Marisa Sweeney

if you were devising an ultimate clean energy / climate tech / decarbonization must read book list, what would you put on it?

People misunderstand how much China’s switch to electrification is in fact a Churchill-ian approach to switching from a steam to an oil navy… 🛢️ ➡️ 🔋

Having a lot of conversations this weekend about the Oracle/Abilene expansion. Here’s the latest: • Oracle’s exclusivity period on the Abilene expansion expired last week. • BUT Oracle was planning to rent GPUs in Abilene to another major customer—NOT OpenAI. (OpenAI decided several weeks ago not to expand beyond 1.2GW Abilene. See post below.) • Nvidia has put down a $150 M deposit and is in exclusivity to be the tenant. Nvidia is in talks with multiple potential customers to rent the compute, including Meta. • The expansion was designed specifically for next-gen Nvidia chips, so Nvidia had an interest in keeping the project moving.

I would like someone to unpack chat gpt’s strong tendency to use “quietly” as a choice adverb, for things not involving sound 🙄 no one writes this way!! No one wants to write overusing the metaphorical use of quietly! It is so bizarre. This is just one example,

Insightful article: Google's new AI infrastructure chief Amin Vahdat says $185B in capex this year is just the start. At that run rate for 10 years, spending could reach $1.9T over a decade. TPU demand is "unprecedented" with Morgan Stanley estimating $13B in TPU revenue for GOOGL by 2027. Google now shifting to modular data center designs to scale globally.

@JackLondonOak is this something you can help with or at least help us to get in touch with the right folks @ the City to get this nuisance resolved?

We need @shell to address the 24/7 trespassing deterrent that blares from its shuttered station, audible from 300+ homes in our area in JLS Oakland. It is a total public nuisance and I’m sure harming business for our locally owned mezcaleria across the street. SO unacceptable!

@charlenewang is this something your office can help with? Our neighbors have been making 311 reports and calls, daily! The site operator used to have a security guard, but now they’ve resorted to this extreme measure that is audible across our entire 200+ unit complex a block away

I’ll buy into the AI hype when Gmail search stops sucking ☠️

For those in a huff about the halftime show not being in English, opera would love a word (a note, an aria) ✨

A man at the airport has his AirPod vol too far up so he is shouting without realizing it, but it’s very clear he’s FaceTiming his children so I think he’s a little forgiven. Not entirely, but about 40% forgiven

@apoorv_bh89 @lyft ApoorvKaren!!!

Thanks to your failure @lyft I missed a train and had to pay for a new one. Will you compensate me for that?

Whatever box I checked that got me on the NYT email alert blast for the Beckham Posh Spice family drama is one I want to uncheck 😂

Maybe this will change as AI and compute continue to propel new load growth and demand 🤷🏻‍♀️

The upshot of living in the Bay Area, but working in energy is that I am blissfully unaware of what any of these billboards actually mean on I80 other than iPhone ads and the Airbnb one next to HQ.

For real: where do all the missing Tupperware halves and second socks go? They should study this metric across households, I’d be interested in the data and correlation with (# of children, neurospicy varietals present in heads of households, # of dogs, cats, # of borrowers)

Visualizing US electric power transmission lines. Learn how: gist.github.com/walkerke/a214c…

Awesome year-end recap of the data center buildout in America. -OpenAI Stargate (Abilene, TX): $50B/site, targeting 1+ GW capacity. "We're growing faster than any business I've ever heard of before." — Sam Altman Meta Hyperion (Louisiana): 4M sq ft, consuming more power than New Orleans. Footprint size of lower Manhattan. Musk Colossus (Memphis): Colossus1 built in 122 days and now w/ Colossus2 expanding to 1M GPUs across three buildings. Bought shuttered Duke Energy plant to power it. Microsoft (Wisconsin): $7B "world's most powerful" AI data center, hundreds of thousands of Nvidia chips online early 2026. Amazon Rainier (Indiana): $11B facility on 1,200 acres, running custom silicon exclusively training Anthropic models. Google (Arkansas): Largest private capital investment in state history, rising from 1,100 acres near West Memphis. Top 5 hyperscalers spending $443B in 2025, projected $602B in 2026 (+36% YoY). Added $121B debt this year = 4x the 5-year average. "This is the largest market in the history of mankind. Larger than oil, because everyone on the planet needs intelligence." — Sameer Dholakia, Bessemer The real bottleneck does not appear to be money at this stage, it's energized real estate and grid capacity. Every project is anchored to same constraint today: Power.

Really insightful commentary from Jefferies today. Jefferies: "Intersect’s existing operating assets in Texas (about 2.2GW solar and 2.4GWh storage) and California are critically not part of the Alphabet acquisition and will remain independent/sold to a different entity. This nuance is perhaps the most bullish as this build-out was supposedly on track to achieve $700Mn+ in annualized EBITDA in 2027+. Unclear on how much of what is in construction would go with the new entity. Bottom line, the GOOGL deal appears to illustrate the real value of what multiple GW+ sized deals are worth to hyperscalers. This acquisition also solidifies Google's focus on zero/low carbon energy sources more than data center peers that have embraced more natural gas. This also underwrites the clear desire of GOOGL to continue to pursue among the greenest of development paths vs its peers. It vindicates the hybrid gas/renewable strategy promulgated by NEE of late as well" They go on... "What are the sector implications? Perceived positive for renewable developers. Negative for existing resources. It is difficult to draw valuation parallels and comparison from the transaction without more information on terms; however, it is generally is a bullish data point for renewables 'DevCo' value overall. Investors will believe this is a strong endorsement of DevCo value until proven otherwise. While the ultimate benefit for renewable developers is up for debate, it is clearer that Google is focused on additionality rather than existing resources. This is increasingly becoming the base case for hyperscalers looking to avoid stakeholder pushback to data center development."

After seeming promising, AI written composition on ChatGPT has gotten SO much worse. Is this flattening? Is this scaling back the consumer model? It’s borderline unusable for use cases it generally worked for ~6 months ago. Not a good sign.