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As Winter Storm Fern swept across the United States in late January 2026, bringing ice, snow, and freezing temperatures, it left more than a million people without power, mostly in the Southeast. Scrambling to meet higher than average demand, PJM, the nonprofit company that operates the grid serving much of the mid-Atlantic U.S., asked for federal permission to generate more power, even if it caused high levels of air pollution from burning relatively dirty fuels. Energy Secretary Chris Wright agreed and took another step, too. He authorized PJM and ERCOTthe company that manages the Texas power gridas well as Duke Energy, a major electricity supplier in the Southeast, to tell data centers and other large power-consuming businesses to turn on their backup generators. The goal was to make sure there was enough power available to serve customers as the storm hit. Generally, these facilities power themselves and do not send power back to the grid. But Wright explained that their industrial diesel generators could generate 35 gigawatts of power, or enough electricity to power many millions of homes. We are scholars of the electricity industry who live and work in the Southeast. In the wake of Winter Storm Fern, we see opportunities to power data centers with less pollution while helping communities prepare for, get through, and recover from winter storms. Data centers use enormous quantities of energy Before Wrights order, it was hard to say whether data centers would reduce the amount of electricity they take from the grid during storms or other emergencies. This is a pressing question, because data centers power demands to support generative artificial intelligence are already driving up electricity prices in congested grids like PJMs. And data centers are expected to need only more power. Estimates vary widely, but the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab anticipates that the share of electricity production in the U.S. used by data centers could spike from 4.4% in 2023 to between 6.7% and 12% by 2028. PJM expects a peak load growth of 32 gigawatts by 2030enough power to supply 30 million new homes, but nearly all going to new data centers. PJMs job is to coordinate that energyand figure out how much the public, or others, should pay to supply it. The race to build new data centers and find the electricity to power them has sparked enormous public backlash about how data centers will inflate household energy costs. Other concerns are that power-hungry data centers fed by natural gas generators can hurt air quality, consume water, and intensify climate damage. Many data centers are located, or proposed, in communities already burdened by high levels of pollution. Local ordinances, regulations created by state utility commissions, and proposed federal laws have tried to protect ratepayers from price hikes and require data centers to pay for the transmission and generation infrastructure they need. Always-on connections? In addition to placing an increasing burden on the grid, many data centers have asked utility companies for power connections that are active 99.999% of the time. But since the 1970s, utilities have encouraged demand response programs, in which large power users agree to reduce their demand during peak times like Winter Storm Fern. In return, utilities offer financial incentives such as bill credits for participation. Over the years, demand response programs have helped utility companies and power grid managers lower electricity demand at peak times in summer and winter. The proliferation of smart meters allows residential customers and smaller businesses to participate in these efforts as well. When aggregated with rooftop solar, batteries and electric vehicles, these distributed energy resources can be dispatched as virtual power plants. A different approach The terms of data center agreements with local governments and utilities often arent available to the public. That makes it hard to determine whether data centers could or would temporarily reduce their power use. In some cases, uninterrupted access to power is necessary to maintain critical data systems, such as medical records, bank accounts and airline reservation systems. Yet, data center demand has spiked with the AI boom, and developers have increasingly been willing to consider demand response. In August 2025, Google announced new agreements with Indiana Michigan Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority to provide data center demand response by targeting machine learning workloads, shifting non-urgent compute tasks away from times when the grid is strained. Several new companies have also been founded specifically to help AI data centers shift workloads and even use in-house battery storage to temporarily move data centers power use off the grid during power shortages. Flexibility for the future One study has found that if data centers would commit to using power flexibly, an additional 100 gigawatts of capacitythe amount that would power around 70 million householdscould be added to the grid without adding new generation and transmission. In another instance, researchers demonstrated how data centers could invest in offsite generation through virtual power plants to meet their generation needs. Installing solar panels with battery storage at businesses and homes can boost available electricity more quickly and cheaply than building a new full-size power plant. Virtual power plants also provide flexibility as grid operators can tap into batteries, shift thermostats or shut down appliances in periods of peak demand. These projects can also benefit the buildings where they are hosted. Distributed energy generation and storage, alongside winterizing power lines and using renewables, are key ways to help keep the lights on during and after winter storms. Those efforts can make a big difference in places like Nashville, Tennessee, where more than 230,000 customers were without power at the peak of outages during Fern, not because there wasnt enough electricity for their homes but because their power lines were down. The future of AI is uncertain. Analysts caution that the AI industry may prove to be a speculative bubble: If demand flatlines, they say, electricity customers may end up paying for grid improvements and new generation built to meet needs that would not actually exist. Onsite diesel generators are an emergency solution for large users such as data centers to reduce strain on the grid. Yet, this is not a long-term solution to winter storms. Instead, if data centers, utilities, regulators and grid operators are willing to also consider offsite distributed energy to meet electricity demand, then their investments could help keep energy prices down, reduce air pollution and harm to the climate, and help everyone stay powered up during summer heat and winter cold. Nikki Luke is an assistant professor of human geography at the University of Tennessee. Conor Harrison is an associate professor of economic geography at the University of South Carolina. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
In 2024, the clean energy sector saw a job boom: The industry added nearly 100,000 new jobs throughout that year, meaning clean energy jobs grew more than three times faster than the rest of the workforce. Last year was a different story, however. It was a year of losses for the clean energy industry, in terms of projects, investments, and employment. Existing factories closed, like Natron Energys sodium-ion battery facilities in Michigan and California. Planned facilities were canceled, including a $3.2 billion Stellantis battery factory in Illinois. And multiple kinds of projects were scrapped, blocked, or downsized, from EV plants to wind farms. In total, the turbulent year meant that 38,000 jobsa mix of current and future positionswere erased from the clean energy industry, according to a new analysis by E2, a nonpartisan organization that tracks U.S. clean energy projects. A net loss of clean energy jobs The vast majority of those 38,000 lost jobs were in manufacturing (though some may have been counted in multiple categories, like energy generation or maintenance). For comparison, by the end of 2024, there were about 577,000 manufacturing jobs in the clean energy industry. These job losses are especially significant because theyre happening amid a general decline in manufacturing employment. In 2024, clean energy manufacturing had been a “bright spot,” says Michael Timberlake, E2 director of research and publications, helping bring back U.S. production. “When those projects are canceled, were not just losing jobs on paper; were losing a pathway that had been driving a new manufacturing resurgence,” he says. “And the investment doesnt disappear. It moves to other countries and U.S. competitors that are aggressively building clean energy supply chains and hiring the workers we cant afford to lose.” Even amid cancellations, some new clean energy projects and jobs were announced in 2025, like a $42 million Anthro Energy battery factory in Louisville, Kentucky, which will create 110 jobs. But the number of jobs eliminated outweighs those potential additions. Just 22,905 jobs were announced in 2025, meaning a net loss of more than 15,000 expected clean energy positions. No previous year tracked by E2 saw job losses on this scale, underscoring how quickly employment gains can evaporate when projects are abandoned, the analysis reads. New clean energy investments were also overshadowed by cancellations. Companies canceled, closed, or downsized $34.8 billion in clean energy projects, nearly three times the $12.3 billion in new investment announced throughout the year, a 3-to-1 imbalance. Republican-held districts hit harder Though the entire country was affected by these losses, Republican-held districts felt their impact a bit more than others. Republican districts lost $19.9 billion in investments that would have brought 24,500 jobs to those regions, compared to $10.6 billion and 12,600 jobs lost in Democratic-held districts. That makes sense because the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed by then-President Joe Biden in 2022which spurred clean energy jobs and projectsbenefited many Republican-led districts, even though not a single Republican voted for the legislation and in fact House Republicans voted 42 times to repeal it. Nearly 200,000 of the 334,000 clean energy jobs that the IRA created in its first two years were in congressional districts represented by Republican House members. Still, clean energy is growing Despite attacks on clean energy by the current Trump administration, the sector is still growing in the United States. In 2025, nearly all of the new power added to the countrys grid came from solar, wind, and batteries. Even the U.S. Energy Information Administration has said that all net new generating capacity the country sees in 2026 will come from renewables. And clean energy experts say the industry will continue to groweven as the president tries to prop up coal, oil, and gasbecause electricity generated from renewables is cheaper than fossil fuels, and the projects are often faster to build than fossil fuel power plants. Still, economic losses that the clean energy sector saw in 2025 are devastating, and may not be fully recovered. And if clean energy job growth is at risk, that affects our entire economy. Clean energy jobs are present in every single state, and, as the World Resources Institute put it in November, movement toward clean energy will create opportunity for millions of Americans. E2’s data also doesn’t capture the “tens of thousands of additional jobs and projects” that likely would have been announced if the country’s policy and market certainty continued, Timberlake says. “Likely hundreds of projects that would have been announced, and hundreds more that could’ve been announced this year, cannot be recovered,” he adds, “and will instead benefiting workers and communities in other countries.”
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E-Commerce
Bob Iger doesn’t understand generative AI. He thinks it is good for the quarterly bottom line. He believes a corporation can control it and that lawyers and agreements can bind it. He is clueless. Generative AI is here to kill Hollywoodincluding the company hes now leaving to Josh DAmaro, the new heir to Disney’s throne. This became painfully clear to me during Disney’s recent first-quarter financial call. Taking a victory lap for his modernization efforts, he briefly laid out the road map for the company’s partnership with OpenAI, announced in December 2025. Under the agreement, Disney would invest $1 billion in the artificial intelligence company and let it tap Disney’s IP crown jewels so Sora users can make clips of Donald Trump wearing an Iron Man suit battling Jafar dressed as an Iranian Ayatollah. Heres Igers plan as stated: Step oneflood Disney+ with Sora 2 generated vertical videos capped at 30 seconds. Iger views this as a positive step that will jump-start the platform’s ability to compete with the dopamine-loop short-form content of TikTok and YouTube. There is no Step 2. At least not yet. For the last 15 years, Iger has been on a quest to find the silver bullet that keeps Disney relevant deep into the 21st century. He bought Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and Fox. Now, as he leaves Cinderellas castle behind, he clearly views this Sora partnership as the final move that allows him to leave the company future-proofed. During the call, Iger all but carved this philosophy in stone for DAmaro. I believe that in the world that changes as much as it does that in some form or another, trying to preserve the status quo is a mistake, and Im certain that my successor will not do that, Iger said. Theyll be handed, I think, a good hand in terms of the strength of the company, [and a] number of opportunities to grow. But to say curated AI slop provides a number of opportunities to grow is an Epcot-sized ball of naiveté. Iger’s intention to evolve Disney is correct; stagnation is indeed death, as any Harvard Business School freshman will recite. But his strategy fails to understand the nature of the beast he has invited into the Magic Kingdom. Iger is talking about generative AI like a new distribution channel or a camera lensa tool that can be kept in a walled garden to serve a corporate master. But AI is not a tool; it is a solvent. It dissolves the barriers between creator and consumer, between professional and amateur, and ultimately, between value and noise. A new plan for Disney D’Amaro is walking into a wall of noise that is going to get increasingly harder to break through as generative content continues to take over our feeds. Disney’s saving grace could be that D’Amaro, a man who built his career overseeing the company’s theme parks and experiences, likely understands the value of true physical, human-driven innovation. Expanding those experiences, as Iger said on the call, will be Disney’s focus in the years to come. It makes perfect sense. Disneys Experiences segment outperformed the Entertainment segment in Q1 2026 by a factor of almost three. While entertainment revenue reached $11.61 billion, high content production and marketing costs for major releases caused its operating income to plunge 35% to $1.1 billion. In contrast, the Experiences segment posted record revenue of $10.01 billion with an operating income of $3.31 billion, accounting for roughly 71% of Disney’s total segment operating profit for the quarter. Its telling that the physical experience and its human factor, beat the cumulus of film and TV re-fried franchise releases. D’Amaro has the opportunity to set a strategy that could make Disney thrive. He has the track record to do it. D’Amaro’s experience isnt limited to running a theme park. He secured the throne partly because he championed Disney’s $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games and Fortnite. He seemingly understands the digital generation. Now the question is, will he see the Sora deal for what it is? Disney’s agreement with OpenAI is a three-year deal, with a one-year exclusivity clause that opens Disney to close deals with, say, Kuaishou Technology, the Chinese makers of Kling. In corporate time, three years is a blink. But for Generative AIwhere time is measured in yellow dogs yearsit is an epoch. By the time this contract expires, the havoc AI will have wreaked on the entertainment industry won’t be something you can negotiate away. This is a pivotal moment that DAmaro needs to address now, even if it goes against the stock market algorithms and the vision of a Wall Street-revered old man now sailing into the sunset on his gilded version of the Black Pearl. Iger’s AI strategy Iger outlined three pillars for this AI strategy at his call: Creativity (assisting the process) Productivity (efficiency, read: cost-cutting) Connectivity (a “more intimate relationship” with the consumer). His vision is a Disney+ where you don’t just watch Frozen; you generate a 30-second clip of Olaf dancing in your living room. Exciting. The financial sector, predictable as ever, applauded at the mere thought of Disney embracing AI. When the Sora deal was announced, many analysts like Citi Research Media Analyst Jason Bazinet called this a masterful move: A strategic defense, and a way to monetize IP that would otherwise be scrapped for free. Bazinet believes this agreement codifies what specific IP can be used (animated characters) and what form the output can take (i.e. short-form video). This will both protect actors/actresses in Hollywood and prevent cannibalization of Disneys long-form Film and TV output. Outside the boardroo, things arent so La La Land. The unions that work in the “Creativity” pillar view Igers AI strategy as a betrayal, framing it as a Trojan Horse that normalizes the technology that is intended to replace them. The Writers Guild of America said that [the partnership] seems to endorse the platform’s appropriation of their work while diminishing the value of their creations for the benefit of a tech corporation. Igers idea of “Productivity” is just corporate speak for employing fewer humans. Jobs are going to be lost, as filmmaker Tyler Perry said after the news. Perry saw the writing on the wall a long time ago, halting an $800 million studio expansion after seeing the first version of Sora. If you can generate a location, you don’t need to build it. If you can generate a performance, you don’t need to film it. Disney has been cutting jobs in the film, television, and finance department, but none related yet to its AI initiatives, mainly in post-production.. And as for Connectivity, consumers are all well served, thank you very much. Anyone who has surfed YouTube, TikTok, Discord, Instagram, X, or Reddit, knows they are overflowing with AI-generated videos. There are not enough Avengers, Baby Yodas, and Mickey Mice in the world to win this war of content. And the more time that passes, the less chance Disney has at winning that war with the same tools as the enemy is using. Disney is adopting Sora to fight a battle in its own walled garden, limited to its famous-but-limited IP. By definition, it cant compete against the entire planet creating universes of infinitely-expanding generated content. Horizon events Iger seems to believe that by partnering with OpenAI, Disney has bought safety. Somehow, he thinks this buys Disney control over the beast. But OpenAI does not control generative AI. Altman is a chump compared to the combined power of the companies cooking generative AI video technology in China. Generative AI is, right now, an all-powerful being who doesnt care about corporate deals. Igers remarks remind me of that viral 1999 Newsnight interview with David Bowie, where he laughed at the interviewer who thought the Internet was just a tool. No Bob, Bowie would have told Iger today, AI is not a tool. Its an alien lifeform. Experts warned me of this moment in 2023. Tom GrahamCEO of Metaphysic, a firm dedicated to protecting actors and regular people against AI clones told me that we were approaching a horizon of events where reality would evaporate. Gil PerryCEO of AI avatar firm D-IDpredicted that within one or two years, we wouldn’t be able to distinguish truth from lies. Emad Mostaqueco-founder of Stability AItold me that within a decade, wed create anything in real-time with visual perfection. They were all correct, but far too conservative. We didnt need a decade. We barely needed three years. Which, in itself, is a testimony of the true power of AI and its ability to change reality and content as we know it. Today, early 2026, we have crossed that horizon. The uncanny valley, which allowed us to instinctively distinguish fake AI from real, is permanently closed. Models like Sora 2 and Googles Veo 3 more than often produce video indistinguishable from reality for short clips. But the real threat to Disney isn’t the partner they paid $1 billion to; its the technology they didn’t buy. Open-source platforms like Wan 2.6made by Chinese company Alibabaare already running on consumer hardware, offering multi-shot storytelling and character consistency that rivals the closed systems of Silicon Valley. The technology is wild, uncensored, and free. It doesn’t care about Disneys copyright. It doesn’t care about walled gardens. It is creating a Big Bang of content where a teenager in a basement can generate a film that looks as expensive as a Marvel blockbuster. The dilution of magic And this is where Igers gamble truly falls apart. He assumes that in this world of infinite, picture-perfect content, Disneys IP will remain king. And why? Disney has spent the last decade systematically exhausting its brand equity. We are drowning in the umpteenth Star Wars spinoff and the 50th Marvel phase. The brand fatigue is palpable. Why would people, except the hard-core fanboys, choose to consume frozen-TV-dinner clips of the same old stuff again and again? How can the acceleration of this IPs exhaustion, allowing users to churn out AI-slopped versions of these characters, help Disney? Iger thinks adding curated user-generated noise to Disney+ is a value-add, failing to see it for what it is: the final commoditization of its former magic. Why would the current and future generations care about a sanitized, 30-second Mickey Mouse clip on Disney+ when they can go to an open platform and generate their own universe, tailored specifically to their own desires, with characters that feel just as real but are completely new? Change course or sink If theres anything I can be sure of is that the history of the internetfrom YouTube to TikTokteaches us one thing: The audience craves the new, the raw, and the personal. They are moving away from the polished, corporate monoliths. By integrating Sora 2, Iger isn’t saving Disney; he is training his audience to accept synthetic media, accelerating the very shift that renders legacy studios obsolete. Bob Iger is right that you have to change or die. But by betting that he can ride the tiger of generative AI without being eaten, he may have just opened the cage door for good. Perhaps D’Amaro, the man of the physical Disney, can save the House of Mouse from the digital trap Iger has set for him. If the future of content is infinite, cheap, and synthetic, the only true luxury left is the human touch. D’Amaro has the chance to zag where the rest of the industry is zigging. He can double down on the one thing AI cannot simulatethe spark of human genius that birthed this company in the first place. Instead of competing with teenagers in garages on AI speed, hire them to do what Walt Disney himself did: Invent new mythologies. Create your own technologies. Craft truly new, bold stories born from the messiness of the human spirit, not the probability curves of a model trained on the past. Reclaim the experience not just as a theme park ride, but as the act of witnessing something undeniably, beautifully human. That is the only magic trick left that an algorithm cant replicate.
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E-Commerce
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