feel aggrieved by the second Trump administration. The release of the Epstein files, “undermining elections,” deportation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, reversing energy policies, legal tangling with Harvard University, military activity against Venezuela — Trump activities make for compelling observation. A lot of this is press-induced, and the Trump style eggs it on. Yet norms have stretched.

I would add that only some of what Trump has done is completely original. But he does things, let’s say, in highly original ways. The result is we have two branches of government in contention with one another. The third branch, and the one detailed first in the Constitution, has rendered itself into an observant chorus with no say over the score.

For federal employees, 2025 will rank as the oddest year many have ever endured. It started with the DOGE swarms, slashing their way to and fro. Then came the deferred resignation program and layoffs. Mass return to the office. Cancellation of collective bargaining agreements at several agencies. Difficulties in settling retirement benefits.

So much news, it almost made me regret retiring. The workforce reductions and changes of conditions may all fall within an administration’s discretionary powers. But rough treatment of persons falls outside of decency. Let’s hope it stops in 2026. I remember a time when a new president of a company I worked for brought in a gaggle of MBAs to do cost cutting. The attitudes felt worse than the cuts, and the company eventually disappeared anyhow.

One thing 2025 has taught me: Keep things in perspective. The worst job situations I remember? I can chuckle about them now. That’s what time does. I once secretly flew to New Jersey and back for a job interview — all in a really extended lunch hour. To be honest, the new job seemed dull, and I never got the offer. Luckily, the situation I was seeking to leave changed overnight for the better, the way better. While you are going through cavalier and high-handed treatment, it’s no fun.

And what about the nation you serve? The absence of any serious debate about what the Government Accountability Office politely calls fiscal unsustainability strikes me as the worst quality in Congress and executive branch policy makers.

It’s not as if no one knows that next year alone the federal deficit will add $2 trillion to the $30 trillion national debt. That Social Security outlays increasingly surpass revenues for as far as the eye can see. That healthcare programs exceed the $3 trillion mark. That interest payments on public debt have passed the $1 trillion mark. The absolute numbers are big, and they are worsening when expressed as a percentage of the nation’s economic output.

So my wish for the nation in the year ahead is fact-facing and rationality, especially on the part of so-called lawmakers.

Beyond thinking of any possible policy and programmatic fixes, the government must resolve to become a better steward of the money it does print and spend.

I’m thinking of Minnesota. The federal prosecutor on the Minnesota Medicare fraud scheme described it as “staggering industrial-scale fraud.” As Trump would say, and McDonald’s used to say, billions and billions. The theft — and it is simple, naked theft — is both heartbreaking and maddening. At an estimated $9 billion, it makes the worst armed robbery seem like child’s play. One almost thinks the perpetrators deserve hanging, such is the extent and callous shrewdness of the crimes. But it also evidences a near total breakdown in program planning, execution and oversight — mainly at the state level, but there’s federal responsibility too. Did anyone notice or care that this was going on?

The staff cuts and turmoil have affected constituent service. People I speak to seem amusedly resigned to how places like the IRS, Social Security and the Postal Service operate. Line employees mostly want to serve effectively, but what kind of backing do they get?

The week before Christmas, I stopped in at my local Postal Service office. It’s busy, a beehive of a facility. I recently became president of a very small non-profit foundation, and we needed to move the P.O. box from Virginia to Maryland so I could easily get the incoming donation checks.

On a Thursday morning, only one employee manned the four-bay counter. Efficiently as she worked, still the line kept stretching to nine, then a dozen, people deep. For a reason I only dimly comprehended, I couldn’t complete the transfer because of a mismatch in phone numbers. I straightened it out a couple of days later, when I had the right information. Two clerks were then on duty, and they kept the lines short.

The post My wish for 2026: Rationality in the Trump era first appeared on Federal News Network.

© AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Google parent Alphabet’s $4.75 billion deal to acquire Intersect, a clean energy developer and data center infrastructure company, represents a major exit for a company that was headquartered for many years in the Pacific Northwest.

More broadly for the industry, the deal adds a new twist to the competition among cloud giants to secure the energy required to power their AI ambitions.

The deal, announced Monday, is expected to give Google a team that can develop, build, and generate power directly alongside data centers — bypassing the long wait that companies typically face to connect new facilities to the electrical grid.

Founded in 2016, Intersect was based in Beaverton, Ore., before officially moving its headquarters earlier this year to San Francisco. 

Intersect has grown into a major player in utility-scale renewable energy, with major assets in solar power and battery storage. The company has raised more than $10 billion to date and already had a partnership with Google, which took a minority stake in a funding round last year.

“AI today is stuck behind one of the slowest, oldest industries in the country: electric power,” wrote Intersect founder and CEO Sheldon Kimber, in a blog post announcing the deal. “The country has racks full of GPUs that can’t be energized because there isn’t enough electricity for them.”

Microsoft and Amazon are also racing to secure power for AI data centers, but through different approaches. Neither has acquired a power developer outright.

• Microsoft has signed large renewable deals and is restarting the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. 
• Amazon has a long-term agreement for nuclear power from the Susquehanna plant in Pennsylvania and is investing in small modular reactor technology. 

Alphabet’s agreement to acquire Intersect is structured as $4.75 billion in cash plus the assumption of debt. It’s expected to close in the first half of 2026. 

Intersect, which has more than 360 employees, will continue to operate under its own brand, with Kimber remaining as CEO. The company’s operations in Texas and California will be carved out and remain with current investors including TPG Rise Climate and Climate Adaptive Infrastructure.

SUMNER, Wash. — At Amazon’s Packaging Innovation Lab south of Seattle, boxes are dropped from different heights, jiggled for hours to simulate truck transport, and crushed under weights designed to replicate the pressure of stacked cargo. 

The goal: to ensure that products arrive undamaged — without the benefit of plastics and extra bulky boxes.

The e-commerce giant says it’s working to phase out plastic from the envelopes, bags, boxes and cushioning it uses to ship everything from bobby pins to bicycles. A recent tour of the Sumner facility and an adjacent fulfillment center featured robotic assembly lines making paper bags and trimmed-down boxes to facilitate that transition.

Amazon says it favors paper because there’s better infrastructure in place for customers to easily recycle the material and for it to be turned back into usable items.

“We’re shifting towards all-paper packaging material,” confirmed John Sly, Amazon’s senior lab and field manager at the Sumner site.

An Amazon spokesperson wouldn’t commit to a target date, saying only that the company is working toward the goal and tracking progress in its annual sustainability reports. 

• Amazon said in its most recent report that it reduced its use of single-use plastic delivery packaging by 16.4% globally last year.
• In October 2024, the company announced that it had eliminated the inflated plastic pillows from packages worldwide, replacing them with crunched-up recycled paper for cushioning. 
• More than half of its North American fulfillment centers were weaned off all plastic shipping materials by 2024. As a result, 37% of shipments that year contained single-use plastic delivery packaging — a decrease from 65% the year before.

The shift follows lobbying by the nonprofit Oceana and some Amazon shareholders to reduce plastic use, and as Amazon pursues ambitious net zero climate emissions targets. 

But despite the packaging wins, the bigger picture reveals much harder challenges. Amazon reported a 6% increase in its carbon footprint for last year, driven by data center expansion. And while it’s deploying electric vans for last-mile deliveries, promises of faster shipping are pushing emissions up across the sector, according to new research. In response to the study, Amazon notes that its extensive network of warehouses reduces its impact and emissions per shipment declined from 2019 to last year.

Automating the push towards paper

A key strategy for making packaging more sustainable is incorporating robotics that speed and customize the process.

One solution is an automated system that folds lightweight boxes around individual items. It uses thinner, more sustainable corrugated paper than found in traditional boxes. It’s pliable enough to wrap around products as they move along a conveyor — cutting to size, folding and sealing without requiring added cushioning.

Another technology uses repurposed machines that formerly made plastic bags, swapping in paper. One of the upsides to the solution is fulfillment centers are already built to fit the devices, so the machines just need to be retrofit to handle and seal paper edges instead of plastic.

On a recent morning, Todd Grasser, an Amazon process assistant, was feeding in products for bagging that included a box of probiotic supplements and a Bluey character coloring set.

The device is able to bag up to 500 items an hour, Grasser said, but his fastest speed on the machine is just slightly lower. “Personally, I do about 475,” he said.

The automated packaging solutions are currently limited to single items, which can apply when someone’s order is sourced from different fulfillment centers or if it includes just one product.

The company is also partnering with manufacturers to ship items in their original packaging. That avoids, say, putting a boxed blender inside a bigger box when it doesn’t need additional protection. As part of that initiative, Amazon has worked with Proctor & Gamble to make boxed versions of Tide detergent and Playmobil sets that are offered in brown shipping boxes that can be flipped inside out after delivery to reveal colorful toy photos.

Moving to more sustainable packaging requires testing its properties to ensure that goods arrive to customers undamaged.

The shift means balancing multiple needs, Sly said, that include “prioritizing for protection and minimizing packaging material needed, while also still hitting the delivery speed that we promised.”

The company can move fast in adopting more sustainable packaging and it has in adopting paper bags and paper filler, “but we have to get the right solution,” Amazon spokesperson Saige Kolpack added. “There’s implications down the entire network that we have to consider.”

Editor’s note: Story updated to add a response from Amazon on the new research addressing emissions from faster shipping times.

The $6 billion planned merger between Trump Media & Technology Group and California’s TAE Technologies has sent a shock wave through the fusion industry — and is drawing skepticism from competitors in the Pacific Northwest’s fusion hub.

The partnership aims to site and begin building what it calls the world’s first utility-scale fusion plant next year, with Trump Media committing $300 million in near-term funding.

Physicists for decades have pursued fusion energy, a nearly limitless source of carbon-free power produced by smashing together light atoms in conditions hotter than the sun. So far, no one has demonstrated a fusion technology that’s financially viable for putting electricity on the grid, and some experts believe the field is still many years from that goal.

TAE, however, claimed on Thursday that it has cracked the riddle.

“We have the science solved,” Michl Binderbauer, CEO of TAE, told The New York Times. TAE has the engineering ready, he said, but has lacked sufficient capital despite raising $1.3 billion from investors.

President Trump is the largest shareholder of Trump Media, the publicly traded parent company of the social media platform Truth Social. His stake — reportedly worth more than $1 billion — is held in a trust managed by his eldest son

Trump Media’s value spiked nearly 50% following news of the merger, which would make TAE one of the first fusion companies to go public.

Washington competitors push back

TAE’s claims triggered pushback in Washington state, home to several fusion companies racing to commercialize the technology.

Helion Energy in July broke ground on what it says will be the first fusion plant to put power on the grid starting in 2028. Pragav Jain, Helion’s chief financial officer, welcomed the merger news while reasserting the company’s head start.

“This is a positive signal for the industry as a whole,” Jain said via email. “The world needs fusion and we’re seeing strong support both from customers and investors, so it’s not surprising to see deals like this.”

Everett-based Helion has raised more than $1 billion and is actively constructing Orion, its planned commercial facility in Eastern Washington. “We’re leading the way to make fusion a reality,” Jain added.

Zap Energy, a fusion company located down the road from Helion, didn’t provide an official comment on the deal when contacted by GeekWire. But spokesperson Andy Freeberg challenged the assertion that anyone has mastered fusion.

“The science has come a long way over several decades of work and is mature enough to build ventures around, that’s very exciting,” Freeberg said on LinkedIn. “But even a superficial knowledge of the state of the technology will show you it’s far from ‘solved’ and statements like this from someone who obviously knows better are completely disingenuous.”

Zap has $330 million from investors and notched scientific milestones, but has been more cautious in setting its own near-time deadlines for commercialized fusion.

Robin Langtry, co-founder and CEO of Seattle-based Avalanche Energy, which is building smaller-scale fusion devices, praised the deal.

TAE has made “some significant breakthroughs recently” that fusion proponents “should celebrate,” Langtry said via email. He added that the substantial funding needed for fusion infrastructure is tough to raise through venture capital or a traditional IPO.

“In that context a merger with a public company that in principle already has the deep pockets to raise the necessary funds makes a lot of sense,” Langtry added.

RELATED STORIES:

• Helion gives behind-the-scenes tour of secretive 60-foot fusion prototype as it races to deployment
• Inside Zap: Fusion pioneer tries to build ‘a star in a jar’ to unlock abundant clean energy
• Meet the key players in the Pacific Northwest’s fusion energy hub

Three U.S. senators have launched an investigation into whether tech giants, driven by soaring AI energy demands, are raising residential power bills. Separately, Amazon released a white paper Tuesday stating that its data centers are not the problem, and that in some regions it actually pays more than required for energy use.

The Democratic senators sent letters to Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and three data center firms, according to the New York Times. The lawmakers raised concerns that energy demand driven by artificial intelligence was forcing utilities to deploy new power plants and upgrade the grid — with local ratepayers helping foot the bill.

“We write in light of alarming reports that tech companies are passing on the costs of building and operating their data centers to ordinary Americans as A.I. data centers’ energy usage has caused residential electricity bills to skyrocket in nearby communities,” the senators said, according to the Times.

Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut issued the letters.

Amazon offered a much different take in an analysis that examined the potential benefits, costs and risks that large energy loads created by data centers have on electric utilities.

The Amazon-funded study found that in some locations, the power bills currently being paid by the company more than cover the utility impacts. A typical 100 megawatt data center was estimated to pay an additional $3.4 million beyond the costs associated with its electricity use, which also include a utility’s infrastructure upgrades, deployment of new energy generation, operations and maintenance.

Utilities can use that surplus “to reduce rates for other ratepayers, but how this potential benefit is realized will differ across jurisdictions,” the study stated.

The assessment examined Amazon data center campuses in Oregon, California and Mississippi and was performed by E3, an independent economic consulting firm.

The white paper said the benefit to the utilities and other customers should continue into 2030, but noted that utilities will need to adjust their rates in the future to ensure that ratepayers are not subsidizing tech operations.

“To continue to prevent cross-subsidization, utilities must keep pace and leverage the full range of tools available to them to mitigate these risks…” the document states.

The rapid growth of the sector is central to the debate. A Department of Energy report projected that data center energy use, which was more than 4% of U.S. electricity consumption in 2023, could triple by 2028. This forecast is fueled by tech giants’ expanding investment: Microsoft and Amazon each reported nearly $35 billion in capital expenditures in the third quarter, much of it on data center infrastructure.

The tech giants are also investing globally in new wind and solar power and energy storage, while pursuing more costly power sources including nuclear.

In October, a group of U.S. representatives raised similar concerns to the senators’, asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Edison Electric Institute and the Data Center Coalition for information regarding data center impacts on residential power bills “to help ensure everyday Americans and small businesses aren’t bearing the brunt of data center energy costs.”

Washington representatives Kim Schrier and Adam Smith as well as Oregon Rep. Andrea Salinas were among the 20 lawmakers who made the request.

The investigations come amid a general rise in household expenses, making the allocation of utility costs particularly contentious. Residential electricity costs nationwide are on the rise, according to federal data. Power bills rose more than 7% on average when comparing September rates to a year earlier.

But the causes of the increase are complicated. A study this month in a peer-reviewed journal concluded that multiple factors impact electricity prices, including inflation, fluctuating gas prices and natural disasters such as hurricanes, storms and wildfires.

At the GeekWire Gala this week, we spent time talking backstage with five of this year’s Uncommon Thinkers — the inventors, scientists, and entrepreneurs who were selected in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners for their work transforming industries and the world. 

You can hear the full conversations on this week’s episode of the GeekWire Podcast. As I mentioned at the end, I came away with an unexpected sense of optimism. 

Jeff Thornburg of Portal Space Systems spent years building rocket engines for Elon Musk at SpaceX and Paul Allen at Stratolaunch. Now he and his team are reviving a NASA concept from decades ago: spacecraft propelled by focused sunlight.

When I asked what the world will look like “if Portal succeeds,” he made a classic entrepreneurial pivot: “When we’re successful,” he said, “we become the backbone of Earth-Moon logistics.” 

From there, he said, it’s about protecting orbits for commerce, supporting human presence on the moon, and eventually pushing out to Jupiter’s moons.

[Read the profile.] 

Anindya Roy of Lila Biologics is using AI to design proteins from scratch — molecules that have never existed in nature — to fight cancer. He trained in David Baker’s Nobel Prize-winning lab at UW, so he saw the before and after of machine learning’s impact on the field.

Before: success rates below 1%, ordering hundreds of thousands of designs to find one that worked. Now: 5-20% success rates, ordering a few hundred designs to find a drug candidate. 

“If you told me a couple of years ago that we can design an antibody from a computer, I would not believe you,” he said.

[Read the profile.]

Jay Graber of Bluesky runs the decentralized social network that has  become a leading alternative to X. But while most tech CEOs build moats, she and her team are building a protocol designed to help users leave. 

She talks about Bluesky and the underlying AT Protocol as a “collective organism,” and describes her role as guiding and stewarding the ecosystem rather than controlling it.

The industry and the world would be better off, she says, if leaders would think about their role “more as guides and stewards, rather than just dictators or emperors as they like to style themselves.”

[Read the profile.]

Kiana Ehsani of Vercept came to Seattle from Iran for her PhD, spent four years at the Allen Institute for AI, and is now competing with OpenAI and Google in the AI agent space with a fraction of their resources.

The ultimate vision is to help people move beyond mouse, keyboard, and touchscreen, letting them interact with computers the way they’d talk to a coworker.

AI agents are still early, she cautions. “Think of ChatGPT three years ago. Don’t think of it today.” Her advice for getting started with AI agents: “Start small, start with simple tasks that you don’t want to do, and then slowly build on top of it to see the magic.”

[Read the profile.]

Brian Pinkard of Aquagga is tackling forever chemicals, the PFAS compounds that have spread through our water, food chain, and bloodstreams. The industry standard is to filter them out and then landfill or incinerate the waste, approaches that don’t truly solve the problem and can simply move it elsewhere.

Aquagga uses technology originally designed to destroy chemical weapons to break PFAS down into inert salts under extreme heat and pressure. Pinkard didn’t believe it was possible until he saw the data. “I’m a skeptic, I’m cynical, I’m a scientist,” he said. “I wanted to see proof.”

His bigger vision is to transform hazardous waste processing entirely. Today, huge volumes of wastewater are trucked to incinerators and burned — which he calls “thermodynamic insanity.”

[Read the profile.]

We’ll speak on a future episode with our sixth honoree, Chet Kittleson, co-founder and CEO of Tin Can, the startup making WiFi-enabled landline phones to help kids connect without screens.

Uncommon Thinkers is presented in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners.

Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Audio editing by Curt Milton.

“All this started with a really hot summer day in ’21,” said Chris Muench, sitting in a small conference room at Hyviva, his startup based in Redmond, Wash.

The Pacific Northwest was being scorched in a heat dome and Muench’s power went out at his home in nearby Duvall. The experience led him to purchase solar panels, but he also wanted to capture the excess power that was generated when the sun was shining its brightest, socking it away for when it wasn’t.

That led Muench and his wife, Sanja, to launch Hyviva in 2023. While many companies use the excess solar power to charge traditional batteries that hold the energy, this startup is harnessing the surplus power to turn water into hydrogen and storing that. The hydrogen is then turned back into energy via fuel cells when the electricity is needed.

This month, the business is shipping its first devices to customers.

Hyviva is initially targeting residential solar installations, a potentially ripe market as long-standing policies allowing homeowners to sell their unneeded solar power back to utilities are being phased out in many places. That excess power can total 20% or more of a household’s daily energy generation, according to a solar trade group.

“That’s the catalyst for storage,” said Paul Owen, chief marketing officer. “You’ve got this opportunity that’s going to waste right now.”

Stored solar power can also reduce a home’s reliance on utility-provided electricity — which is getting more expensive — and keep the lights on and fridge running during power outages.

A hydrogen storage solution

Hyviva’s device is a little narrower than a standard refrigerator, built from stacked units with a shiny black casing. Here’s how it works:

• Water plumbed into the system goes into an electrolyzer that splits it into hydrogen and oxygen. The excess energy from the solar panels essentially powers the electrolyzer.
• The hydrogen flows into slender, stainless steel tanks containing a metal that binds the gas, forming a metal hydride that stores the hydrogen.
• When power is needed, the metal hydride is heated, releasing the hydrogen that flows into fuel cells that convert it to electricity.
• All of the electrical and plumbing hardware are integrated into the structure of the unit, so installation requires little skilled labor.
• Because of their modularity, the systems are easy to expand to increase storage capacity.

“Every module can be plugged into another module without the need of a hydrogen expert,” Chris Muench said. “Just ‘Lego brick’ them together, and then you decide how much power draw do you want, how much storage do you want, how much hydrogen you want to generate.”

The Hyviva technology connects to an existing solar system’s inverter, which manages electricity flow. The startup’s software then optimizes the flow of energy into the home, balancing inputs from the grid, solar panels and the storage device.

The five-person company is promoting its technology online and was at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas last January. Hyviva’s initial customers are in Europe and the first units are being built in Germany. The startup can also do manufacturing in Redmond for U.S. customers.

Costs and competition

Hyviva’s biggest U.S. rival is the Tesla Powerwall system that uses conventional lithium-ion batteries to hold power. The company reported $7.4 billion in revenue last year from energy generation, and that number has continued to climb.

Hyviva touts its product’s competitive features across performance, safety and longevity. The startup’s basic system holds more power — 33.6 kilowatt hours to Tesla’s 13.5 kWh. While blazes are uncommon, lithium ion batteries pose a fire risk that’s greater than the hydrogen present in a Hyviva device for short periods. And conventional batteries lose capacity over time, while the metal hydride retains its hydrogen storage capabilities for decades.

The startup, however, faces big hurdles when it comes to costs.

Tesla’s Powerwall 3 costs roughly $15,000, including the system and installation costs, while a Hyviva unit is priced at about $40,000.

But when it comes to scaling the storage capacity, the cost advantage flips as it’s cheaper and easier to add hydrogen storage to the Hyviva system. So a 90-kilowatt hour setup is about $50,000 for the startup, while the company estimates a comparable Tesla system would cost $82,000 installed.

To put the capacity in perspective, a U.S. single-family household consumes around 80 kilowatt hours of power per day on average. The cost benefits of the larger deployments continue amplifying for commercial- and industrial-scale applications, the company said.

The broader picture

As power demand keeps expanding globally, experts estimate that $1.2 trillion worth of battery energy storage will be needed through 2034. That escalating need is reflected in pockets of growth in the sector, including a Texas startup called Base Power that leases batteries to homeowners and recently announced $1 billion in new funding. And energy storage is being paired with data centers to reduce their power grid impacts, including at an Oregon campus that’s installing 31 megawatts of batteries.

At the same time, Hyviva and others face political headwinds at the federal level as the current administration pushes policies and budgets that hobble renewable energy companies and deployments.

But the startup is attracting interest, said Chief Operations Officer John Traynor. It has funding from an angel investor and reports having dozens of potential customers, with commercial sites and utilities reaching out as well.

“That’s given us the confidence that we’re on the right track,” Traynor said.

Editor’s note: Story updated to elaborate on how the energy storage system works.