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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

In Virginia—home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers—rising electricity consumption from data centers actually prevented prices from rising as much as they otherwise would have between 2019 and 2024, according to the report.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

North Dakota is the only state in the US that didn’t see its electricity prices rise between 2019 and 2024. Over that period, rates actually fell in inflation-adjusted terms.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

This was surprising to me: In states with the highest electricity demand growth—from sources like data centers—electricity prices actually fell over the last 5 years. Totally opposite of the prevailing narrative that data centers raise electricity prices. 🧵

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Meta is also working on a data center in Louisiana that would be twice the size of its Ohio data center. The floorspace will be about half the size of lower Manhattan. At peak power, Hyperion will consume about half as much electricity as the entire city of New York.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

To build its first 1 GW data center, Meta is sticking thousands of $60k NVIDIA GPUs in tents in Ohio. That might sound crazy, but it's cut the time to build in half. The first few buildings at its site in Ohio took 2-3 years to build. The tents will take less than a year.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

The only hyperscaler that isn't working on a giga-scale data center in the US is Google. Instead, they've built a distributed cluster of 4 data centers connected by fiber on the border of Nebraska and Iowa. By 2026, the cluster will have 1 GW of capacity.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Stargate isn’t the only gigawatt-scale project progressing quickly in the US either. Amazon recently finished the first phase of a data center in Indiana that will eventually use 2.2 GW of power. The first phase (525 MW) took a bit more than a year to build.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Another way to understand the scale of the project is to compare the 1.2 GW of peak demand the facility will use to that of one of the nearest utilities. El Paso Electric, a utility that serves 465,000 customers west of the project, has a peak system load of 2.4 GW.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

It’s hard to really put the scale of this project in perspective. One way to do it is to look at the project from space. The satellite image below shows Stargate’s first two buildings. Each of those tiny little dots is a construction worker's car. There are 6,000 of them.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

OpenAI’s Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas is one such project. Just over a year ago, the project was nothing more than some permits and a few hundred acres of dirt in West Texas. Today there are 100,000 of NVIDIA’s most advanced chips consuming 200 MW of power.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, tech companies have spent huge sums of money building data centers. In just three years, spending on data centers in the US has gone from $13.8 billion to $41.2 billion per year—an increase of 200%.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

In the coming weeks, the Senate will decide the fate of clean energy in America. So I decided to crunch some numbers and see how much solar, wind, and storage capacity has been built in each Senators' state.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

This week, Republicans released their budget bill that aims to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. I analyzed every clean energy project that has been built since the IRA passed—3,570 in all. The proposed budget bill would hurt Republican districts the most. www.distilled.earth/p/the-republ...

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

93% of solar panel imports came from just 6 countries in 2024. These countries have some of the highest tariffs going forward.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

How are tariffs going to impact the solar market in the US? At Cleanview we just published a new dataset and dashboard to help folks understand the potential impact of the latest tariffs. Here are a few takeaways from the data: cleanview.co/content/sola...

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

We're tracking hundreds of planned clean energy projects and 400+ developer pipelines at Cleanview. More on our clean energy project tracker here: cleanview.co

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Texas will add more battery storage capacity in 2025 than any other state. Developers plan to build 7 GW of new capacity—as much as the entire US built in 2023.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

One of the most overlooked energy stories of 2024: Battery storage grew 65% last year, with the U.S. adding 10.9 GW of new capacity. And growth is accelerating—we're on track for 18.1 GW in 2025, a 68% increase. Just 5 years ago, this technology was considered experimental.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

One of the most promising clean energy trends over the last year has been the growth of solar in Republican states in the South. - AR added 943 MW of capacity (99% vs. 2023). - MS added 794 MW of capacity (647% vs. 2023). - LA added 726 MW of capacity (230% vs. 2023). cleanview.co/annual-repor...

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Texas is going to build a massive amount of solar this year. It's worth noting that 80% of the capacity (~9 GW) in the chart below is already under construction and therefore protected against Trump's recent orders.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Beyond 2025, no one knows with certainty what will happen to clean energy in America. Most clean energy is being built in counties that voted for Trump. Traditional political economy / theory would say it'd be unpopular to repeal the clean energy tax credits.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Solar also started to boom in the sunny South in states that have, up until now, been slow to adopt the technology. Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana all saw solar surge in 2024. It’s worth noting that these are all deep red states.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

But solar’s growth was far from evenly distributed. Texas added the most capacity, bringing 8.9 GW of new capacity online. Florida added the second most capacity (~3 GW). The Sunshine State added more solar capacity than California (2.5 GW) for the first time.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Few states were untouched by this solar boom. As the map below shows, developers built utility-scale solar projects in 45 different states, everywhere from Florida to Maine to Hawaii.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

In 2024, the star of the clean energy show was without a doubt solar energy. The U.S. added 32.1 GW of new utility-scale solar capacity in 2024. Annual solar capacity additions rose by 65% in 2024 compared to 2023 when the country added 19.5 GW.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

While the scale of clean energy’s growth in 2024 was remarkable, the fact that clean capacity grew isn't all that surprising. What was shocking to me, however, was just how much of the new power capacity that came online in 2024 was clean. 95% of new capacity was carbon-free.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Over the last few months, I've been analyzing data on clean energy trends in America. Today I published a report with ~50 trends that I found in my research. One major takeaway: The U.S. added 47% more clean energy in 2024 than the year before. cleanview.co/annual-repor...

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Moss Landing, the largest battery in the US caught fire yesterday. A journalist just asked me, "Are batteries safe?" I told him the fossil fuel plants batteries replace kill 1,000s of people in the US / year. Batteries aren't perfect. But they're way better than coal/gas.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Mark Zuckerberg: "Companies need more masculine energy." Meanwhile, there are more Fortune 500 CEOs named John than there are Fortune 500 CEOs who are women. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Another takeaway from my upcoming 2024 clean energy trends report: The US added a huge amount of battery capacity to the grid in 2024. But the vast majority of it was built in just 4 states: California, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

New data from a report I'm working on: The U.S. added a record amount of solar capacity in 2024. The country added 34 GW of utility-scale solar, which is 74% more than last year's record year.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

2024 was another record-breaking year for clean energy in the U.S. Here are some stats from an upcoming report I'm working on for Cleanview: - 96% of new power capacity was carbon-free - 74% more solar added vs. 2023 - 99% more battery capacity added vs. 2023

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

California's insurer of last resort, FAIR, has seen its exposure explode in recent years. Between Sept 2023 and 2024, it grew by 61%. Total exposure now sits at ~$450 billion.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Last year State Farm dropped 70% of their customers in Pacific Palisades. As of Sept. 2024, the state's insurer of last resort program had $5.9 billion of exposure in the area. www.cfpnet.com/key-statisti...

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

Some thoughtful responses / critiques of my critique from @triofrancos.bsky.social here. And my response. Ah the joys of using two social platforms!

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

The main idea of this piece—and many similar op-eds published recently—is that to win voters Democrats need to embrace "green economic populism." We need bold climate policy + everything from "universal health insurance to universal prekindergarten and affordable child care."

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

I will never be able to look at a Cybertruck the same after seeing this.

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

American exceptionalism at its finest

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

2024 will go down as the first full year when wind and solar generated more electricity than coal. Our air and water is cleaner, our electricity is cheaper, and our world is better as a result. www.canarymedia.com/articles/cle...

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Today the company gets ~50% of its electricity from renewables. And that's using a "market-based" approach, which is really easy to achieve. You basically just need to buy some cheap RECs from a project anywhere in the world. No hourly or locational matching required!

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

In their statements, Walmart is highlighting the lack of climate solutions in the "hard-to-abate" sectors—basically the stuff that everyone agrees we should focus on last. This is a smart sleight of hand. I read these and thought, "They have a point! We still don't have electric tractors."

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

This year has been full of surprises!

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Some shocking figures from the latest Congressional report on climate change and insurance. Since 2018, more than 1.9 million home insurance contracts nationwide have been dropped. In more than 200 counties, the nonrenewal rate has tripled or more. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Elections have consequences. In Brazil, deforestation rates have fallen by 50% due to Lula's policies. www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/amazon-2024

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Southern states have been slow to build solar over the last decade. But that's slowly starting to change. Last quarter, states in the South built the most solar in the country. And it wasn't just Texas. Louisiana, Georgia, Arkansas, and Kentucky all built a lot. Good trend to see!

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

Some good climate news to start the week: The U.S. built less new gas capacity in 2024 than any year since 1994. Most of it was combustion turbines that are designed to run infrequently to meet peak demand. cleanview.co/data-insight...

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

One of my favorite facts: In 1975 solar panels cost $115 per watt, which means it would have cost $1 million to put solar panels on your roof. Today, you can buy solar panels for less than $0.25 per watt. www.distilled.earth/p/the-remarkabl…

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Michael Thomas @michael-thomas.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Over the last 15 years, one thing and one thing only has helped the U.S. cut emissions: the decarbonization of the electric grid. But recently, that progress has slowed. And in the last year, emissions have risen slightly. We need much more ambition and action. cleanview.co/data-insight...

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