Massachusetts Data Center Intel

Recent Massachusetts data center news

• Dec 23, 2025

  GE Vernova to modernize a key high-voltage power transmission link in India

  GE Vernova Inc. has announced that its Electrification Systems business won a contract from Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (POWERGRID) to refurbish the 1,000 MW Chandrapur–Ramagundam back-to-back HVDC interconnection between India’s western and southern grids.

  • Scope and technical details: GE Vernova will upgrade both 500 MW converter stations at Chandrapur and Ramagundam, modernize HVDC control and protection systems, and replace legacy converter valves with advanced technology manufactured in India, aiming to extend asset life, enhance energy efficiency, and improve grid flexibility for rising renewable penetration; the order was booked in December 2025.
  • Context and energy transition role: The HVDC link, commissioned in the late 1990s, balances power flows between fossil-rich western and hydro-rich southern regions, supporting India’s target of 500 GW non-fossil capacity by 2030 by enabling large-scale renewable power transfers, grid stability, and secure, sustainable power system development; GE Vernova positions this project within its broader grid modernization and energy transition strategy.
• Dec 22, 2025

  GE Vernova awarded major contract to deliver HVDC technology for Adani’s 2.5-gigawatt transmission corridor in India

  GE Vernova Inc. has announced that its Electrification Systems business has been awarded a major contract by Adani Energy Solutions Ltd. to supply VSC-based HVDC technology for the 2.5 GW Khavda–South Olpad renewable power transmission corridor in India.

  • Scope & scale: GE Vernova will design and supply a ±500 kV, 2,500 MW (2 × 1,250 MW) VSC-based bipolar HVDC system, including converter stations, major converter equipment, and erection/testing/commissioning (excluding civil works), using its eLumina™ control platform, with phased delivery and overall completion targeted by 2030; the letter of award is expected to be booked as an order in the first half of 2026.
  • Project context: The Khavda–South Olpad corridor will evacuate large volumes of renewable electricity from Khavda in Gujarat’s Kutch region (a major renewable energy zone) to South Olpad as a key pooling and injection point into India’s national grid, representing the highest-rated VSC-based HVDC system planned in India and reinforcing GE Vernova’s long-standing role in India’s grid, including prior projects like the Champa–Kurukshetra HVDC link.
• Dec 19, 2025

  Rewinding 2025: A year of The McKinsey Podcast insights—in under 10 minutes

  McKinsey & Company, via The McKinsey Podcast, reviews key 2025 insights on leadership, strategy, AI, and data centers from its senior partners.

  • Podcast hosts Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fusaro highlight expert views on strategy in uncertain geopolitics, CMO involvement in planning, M&A as a growth path, bank exposure to macro and geopolitical risks, the rise of AI agents/digital coworkers, data centers’ power and electricity needs to support AI, and leadership traits such as field promotions, curiosity, and continuous improvement led by CEOs and COOs.
  • The transcript is an edited year-in-review episode rather than a new policy or investment announcement, summarizing perspectives from senior partners Shubham Singhal, Shelley Stewart III, Jake Henry, Pradip Patiath, Lareina Yee, Jesse Noffsinger, Daniel Pacthod, Carolyn Dewar, and Daniel Swan on how companies can stay competitive amid technology shifts, AI adoption, and geopolitical flux.
• Dec 18, 2025

  Beyond Coal 2025: Fighting for an Affordable, Renewable, Zero-Emission Future

  The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign published a 2025 year-end summary of actions and wins while outlining ongoing legal and advocacy fights against federal rollbacks and fossil fuel bailouts.

  • Campaign summary & key metrics: Sierra Club highlights 60,000 premature deaths prevented, claims 100,00 heart attacks and one million asthma attacks avoided (June milestone); warns of projected 50 gigawatts of data center-driven electricity demand by 2030 (nearly a 10% U.S. grid increase over four years); reports active presence in 30+ states and support for nearly 9 GW of onshore wind, solar, and storage projects across 20 states in 2025 with a plan to double engagement in 2026.
  • Legal and policy actions / implementation details: The campaign is challenging EPA rollbacks and litigating coal bailouts; it filed at the D.C. Circuit Court to contest the J.H. Campbell extension and filed at DOE over the Eddystone extension; it joined amici in litigation against the Trump offshore wind moratorium, supported actions around the 800 MW Empire Wind (noting it would provide electricity to 500,000 homes) and cited a federal ruling vacating the wind permitting ban and resumed construction by Equinor; Merrimack coal station retired in September 2025 (final New England coal retirement).
• Dec 18, 2025

  Trump Media Group, Fusion Company TAE Merging in $6-Billion Deal

  The Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announced an all-stock merger with TAE Technologies in a $6-billion deal to create one of the first publicly traded fusion companies.

  • Main transaction details: The deal is an all-stock merger valued at $6 billion, with shareholders of Trump Media and TAE each to own about 50% of the combined company; TMTG will provide up to $200 million in cash at signing and an additional $100 million upon initial filing of Form S-4. Devin Nunes (TMTG) and Michl Binderbauer (TAE) will serve as co-CEOs, and Michael B. Schwab is expected to be named chairman of the combined company.

  • Background, investors, and project timelines: TAE expects to begin work next year on a 50 MW fusion power plant with later scaling to 500 MW, and is targeting “first power in 2031”; existing investors include Chevron Technology Ventures, Charles Schwab, Goldman Sachs, Sumitomo, and Alphabet; TAE also announced a joint venture with the UK Atomic Energy Authority and has reported recent technical milestones (e.g., plasma temperatures exceeding 75 million C).

• Dec 18, 2025

  Calls for US Data Center Freeze Grow as Local Enthusiasm Melts

  Senator Bernie Sanders has called for a national moratorium on new data center construction, urging Congress to slow AI expansion and involve more people in decisions about AI’s future.

  • Main action and scope:Sen. Bernie Sanders publicly advocated a national moratorium on data center construction; more than 200 environmental organizations (via a letter) also called for a moratorium citing impacts on water resources, electricity consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions; Data Center Watch reports $64 billion in data center plans have been blocked or delayed by local activism in the last two years.
  • Background and additional details: Federal debate is split—Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, and Richard Blumenthal are investigating links between data center power usage and rising consumer bills and have sent letters to major hyperscalers (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, CoreWeave, Digital Realty, Equinix); the Trump administration and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright have pushed for accelerated permitting and less state regulation; a Carnegie Mellon University study projects data center and crypto growth could raise average U.S. electricity costs ~8% by 2030 (with regional spikes, e.g., >25% in Virginia).
• Dec 18, 2025

  Predicting Power Grid Failures Using Self-Organized Criticality: A Case Study of the Texas Grid 2014-2022

  Researchers present a new SOC-based predictive framework for assessing power grid vulnerability, applied to Texas grid outage data from 2014–2022.

  • Method tracks power-law critical exponents in outage size distributions, showing a decline from 1.45 (2018) to 0.95 (2020) and then 0.62 (2021), with values dropping below the theoretical critical threshold α = 1 approximately 6–12 months before the February 2021 Texas power crisis.
  • The framework, accepted for presentation at the 2025 MRS International Risk Conference (July, Boston, MA, US), is proposed as a quantitative early-warning tool for catastrophic infrastructure failures to support grid resilience planning, risk assessment, and emergency preparedness in stressed power systems.
• Dec 18, 2025 · Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

  Trump Administration Gets H200 Chip Sales to China Right and Wrong

  The Trump administration has announced it will allow sales of Nvidia’s H200 AI chips to China but plans to impose a 25 percent fee on such exports.

  • Policy details & rationale: The administration reversed previous restrictions to greenlight exports of Nvidia’s H200—a 2022 Hopper-architecture chip that is no longer Nvidia’s most advanced—arguing this will divert Chinese spending from domestic competitors, keep leading Chinese AI firms reliant on U.S. hardware and CUDA software, and help fund U.S. R&D into next-generation chips, though the proposed 25% fee on these sales is criticized as undercutting U.S. competitiveness.
  • Context & competitive landscape: The article argues that earlier U.S. bans boosted Chinese chipmakers and spurred innovation, notes China’s large and in some cases surplus AI compute capacity and strong power buildout, and highlights Huawei’s supernode strategy (CloudMatrix, Atlas 950, planned 500,000‑chip supercluster) as serious competition to Nvidia, concluding that maintaining Chinese dependence on U.S. chips and CUDA is strategically preferable to forcing a switch to Huawei’s CANN/MindSpore ecosystem.
• Dec 16, 2025 · Tech Xplore

  Transparency in AI companies falls to new low

  Stanford, with coauthors at Berkeley, Princeton, and MIT, published the 2025 Foundation Model Transparency Index reporting a marked decline in corporate transparency across major AI developers.

  • Main announcement: The 2025 Foundation Model Transparency Index finds the industry average transparency score fell to 40/100, down from 58/100 in 2024; the Index assessed 13 companies and identifies three performance clusters (top ≈75, middle ≈35, low ≈15). Key score changes include IBM 95/100 (highest in Index history), xAI and Midjourney 14/100 (among the lowest), Meta 60→31, and Mistral 55→18. The 2025 edition adds four companies for the first time: Alibaba, DeepSeek, Midjourney, xAI.
  • Background and details: The Index evaluates companies on 15 areas (training data, risk mitigation, economic impact, etc.) and finds systemic opacity on training data, training compute, model use, and societal impact. 10 companies disclose no environmental-impact data (AI21 Labs, Alibaba, Amazon, Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, Midjourney, Mistral, OpenAI, xAI). The report notes delays/non-release of documentation by major firms (e.g., Google’s Gemini 2.5 model card delay; Meta did not release a technical report for Llama 4) and cites the Index as an input for policy interventions already under way in California and the European Union.
• Dec 13, 2025

  US Coal Plants Closing Fast Amid Renewables Surge and Regulations

  US coal-fired power plants are closing rapidly due to cheaper renewables, natural gas, and stricter regulations; closures and conversions are reshaping local economies and generation mix.

  • Main announcement/action: The article documents accelerated retirements and early shutdowns (e.g., Brayton Point Power Station closed three years early) with coal’s share of U.S. electricity at about 13% in 2025 (down from 51% two decades ago). It notes specific operational shifts such as TransAlta pivoting its last Washington coal plant to natural gas under an agreement with Puget Sound Energy, and that the nation’s newest large coal plant is offline until 2027 per IEEFA. The piece also reports 15 coal plants delayed retirements due to rising demand from data centers/AI and cites projections of coal falling to ~5% by 2030 (S&P Global) and 7% by 2035 (EIA outlook).
  • Background and details: The article references international and policy context: South Korea announced a coal phase-out by 2040, pressuring exporters like Australia; West Virginia regulators (PSC) have stated they won’t approve shutdowns to protect grid reliability. It cites job and economic figures reported in analyses tied to Project 2025 (e.g., Pennsylvania could face up to 37,700 job losses by 2030 in some scenarios), and highlights reliability concerns as AI-driven data center demand strains the grid.