An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: In an unmarked office building in Austin, Texas, two small rooms contain a handful of Amazon employees designing two types of microchips for training and accelerating generative AI. These custom chips, Inferentia and Trainium, offer AWS customers an alternative to training their large language models on Nvidia GPUs, which have been getting difficult and expensive to procure. "The entire world would like more chips for doing generative AI, whether that's GPUs or whether that's Amazon's own chips that we're designing," Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky told CNBC in an finterview in June. "I think that we're in a better position than anybody else on Earth to supply the capacity that our customers collectively are going to want...."

In the long run, said Chirag Dekate, VP analyst at Gartner, Amazon's custom silicon could give it an edge in generative AI...
With millions of customers, Amazon's AWS cloud service "still accounted for 70% of Amazon's overall $7.7 billion operating profit in the second quarter," CNBC notes. But does that give them a competitive advantage?

A technology VP for the service tells them "It's a question of velocity. How quickly can these companies move to develop these generative AI applications is driven by starting first on the data they have in AWS and using compute and machine learning tools that we provide." In June, AWS announced a $100 million generative AI innovation "center."

"We have so many customers who are saying, 'I want to do generative AI,' but they don't necessarily know what that means for them in the context of their own businesses. And so we're going to bring in solutions architects and engineers and strategists and data scientists to work with them one on one," AWS CEO Selipsky said... For now, Amazon is only accelerating its push into generative AI, telling CNBC that "over 100,000" customers are using machine learning on AWS today. Although that's a small percentage of AWS's millions of customers, analysts say that could change.

"What we are not seeing is enterprises saying, 'Oh, wait a minute, Microsoft is so ahead in generative AI, let's just go out and let's switch our infrastructure strategies, migrate everything to Microsoft.' Dekate said. "If you're already an Amazon customer, chances are you're likely going to explore Amazon ecosystems quite extensively."

By 2035 America needs a 43% increase in its power-transmitting capacity, according to an analysis by the REPEAT project. But NPR reports there's another way to quickly improve capacity without building new transmission lines: That's where the laser sensors come in, says Jon Marmillo, co-founder of LineVision, the company that makes them. Sensors can help utilities get real-time data on their power lines, which can allow them to send more renewable electricity through the wires. This tech is part of a suite of innovations that could help the U.S. increase its grid capacity faster and cheaper than building new transmission lines...

At any given moment, utilities typically know how much power is going through their lines. But they aren't required to know the real time conditions of those lines, like the wind speed or how hot the line is. Without that data, utilities have to use conservative standards for how much power can safely flow, says Jake Gentle, senior program manager for infrastructure security at Idaho National Laboratory. But when sensors gather information from the wires — about wind, temperature, and wire sag — that data allows utilities to go beyond their conservative standards and safely put more electricity through the wires... With this tech, called "dynamic line rating", utilities are able to increase the efficiency of their lines — sometimes as much as 40%, says Gentle.
One Pittsburgh company using similar technology told NPR that "we found an average of 25% additional available capacity on transmission lines that were equipped with the sensors."

Ars Technica reports that Microsoft "disclosed 15 high-severity vulnerabilities in a widely used collection of tools used to program operational devices inside industrial facilities" (like plants for power generation, factory automation, energy automation, and process automation).

On Friday Microsoft "warned that while exploiting the code-execution and denial-of-service vulnerabilities was difficult, it enabled threat actors to 'inflict great damage on targets.'" The vulnerabilities affect the CODESYS V3 software development kit. Developers inside companies such as Schneider Electric and WAGO use the platform-independent tools to develop programmable logic controllers, the toaster-sized devices that open and close valves, turn rotors, and control various other physical devices in industrial facilities worldwide... "A denial-of-service attack against a device using a vulnerable version of CODESYS could enable threat actors to shut down a power plant, while remote code execution could create a backdoor for devices and let attackers tamper with operations, cause a PLC to run in an unusual way, or steal critical information," Microsoft researchers wrote.

Friday's advisory went on to say: "[...] While exploiting the discovered vulnerabilities requires deep knowledge of the proprietary protocol of CODESYS V3 as well as user authentication (and additional permissions are required for an account to have control of the PLC), a successful attack has the potential to inflict great damage on targets. Threat actors could launch a denial-of-service attack against a device using a vulnerable version of CODESYS to shut down industrial operations or exploit the remote code execution vulnerabilities to deploy a backdoor to steal sensitive data, tamper with operations, or force a PLC to operate in a dangerous way."

Microsoft privately notified Codesys of the vulnerabilities in September, and the company has since released patches that fix the vulnerabilities. It's likely that by now, many vendors using the SDK have installed updates. Any who haven't should make it a priority.
"With the likelihood that the 15 vulnerabilities are patched in most previously vulnerable production environments, the dire consequences Microsoft is warning of appear unlikely," the article notes.

A malware/senior vulnerability analyst at industrial control security firm Dragos also pointed out that CODESYS "isn't widely used in power generation so much as discrete manufacturing and other types of process control. So that in itself should allay some concern when it comes to the potential to 'shut down a power plant'." (And in addition, "industrial systems are extremely complex, and being able to access one part doesn't necessarily mean the whole thing will come crashing down.")

The Verge writes that "LK-99 hasn't turned out to be the miraculous superconductor some people initially claimed it was..." [T]he results so far indicate that LK-99 is not a superconductor, at room temperature or otherwise. A slew of research groups have released studies that counter claims originally made about LK-99. "With a great deal of sadness, we now believe that the game is over. LK99 is NOT a superconductor, not even at room temperatures (or at very low temperatures). It is a very highly resistive poor quality material. Period. No point in fighting with the truth," the University of Maryland's Condensed Matter Theory Center (CMTC) posted on August 7th... [The last words of their tweet? "Data have spoken."]

Labs hurriedly published their own results on ArXiv, the same server for preprints (papers that haven't undergone peer review) where the original papers on LK-99 first appeared. Now, a body of evidence has piled up that disproves claims about LK-99. "There is no sign of superconductivity in LK-99 at room temperature," says one preprint from the CSIR-National Physical Laboratory in India. (That was one of the papers cited by the University of Maryland's Condensed Matter Theory Center this week when it posted that "the game is over....") [H]opes that levitation meant that LK-99 is a superconductor were dashed this week after another preprint posed another explanation for why the material might float. The International Center for Quantum Materials in China found evidence that the material is ferromagnetic. That means it can be magnetized and then attracted or repelled by other magnetic materials (iron, for example, is ferromagnetic)...

[T]here are already well over a dozen papers on ArXiv casting doubt on LK-99. "There may be room temperature superconductors to find, but this does not seem to be one," Chris Grovenor, professor of materials at the University of Oxford and director of the Centre for Applied Superconductivity, tells The Verge in an email.
The Washington Post reports that one of physicists who co-authored the discovery paper "countered in an email that other research groups' failure to replicate their results are probably because they lack 'know how' in developing the sample the same way."

Last year, Queens resident David Leacraft filed a lawsuit against Canon claiming that his Canon Pixma All-in-One printer won't scan documents unless it has ink. According to The Verge's Sean Hollister, it has quietly ended in a private settlement rather than becoming a big class-action. From the report: I just checked, and a judge already dismissed David Leacraft's lawsuit in November, without (PDF) Canon ever being forced to show what happens when you try to scan without a full ink cartridge. (Numerous Canon customer support reps wrote that it simply doesn't work.) Here's the good news: HP, an even larger and more shameless manufacturer of printers, is still possibly facing down a class-action suit for the same practice.

As Reuters reports, a judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit by Gary Freund and Wayne McMath that alleges many HP printers won't scan or fax documents when their ink cartridges report that they've run low. Among other things, HP tried to suggest that Freund couldn't rely on the word of one of HP's own customer support reps as evidence that HP knew about the limitation. But a judge decided it was at least enough to be worth exploring in court. "Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that HP had a duty to disclose and had knowledge of the alleged defect," wrote Judge Beth Labson Freeman, in the order denying almost all of HP's current attempts to dismiss the suit.

Interestingly, neither Canon nor HP spent any time trying to argue their printers do scan when they're low on ink in the lawsuit responses I've read. Perhaps they can't deny it? Epson, meanwhile, has an entire FAQ dedicated to reassuring customers that it hasn't pulled that trick since 2008. (Don't worry, Epson has other forms of printer enshittification.) HP does seem to be covering its rear in one way. The company's original description on Amazon for the Envy 6455e claimed that you could scan things "whenever". But when I went back now to check the same product page, it now reads differently: HP no longer claims this printer can scan "whenever" you want it to. Now, we wait to see whether the case can clear the bars needed to potentially become a big class-action trial, or whether it similarly settles like Canon, or any number of other outcomes.

According to the Financial Times, China's internet giants have ordered more than $5 billion worth of high-performance Nvidia chips for building generative AI systems. Reuters reports: Baidu, TikTok-owner ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba have made orders worth $1 billion to acquire about 100,000 A800 processors from the U.S. chipmaker to be delivered this year, the FT reported, citing multiple people familiar with the matter. The Chinese groups had also purchased a further $4 billion worth of graphics processing units to be delivered in 2024, according to the report.

The Biden administration last October issued a sweeping set of rules designed to freeze China's semiconductor industry in place while the U.S. pours billions of dollars in subsidies into its chip industry. Nvidia offers the A800 processor in China to meet export control rules after U.S. officials asked the company to stop exporting its two top computing chips to the country for AI-related work. Nvidia's finance chief said in June that restrictions on exports of AI chips to China "would result in a permanent loss of opportunities for the U.S. industry", though the company expected no immediate material impact.

SanDisk's silence this week has been deafening. Its portable SSDs are being lambasted as users and tech publications call for them to be pulled. From a report: The recent scrutiny of the drives follows problems from this spring when users, including an Ars Technica staff member, saw Extreme-series portable SSDs wipe data and become unmountable. A firmware update was supposed to fix things, but new complaints dispute its effectiveness. SanDisk has stayed mum on recent complaints and hasn't explained what caused the problems.

In May, Ars Technica reported on SanDisk Extreme V2 and Extreme Pro V2 SSDs wiping data before often becoming unreadable to the user's system. At least four months of complaints had piled up by then, including on SanDisk's forums and all over Reddit. Even Ars' Lee Hutchinson fell victim to the faulty drives. Two whole Extreme Pros died on him. Both times they filled about 50 percent and then showed a bunch of read and write errors. Upon disconnecting and reconnecting, the drive was unformatted and wiped, and he could not fix either drive by wiping and reformatting. When Ars reached out to SanDisk about the problem in May, it didn't answer most of our questions about why these problems happened (and, oddly, excluded certain models we saw affected when naming which models were affected).

A recent comprehensive study reveals that automated bots are substantially more efficient than humans at cracking Captcha tests, a widely used security measure on over 100 popular websites. The Independent reports: In the study, scientists assessed 200 of the most popular websites and found 120 still used Captcha. They took the help of 1,000 participants online from diverse backgrounds -- varying in location, age, sex and educational level -- to take 10 captcha tests on these sites and gauge their difficulty levels. Researchers found many bots described in scientific journals could beat humans at these tests in both speed and accuracy.

Some Captcha tests took human participants between nine and 15 seconds to solve, with an accuracy of about 50 to 84 per cent, while it took the bots less than a second to crack them, with up to near perfection. "The bots' accuracy ranges from 85-100 per cent, with the majority above 96 per cent. This substantially exceeds the human accuracy range we observed (50-85 per cent)," scientists wrote in the study. They also found that the bots' solving times are "significantly lower" or nearly the same as humans in almost all cases.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phoronix: This Patch Tuesday brings a new and potentially painful processor speculative execution vulnerability... Downfall, or as Intel prefers to call it is GDS: Gather Data Sampling. GDS/Downfall affects the gather instruction with AVX2 and AVX-512 enabled processors. At least the latest-generation Intel CPUs are not affected but Tigerlake / Ice Lake back to Skylake is confirmed to be impacted. There is microcode mitigation available but it will be costly for AVX2/AVX-512 workloads with GATHER instructions in hot code-paths and thus widespread software exposure particularly for HPC and other compute-intensive workloads that have relied on AVX2/AVX-512 for better performance.

Downfall is characterized as a vulnerability due to a memory optimization feature that unintentionally reveals internal hardware registers to software. With Downfall, untrusted software can access data stored by other programs that typically should be off-limits: the AVX GATHER instruction can leak the contents of the internal vector register file during speculative execution. Downfall was discovered by security researcher Daniel Moghimi of Google. Moghimi has written demo code for Downfall to show 128-bit and 256-bit AES keys being stolen from other users on the local system as well as the ability to steal arbitrary data from the Linux kernel. Skylake processors are confirmed to be affected through Tiger Lake on the client side or Xeon Scalable Ice Lake on the server side. At least the latest Intel Alder Lake / Raptor Lake and Intel Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids are not vulnerable to Downfall. But for all the affected generations, CPU microcode is being released today to address this issue.

Intel acknowledges that their microcode mitigation for Downfall will have the potential for impacting performance where gather instructions are in an applications' hot-path. In particular given the AVX2/AVX-512 impact with vectorization-heavy workloads, HPC workloads in particular are likely to be most impacted but we've also seen a lot of AVX use by video encoding/transcoding, AI, and other areas. Intel has not relayed any estimated performance impact claims from this mitigation. Well, to the press. To other partners Intel has reportedly communicated a performance impact up to 50%. That is for workloads with heavy gather instruction use as part of AVX2/AVX-512. Intel is being quite pro-active in letting customers know they can disable the microcode change if they feel they are not to be impacted by Downfall. Intel also believes pulling off a Downfall attack in the real-world would be a very difficult undertaking. However, those matters are subject to debate. Intel's official security disclosure is available here. The Downfall website is downfall.page.

Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from NBC News: A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Biden administration to enforce regulations aimed at clamping down on so-called ghost guns -- firearm-making kits available online that people can assemble at home. The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, in a brief order (PDF) put on hold a July 5 ruling by a federal judge in Texas that blocked the regulations nationwide. The vote was 5-4, with conservatives Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the three liberal justices in the majority.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, commonly known as ATF, issued the regulations last year to tackle what it claims has been an abrupt increase in the availability of ghost guns. The guns are difficult for law enforcement to trace, with the administration calling them a major threat to public safety. The rule clarified that ghost guns fit within the definition of 'firearm' under federal law, meaning that the government has the power to regulate them in the same way it regulates firearms manufactured and sold through the traditional process. The regulations require manufacturers and sellers of the kits to obtain licenses, mark the products with serial numbers, conduct background checks and maintain records.

Soon, all GM EV's on the Ultium platform will come equipped with bidirectional charging capabilities. Electrek reports: According to a release from GM this morning, the automaker has decided to roll out V2H capabilities to all of its incoming EV models, in addition to those already promised. [...] According to GM, all new EVs based upon the Ultium platform will feature bi-directional charging by model year 2026, so expect additional models beyond those above to also come equipped with the ability to power your home.

GM states its expanded V2H access will be supported by the rollout of the Ultium Home bundles previously announced, although we still do not know how much this technology is going to cost homeowners. GM says that additional details of expanded V2H technology and the specific timings of its rollout to the models mentioned above will be revealed at a later date. In the meantime, check out GM's latest sizzle reel showing off some of the incoming capabilities of its Ultium EVs, including a shadowy peek at the aforementioned Escalade IQ.

TSMC is committing $3.8 billion to establish its first European factory in Germany, benefiting from significant state support for the $11 billion project as Europe aims to shorten supply chains. Reuters reports: The plant, which will be TSMC's third outside of traditional manufacturing bases Taiwan and China, is central to Berlin's ambition to foster the domestic semiconductor industry its car industry will need to remain globally competitive. Germany, which has been courting the world's largest contract chipmaker since 2021, will contribute up to 5 billion euros to the factory in Dresden, capital of the eastern state of Saxony, German officials said.

"Germany is now probably becoming the major location for semiconductor production in Europe," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, less than two months after Intel announced a 30 billion euro plan to build two chip-making plants in the country. "That is important for the resilience of production structures around the world, but it is also important for the future viability of our European continent, and it is of course particularly important for the future viability of Germany."

TSMC said it would invest up to 3.499 billion euros into a subsidiary, European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC), of which it will own 70%. Germany's Bosch and Infineon and the Netherlands' NXP (NXPI.O) will each own 10% of the plant, which will make up to 40,000 wafers a month for cars and industrial and home products when it opens in 2017. The factory will cost around 10 billion euros in total.

Amazon is the most successful manufacturer of Arm server chips, accounting for just over half of Arm-based server CPUs currently deployed, while some chipmakers are also now betting on Arm-based Windows PCs. From a report: This information comes from a report issued by Bernstein Research which estimates that nearly 10 percent of servers across the world contain Arm processors, and 40 percent of those are located in China, as we reported earlier. But that total is beaten by just one company -- Amazon -- which has slightly above 50 percent of all Arm server CPUs in the world deployed in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) datacenters, said the analyst.

Amazon currently uses its own Graviton family of chips, designed by the Annapurna Labs division of Amazon Web Services and introduced to the world back in 2018, which are for its own internal use only. The latest iteration is the Graviton3E for high-performance computing applications, introduced towards the end of 2022. According to Bernstein, because these chips were optimized for the specific needs of AWS, the company is able to fit in more cores per socket or per rack and the chips consume less power, translating to lower spending on space and cooling.

Nvidia announced an updated AI processor that gives a jolt to the chip's capacity and speed, seeking to cement the company's dominance in a burgeoning market. From a report: The Grace Hopper Superchip, a combination graphics chip and processor, will get a boost from a new type of memory, Nvidia said Tuesday at the Siggraph conference in Los Angeles. The product relies on high-bandwidth memory 3, or HBM3e, which is able to access information at a blazing 5 terabytes per second. The Superchip, known as GH200, will go into production in the second quarter of 2024, Nvidia said. It's part of a new lineup of hardware and software that was announced at the event, a computer-graphics expo where Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang is speaking.

[...] The latest Nvidia products are designed to spread generative AI -- and its underlying hardware -- to even more industries by making the technology simpler to use. A new version of the company's AI Enterprise software will ease the process of training the models, which can then generate text, images and even video based on simple prompts. The lineup also includes new chips for workstations, computers designed for heavy workloads. New AI Workbench software, meanwhile, helps users switch their work on AI models between different types of computers.

When Spin ceased operations of its scooter rental service in Seattle, abandoned scooters were found throughout the city, each housing a Raspberry Pi 4B. Tom's Hardware reports: This discovery was recently shared to social media where Pi enthusiasts are simultaneously befuddled and ready to book their tickets to Seattle. Legally speaking, if the scooters are abandoned then snagging one for the Pi inside is fair game but it's currently not clear if Spin has plans to recover their remaining assets.

As of writing, it's not clear what the Raspberry Pi 4 Bs were actually used for inside the scooter. At first glance, it seems like an overpowered option for something like an electric scooter but without exact confirmation of its purpose, we can only speculate. No doubt it requires much more power than something smaller like a Raspberry Pi Zero. In the meantime, residents have taken to finding these scooters and exploring their insides for the hardware left behind. We can see the Pi 4 is attached to a HAT and has something resembling a NoIR connected to the camera module port. Again, the exact purpose of each component and how it was implemented is unclear.

Gigabyte has launched a new low-profile GeForce RTX 4060 OC graphics card that's designed to fit into mini PC builds. Unlike many of the other GPUs meant for compact PCs, this one comes with three fans instead of just two or one. From a report: That three-fan setup might make it a bit difficult to fit into some small form factor cases, as the card measures 182mm long. But it makes up for that with its thin 40mm height and 69mm width.

Despite its slender design, the chip comes outfitted with two DisplayPort and two HDMI ports as well. It also comes with a low-profile bracket, which is a nice touch. While it's nice that Gigabyte has made a 40-series chip specifically for low-profile builds, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 isn't that great of a card to begin with. The GPU barely outpaces the older (and slightly more expensive) 3060 Ti, as it comes with an underwhelming 8GB of VRAM and a 128-bit memory bus.

In a neighborhood in Seoul there's an ordinary red-brick, four-story building, reports Bloomberg — but there's something unique about the building's basement office. It's somehow the registered address of the Centre "whose extraordinary claims about a breakthrough in superconductor technology have shocked the scientific community and captivated the world."

Bloomberg also reports that:

- "No one responded when a Bloomberg News reporter knocked on the center's locked doors or reached out via LinkedIn."

- "Goods including bottles of sparkling water delivered to the center's address have been left untouched outside the office's entrance."

- "Multiple attempts to reach the scientists at the Quantum Energy Research Centre were not answered."

- "The center's website has also been closed and says it is 'under construction.'"

However, Kim Hyun Tak, one of the authors of the papers who is a research professor of physics at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, said the skeptical reaction is expected. "It's common practice when a new crucial discovery or invention is made public that there are more people who say that it's not credible," Kim said in a Zoom interview. "It's a natural thing for some people to laugh at it because it's the first time, and they don't even know what it is, but as time passes, they start to believe it...."

In response to questions about why the Quantum Energy Research Centre hasn't provided the materials to other scientists, Kim said that it doesn't have enough inventory of the LK-99 compound nor time to recreate it, and that the researchers have been distracted by the number of journalists trying to contact them. "You know that the office is extremely small and in a poor state." he said. "It's so small, and you need the money to make the compounds. That's why they cannot mass-produce it."

Despite the questions, he remained defiant that the research was sound. "The experimental data speaks for itself," Kim said. "We know it because we're the ones who synthesized it and conducted the studies."
"The claim has been met with widespread excitement globally," adds Bloomberg, "sending related stocks soaring in South Korea and China, but also skepticism as past claims had been later proven wrong."

The Financial Times reports: U.S. government scientists have achieved net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the second time, a result that is set to fuel optimism that progress is being made towards the dream of limitless, zero-carbon power... "In an experiment conducted on July 30, we repeated ignition at NIF," the laboratory said. "As is our standard practice, we plan on reporting those results at upcoming scientific conferences and in peer-reviewed publications..."

Although many scientists believe fusion power stations are still decades away, the technology's potential is hard to ignore. Fusion reactions emit no carbon, produce no long-lived radioactive waste and a small cup of hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds of years...

[T]he improved result at NIF, coming "only eight months" after the initial breakthrough, was a further sign that the pace of progress was increasing, said one of the people with knowledge of the results.

Is natural gas really a cleaner alternative to coal and oil? That claim "is facing increasing scrutiny," writes Slashdot reader sonlas: One significant concern with natural gas is the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, during its extraction, production, transportation, and processing. Methane is approximately 30 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 100-year period. (And methane leaks can occur at various stages of the gas supply chain, from wellhead emissions during drilling and extraction to leakage during transportation and distribution.) Additionally, intentional venting or flaring of methane also contributes to the problem.

An article published in Environmental Research Letters challenges the assumption that natural gas is a cleaner energy source compared to coal or oil. Their study takes into account the full lifecycle emissions of natural gas, including methane leakage rates, and arrives at a different conclusion. With a methane leakage rate of 7.5% and other relevant factors considered, the greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas can be on par with or even exceed those of coal. Even a lower methane leakage rate of 2% can diminish the environmental advantage of natural gas significantly.

A key aspect of this study is its focus on real-world methane leakage rates. Aerial measurements conducted in various oil and gas production regions in the U.S. revealed substantial methane leak rates ranging from 0.65% to a staggering 66.2%. (Similar leakage rates have been identified in other parts of the world.) These findings raise serious concerns about the climate impact of natural gas and cast doubt on its role as a so-called "transition energy" in the quest for cleaner and more sustainable energy sources, especially liquefied natural gas...

This complicates the search for sustainable energy solutions, especially in Europe where gas was included in the green taxonomy following a push from Germany.

A new analysis "shows that over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential is available along the U.S. coastline," capable of fulfilling up to 25% of U.S. energy demand in 2050. (And it could also add $1.8 trillion in economy-boosting investment, while employing up to 390,000 workers.)

This new analysis comes from Berkeley researchers, who worked with nonprofit clean energy research firm GridLab and climate policy think tank Energy Innovation, reports the Verge: The Biden administration has committed to halving the nation's emissions by the end of the decade and has plans to source electricity completely from carbon pollution-free energy by 2035. Adding to that urgency, U.S. electricity demand is forecast to nearly triple by 2050, according to the Berkeley report. On top of a growing economy, the clean energy transition means electrifying more vehicles and homes — all of which put more stress on the power grid unless more power supply comes online at a similar pace.

To meet that demand and hit its climate goals, the report says the U.S. has to add 27 gigawatts of offshore wind and 85 GW of land-based wind and solar each year between 2035 and 2050. That timeline might still seem far away, but it's a big escalation of the Biden administration's current goal of deploying 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030. Europe, with an electricity grid about 70% the size of the U.S., already has about as much offshore wind capacity as the Biden administration hopes to build up by the end of the decade. Right now, wind energy makes up just over 10% of the U.S. electricity mix, and nearly all of that comes from land-based turbines...

For now, the U.S. has just two small wind farms off the coasts of Rhode Island and Virginia. Construction started on the foundations for the nation's first commercial-scale wind farm off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, in June... Project costs have gone up with higher interest rates and rising prices for key commodities like steel, Heatmap reports. That's led to power purchase agreements falling through for some projects in early development, including plans in Rhode Island for an 884-megawatt wind farm that alone would have added more than 20 times as much generation capacity as the U.S. has today from offshore wind. Developers are struggling to make projects profitable without passing costs on to consumers...

The study found a modest 2 to 3 percent increase in wholesale electricity costs with ambitious renewable energy deployment. But renewable energy costs have fallen so dramatically in the past that the researchers think those costs could wind up being smaller over time.
The report points out that wind energy complements solar, by producing the most wind energy right when demand is peaking (in the summertime on the West Coast, and during the winter on the East Coast).