Stephen Lacey

Massachusetts

Co-founder and Executive Editor at Latitude Media

Co-founder and executive editor of Latitude Media. Covering the new frontiers of the energy transition. Co-host of Open Circuit.

Articles

Fear and loathing at the Department of Energy

6 days ago | latitudemedia.com | Stephen Lacey

The Department of Energy is losing talent at an alarming rate. Described by insiders as a “hostile takeover,” the agency’s transformation under Trump has pushed out thousands of scientists, engineers, and policy experts. What’s left behind are gutted offices, stalled infrastructure projects, and billions in funding commitments thrown into question. This isn’t a typical government transition — it’s a systematic dismantling of America’s energy brain trust.
Tariffs, delays, high costs: The harsh realities facing the energy transition

1 week ago | latitudemedia.com | Stephen Lacey

Listen to the episode on: This week, we’re asking the central question of the energy transition: How fast are we going? Clean energy is bringing in $2 trillion of investment annually. Wind and solar now account for the vast majority of new electricity capacity globally. And we may already be at “peak trade” of fossil fuels. And yet, when we look at the share of renewables in final energy consumption, they’re increasing only incrementally around the world.
How Trump’s regulatory power grab could raise energy costs

2 weeks ago | latitudemedia.com | Stephen Lacey

The most revealing part of President Trump’s economic vision isn’t what he wants to build — but what he’s desperate to restore. His trade policies reflect an outdated view of American manufacturing from the 1950s, ignoring how automation, global supply chains, and technological advancement have fundamentally transformed production over the last half-century.
Who’s really paying AI’s power bill?

2 weeks ago | latitudemedia.com | Stephen Lacey

Listen to the episode on: When tech giants build massive data centers to power AI, they’re often negotiating confidential deals with utilities that few people will ever see — but that everyone might pay for. Harvard legal expert Ari Peskoe has uncovered a pattern across 40 state regulatory proceedings: special contracts between utilities and data centers being approved with minimal public scrutiny, potentially shifting billions in infrastructure costs to regular ratepayers.
A tsunami of uncertainty for clean energy

3 weeks ago | latitudemedia.com | Stephen Lacey

Listen to the episode on: The business world is facing a tsunami of uncertainty. Across nearly every industry, investment is seizing up amid unpredictable tariffs and contradictory domestic policies. In this week’s episode of Open Circuit, we examine how this compounding uncertainty is impacting clean energy during a critical moment of spiking demand and rising costs. We dissect the signals from the market, revealing that despite the chaos, certain sectors are finding unexpected advantages.
Utah is taking a different approach to new data center load

1 month ago | latitudemedia.com | Maeve Allsup |Bianca Giacobone |Stephen Lacey

Starting next month, new data center load seeking to come online in Utah could have the opportunity to source their own generation, thanks to a law signed by the governor at the end of March. Utah’s Senate Bill 132 modifies Rocky Mountain Power’s duty to serve “large loads,” which it defines as 100 megawatts or more in five years.
Bringing back evaporative cooling for data centers

1 month ago | latitudemedia.com | Bianca Giacobone |Maeve Allsup |Stephen Lacey

Some quick research into the largest sources of fresh water in the world would likely point you to the aquifers sprawling for millions of miles underground, like the Great Artesian Basin in Australia, or the Ogallala Aquifer in the United States, or else to the glaciers and ice caps concentrated in Greenland and Antarctica, which are estimated to contain 70% of the world’s fresh water. But there’s another large and reliable source of fresh water available: the atmosphere.
For Trump’s incoherence on tariffs, look to clean energy manufacturing

1 month ago | latitudemedia.com | Stephen Lacey |Maeve Allsup |Bianca Giacobone

President Trump reminds us constantly that he wants to bring back U.S. manufacturing. The vision is alluring: shuttered factories reopening, assembly lines humming — perhaps an American army of “millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones,” as the commerce secretary recently imagined. In Trump’s mind, there’s only one way to get there: tariffs.
Tariff turmoil: ‘energy dominance’ meets economic chaos

1 month ago | latitudemedia.com | Stephen Lacey |Bianca Giacobone |Maeve Allsup |Scott Clavenna

Listen to the episode on: President Trump promised energy dominance. But his sweeping new tariffs are delivering the opposite – creating unprecedented uncertainty for every sector of the energy economy. Faced with a market in revolt, the president blinked. Just hours after his tariffs went into effect, he put a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs, keeping a 10% baseline tariff and a 125% tariff on China.
Trump's trade war signals a shift in the global energy order

1 month ago | latitudemedia.com | Stephen Lacey

America just swung a wrecking ball at the global trade system. On Wednesday’s “Liberation Day,” President Trump unleashed a package of new tariffs — 34% on Chinese imports, 20% on European goods, and a 10% baseline tax on virtually everything else entering the United States. The post-World War II economic architecture that America itself designed? Trump declared it a system where America has been “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered.”Wall Street is recoiling. Allies are stunned.