C3 Journal on
Essays, evidence, and original arguments from the writers shaping this conversation.
The voices in this section
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Energy
Necessity, the proverb says, is the mother of invention. That indicates that the reason behind most innovations is that they fill a need. Many of us have a different, more modern way to explain that same observation: free markets work. People see a need, and they innovate to fill it, often crafting a new product or service.
Energy
The surge in AI and data centers risks driving up electricity demand faster than we can deploy the power lines needed to carry it. The high-voltage transmission that this expansion, and economic growth more broadly, relies on is slow and expensive to develop, and stuck in an outdated regulatory system that often hands the work to local utilities without competition. New analysis from the R Street Institute shows what this costs us, finding that, when transmission projects are open to competitive bidding, they get built cheaper and faster.
Energy
The term “moon shot” was launched in the 1940s, according to research by the Oxford English Dictionary. “The real result of all the work which would have to go into the moon shot,” Rotarian magazine wrote in 1949, “would be the knowledge of how to build and operate rockets of such size.”
Infrastructure
Developing and commercializing new metal alloys is a slow and expensive process. As a result, companies in sectors such as aerospace, defense, and energy often rely on established materials, even when they lack the performance required to build next-generation products. To address this challenge, Foundation Alloy is developing a new class of advanced alloys based on metals.
Energy
With the AI and data boom underway, electricity has become the top economic infrastructure for growth. Electricity has long been foundational to our society, powering our homes and businesses, but now, it is the primary infrastructure on which the digital economy, advanced manufacturing and an American industrial resurgence depend.
Energy
Two bills recently passed by the U.S. House—H.R.5631, the Geothermal Energy Advancement Act, and H.R.1687, the CLEAN Act—take direct aim at this regulatory dysfunction. Together, they represent a consequential step toward realizing the full extent of the geothermal opportunity as the legislation now moves to the Senate for consideration.
Energy
Since 1998, the federal government has paid nuclear reactor owners more than$10.6 billion in court-ordered damages over a broken contract of its own making. The tab grows by roughly $2 million a day, and total federal exposure may eventually reach $39.2 billion. The cause isn’t a safety failure or a market collapse but rather political failures.
Energy
America’s electric grid is facing a structural breaking point. Trillions of dollars of artificial intelligence infrastructure, data centers, and industrial reshoring demand power today, but traditional high-voltage transmission upgrades take five to seven years to deliver firm capacity. Under the status quo, large energy consumers are forced to wait in line, threatening stymied global leadership and lost economic growth.
Energy
Last week, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad and consisting of the United States, India, Japan, and Australia, met in New Delhi and hammered out, among other things, a Quad Critical Minerals Initiative Framework.
Energy
Nuclear energy is safe, clean, reliable, and scalable. It can power the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, revitalize industrial communities, and help meet our environmental ambitions. So why does building a nuclear plant in the United States cost so much?
