Texas has stopped connecting new data centers to its grid. The order came from Governor Greg Abbott in late August, and ERCOT acted within hours, suspending the study process that developers had been waiting on. The Public Utility Commission now has to audit what is sitting in the queue before anything else moves. What’s in the queue is the story. Requests from data centers and other large loads have gone from roughly 48 gigawatts in 2023 to more than 474 gigawatts.

Russia thought it had a windfall coming. When the Iran war effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz and sent oil prices surging, Moscow was positioned to pocket around $760 million a day from energy exports. War elsewhere was becoming a revenue stream. Ukraine had other plans. In the span of five days, Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s two largest Baltic oil export facilities — Ust-Luga and Primorsk — three separate times. Then came a fourth hit: the KINEF Kirishi refinery, one of Russia’s largest, processing around 350,000 barrels a day.