Selected ENERGY NEWS December 2025
Battery Storage
ConEd is testing whether small, in-home batteries can take pressure off New York City’s grid during summer peaks. (Canary Media)
In a pilot with Standard Potential, 65 household ACs are being wired to portable battery units that discharge during high-demand periods. Participants get $100/unit for the season, funded by ConEd’s demand-reduction payments.
Utility perspective: ConEd sees potential to scale the program to avoid firing up expensive, polluting peakers. The utility is also considering pairing batteries with electric heat pumps in the winter. Source: Energy Central
Nuclear Waste
The EPA signed off on DOE’s plan to excavate two more storage panels at New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the only permanent US burial site for radioactive materials. Each new panel will have seven rooms, each the length of a football field, boosting capacity lost after a 2014 drum rupture forced a years-long shutdown.
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/12/epa-nuclear-waste-new-mexico
Commercial Heat Pumps
from Grist: https://grist.org/energy/installing-heat-pumps-in-factories-could-save-1-5-trillion-and-77000-lives/
Author’s summary:
“Installing heat pumps in factories could save $1.5 trillion and 77,000 lives.”
Full of good news this morning.
“A new report finds that replacing conventional boilers with heat pumps could also avoid 33 million asthma attacks by 2050, thanks to improved air quality.”
Pivoting from a focus on wonderfully efficient residential heat pumps, ‘attention is turning toward industries that burn fossil fuels in boilers to process food, textiles, and a bevy of other goods.’
Here’s the rub: “In addition to producing almost a quarter of the nation’s directly emitted greenhouse gases, the manufacturing sector loads the atmosphere with toxicants, including nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and PM 2.5—particulate matter smaller than 2.5 millionths of a meter—which all cause extensive and severe health problems.”
A new report from the American Lung Association [ALA] finds…replacing 33,500 conventional, combustion-based boilers nationwide with this electric alternative could avoid 77,200 premature deaths, 33 million asthma attacks, and more than 200,000 new asthma cases by 2050, not to mention ‘save $1.1 trillion in health costs in that period and prevent $351 billion in climate damages.’ As a physician, I appreciate that “by shifting to zero-emissions technologies that aren’t burning fuel—but they’re producing the same heat, steam, and boiling water that’s needed to fulfill these manufacturing needs—we can see these massive public health benefits.”
Just that 1 pollutant, PM 2.5 particulates, can bypass our body’s defenses + ‘go deep’ into our lungs + actually pass into our bloodstream.
Author’s comment: “Just last week, “scientists estimated that the massive blazes in Los Angeles in January may have killed 15 times as many people as the official tally, considering the deaths that may have been due to smoke inhalation but weren’t recognized as such.” Thus, heat pumps can save energy, the air, and lives.” Source: Energy Central, August 15, 2025
Geothermal: How Clean, Next-Gen Geothermal Could Power the World 140 Times Over
In an August 18 article in Forbes by Ken Silverstein, who covers global energy and climate issues, he states that “The potential solution for abundant and clean energy could be right under our feet—or more specifically, beneath the Earth’s surface. Geothermal power has long been the forgotten sibling among renewable energies, even though it provides dependable electricity in places like Iceland and California.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2025/08/18/how-clean-next-gen-geothermal-could-power-the-world-140-times-over/
Nuclear Subsidies
California’s $1.4B “bridge loan” to keep PG&E’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant running until 2030 was sold as a no-risk deal—federal money would cover it. But? That might not be the case. CA may be required to forgive as much as $588M, about 42% of the loan. For context: DOE’s nuclear credit program tops out at $1.2B per cycle, and PG&E only applied for $1.1B, well under the $1.4B it was set to pay back.
What happens if the funds don’t materialize? PG&E’s agreement with the state suggests it could use profits from the plant’s final year of operation…but the utility projects that costs for Diablo Canyon will outpace revenue from selling its energy on the wholesale market—potentially leaving the bill to customers.
Trump and Nuclear Power
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/9-key-takeaways-president-trumps-executive-orders-nuclear-energy
Google and Nuclear Power
Google has agreed to buy a total of 500 megawatts of power from a California company, Kairos. It is building a demonstration reactor in Tennessee, due to be completed in 2027. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/15/google-buy-nuclear-power-ai-datacentres-kairos-power#:~:text=The%20US%20tech%20corporation%20has,require%20huge%20volumes%20of%20electricity