Matteo De Felice

‘A different set of rules’: thermal drone footage shows Musk’s AI power plant flouting clean air regulations Images confirm xAI is continuing to defy EPA regulations in Mississippi to power its flagship datacenters

I am happy that the SMR by TerraPower got the green light to be built in Wyoming.

But let's focus on the "here and now". This article gives a possible example of the current bring-your-own-capacity mentality to power data centres in the US:
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I created this visualisation using 15-minute CAISO data from January 2023 to December 2025 to explore how batteries operate in relation to wind & solar generation and overall grid demand.

A Rational Analysis of the Effects of Sycophantic AI People increasingly use large language models (LLMs) to explore ideas, gather information, and make sense of the world. In these interactions, they encounter agents that are overly agreeable. We…

Don't tell me. Sycophantic AI serves as a personal echo chamber that can actually keep you from finding good ideas. arxiv.org/abs/2602.14270

Native Geospatial Types in Apache Parquet Native Geospatial Types in Apache Parquet

Very very nice.
Apache Parquet has officially introduced native GEOMETRY and GEOGRAPHY logical types.
parquet.apache.org/blog/2026/02...

Why is AI so bad at reading PDFs? One of the most ubiquitous file formats is stumping the major models

From The Verge: "One of the humblest and most ubiquitous file formats is stumping the world’s most advanced models" 👉 www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

Google found a way to connect get its 850MW data center online in Texas in less than two years rather than five. The answer: co-located wind and solar.

www.distilled.earth/p/google-is-...

South Korean farmers sue utility giant KEPCO over climate damage to crops - UPI.com Five farmers in South Korea are plaintiffs in a landmark civil suit against state-owned utility KEPCO for climate-related agricultural damages.

South Korean farmers sue utility giant KEPCO over climate damage to crops: www.upi.com/Top_News/Wor...

‘Daunting but doable’: Europe urged to prepare for 3C of global heating Advisory board member says adapting is ‘not rocket science’ but Europe already paying price for lack of preparation

EU’s climate advisory board (ESABCC) urges countries to prepare for a catastrophic 3C of global heating. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Deluge revives concerns about European food price rises Winter ‘pantry’ depleted as rains devastate crops in Spain, Portugal, France and Morocco

Climate change is not "projected to happen" or "on the horizon", it is not even a news any more.

www.ft.com/content/8504...

Hinkley Point C nuclear plant delayed to 2030 as costs climb to £35bn French utility company EDF says operations in Somerset will start a year later as delay costs firm €2.5bn

Britain’s first new nuclear plant in a generation at the Hinkley Point C site will face further delay, it will begin operations in 2030, a year later than planned: almost 13 years after construction work began www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

I keep coming back to this IPCC chart, and I'm surprised it hasn't become the go-to reference for precipitation extremes. I think it works for two reasons:

1. Clarity and simplicity
2. Honesty about uncertainty: Regions with limited data or low agreement get equal visibility

Electric Vehicle Sales Boom as Ethiopia Bans Fossil-Fuel Car Imports The East African country is making use of cheap hydropower and Chinese electric vehicles to ditch the internal combustion engine.

Ethiopia: In the two years since the ban on internal combustion engine vehicles, EV adoption has grown from less than 1% to nearly 6% of all of the vehicles on the road in the country : www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Kenya launches a carbon registry to boost climate finance and credibility Kenya has launched its first national carbon registry, a centralized system to track carbon credit projects, prevent double counting and strengthen transparency in climate markets.

Kenya launches a carbon registry to boost climate finance and credibility: apnews.com/article/carb...

We tend to think of batteries as the ones in our phones. But the real shift is happening at grid scale.

Utility-scale “mega batteries” now have hundreds of millions of times the capacity of a smartphone battery.

Costs are down ~40% since 2024, and capacity in 2024 was 12x higher than in 2020.

Climate change fuels the destruction of world’s oldest trees – World Weather Attribution From early January 2026 severe wildfires burned through the Andean foothills of central-southern Chile and across northern Patagonia in Argentina, affecting dense native forests, national parks, and…

World Weather Attributions finds that the extreme heat, drought and winds behind the deadly Patagonia wildfires were made up to 3x more likely by human‑driven climate change, showing how rising temperatures are rapidly escalating wildfire risk. www.worldweatherattribution.org/climate-chan...

Anthropic says it’ll try to keep its data centers from raising electricity costs Facing growing backlash over energy-hungry data centers, Anthropic joins other tech companies in its promises to limit costs.

Anthropic says it’ll support efforts to get new power sources online to meet growing electricity demand from AI: www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

Hyperscalers are spending a lot of money.

The world’s largest compressed-air power storage plant started operating in China, an important step in the country’s efforts to expand energy storage to support its green transition.
The 600MW plant has 4 hours of capacity (2.4GWh): www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

‘The land will be left as ashes’: why Patagonia’s wildfires are almost impossible to stop Funding cuts, conspiracy theories and ‘powder keg’ pine plantations have seen January’s forest fires tear through Chubut in southern Argentina

Argentinian government claims that a "human-made climate crisis does not exist" but the wildfires don't agree with that. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

"Credit fund Enosis Capital has sealed an agreement with AXA XL for the insurance giant to provide crucial cover for a new $3 billion wave of 'debt-for-nature' deals, the first of which is expected in the next six to nine months": www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Data centres in the US: it takes too much time to be connected to the power grid (for example, it's 7 years in Virginia right now) and thus companies build their own behind-the-meter power plants to secure the energy in a reasonable time. And the most common technology will be natural gas.

Ben Affleck reveals why AI won't replace writers, and it's brilliant Affleck goes 'Good Will Hunting' on the AI industry, and it's worth three minutes of your time.

Ben Affleck says that AI won't replace writers. Nice reading. storytellingedge.substack.com/p/ben-afflec...

Ben Affleck reveals why AI won't replace writers, and it's brilliant Affleck goes 'Good Will Hunting' on the AI industry, and it's worth three minutes of your time.

Ben Affleck says that AI won't replace writers. Nice reading. storytellingedge.substack.com/p/ben-afflec...

Rijksbouwmeester: ‘Het is een wonder dat we jaarlijks 80.000 huizen bouwen’ Francesco Veenstra (52) is bezig aan zijn laatste maanden als Rijksbouwmeester. Hij vindt dat een nieuw kabinet minder moet focussen op nieuwbouw en de volksgezondheid veel meer aandacht moet…

Rijksbouwmeester Francesco Veenstra: ‘Eigenlijk is het een wonder dat we jaarlijks 80.000 nieuwe woningen bouwen’: fd.nl/samenleving/...

Opinion | When A.I. Took My Job, I Bought a Chain Saw I was now facing the same reality my working-class neighbors knew well: the world had changed, my work had all but disappeared, and still, the bills wouldn’t stop coming.

There are stories able to capture the zeitgeist of our times, this is one: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/o...

I love this title from MIT Review, technology is more and more divisive and polarising topic: www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/14/1...

GDROM v2: An Inventory of Operation Variables Time Series and Rules for 2,017 Large Reservoirs across the CONUS | CUAHSI HydroShare GDROM v2: A Nationwide Inventory of Operation Variables and Rules for 2,017 Large Reservoirs across the CONUS

A new interesting open license on US water reservoirs with daily inflow data: www.hydroshare.org/resource/529...

Data centres consume 4.6 percent of the Netherlands’ electricity In 2024, data centres consumed 5,100 GWh of electricity, which is 4.6 percent of total electricity consumption in the Netherlands.

Data centres consume 4.6 percent of the Netherlands’ electricity. www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2...

Enthusiasm for OpenAI’s Sora Fades After Initial Creative Burst Welcome to Tech In Depth, our daily newsletter about the business of tech from Bloomberg’s journalists around the world. Today, Ellen Huet reports on OpenAI’s video generator, Sora, after an initial…

It seems that the demand for AI video-generation apps has been a bit overestimated. Sora, the OpenAI app, shows very low retention numbers... www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Why energy traders are sceptical of the data centre build-out Some are questioning if electricity demands are being overstated

The FT says that energy traders aren’t fully convinced that data centres will drive a big surge in electricity demand. Forward prices reflect this skepticism. Two reasons:
1. Future data centre growth might be overestimated.
2. Computing is getting more energy-efficient
www.ft.com/content/959f...