| By Kendra Pierre-Louis, Zahra Hirji, and Michael Smith Hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated swaths of the southeastern US by bringing too much water. Now, communities are struggling with the opposite problem: too little of it. The North Fork Water Treatment Plant supplies most of the drinking water to Asheville, North Carolina, and some surrounding mountain towns. Built in the 1970s, it was known for its clear water, which flows into the plant from a large reservoir. After Hurricane Helene barreled in late last month, dumping almost 14 inches of rain, the plant had to be shut down due to pipeline damage, leaving almost no water for a system that serves 160,000 people. The city's other big treatment plant, called William DeBruhl, was largely knocked out as well. Only a smaller plant remained operational.  Workers repair damage to the main pipeline that connected the North Fork plant to Asheville's pipe system before Helene ruptured it, Oct. 4, 2024. Michael Smith/Bloomberg News As Bloomberg Green reports today, the city's woes illustrate how the age of the nation's water infrastructure, combined with the increasing pressures of climate change, can push systems to collapse. That means what has happened in Asheville, absent mitigation efforts, is likely to play out in slightly different ways in communities across the country. In related news, the Biden administration announced it's awarding nearly $2 billion in funding to help protect the US power grid against extreme weather and to expand transmission projects. The funding for 32 projects is being made available through the Energy Department and will span 42 states, the administration said in a statement Friday. Investments will include utilities that were wrecked by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Nuclear energy is having a moment. And according to OpenAI backer and tech billionaire Vinod Khosla, the holy grail of clean power generation, nuclear fusion, will be a reality within five years. A major booster of artificial intelligence who wrote the first venture capital check for Sam Altman's OpenAI, Khosla said fusion will be key to meeting data center energy demand. Generating energy by smashing atoms together has long been a dream for investors and entrepreneurs eager for a source of limitless, clean baseload power. The technology saw a breakthrough in 2022 when scientists were able to get more energy out than energy put in for a fusion reaction. But it's struggled to reach viability, prompting skepticism it'll become a reality. Soaring electricity demand due in part to the AI data center boom, though, has spawned a renewed interest in both moonshot approaches and traditional nuclear technology known as fission, which involves splitting large atoms instead.  Vinod Khosla Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Google made its first nuclear investment this week. The company announced its supporting the development of several advanced small modular reactors from Kairos Power. "We feel that nuclear is a very important technology for going carbon free for offices, data centers, communities where we operate," Michael Terrell, senior director of energy and climate, said on Bloomberg Television. Nuclear is becoming a prerequisite for AI. Nvidia Corp.-backed cloud services firm Ubitus K.K. said it wants to build a new data center in Japan, but it's demanding that nuclear power is available nearby. The Tokyo-based firm, which already has two data centers for gaming, plans to build a third to serve generative AI. Meanwhile, AI might be looking through your trash. Cities are trialing artificial intelligence-enhanced methods to help improve their waste management, including reducing contaminants in their recycling and composting streams. But as with all new technology, there are privacy concerns. By Thomas Seal An unlikely political upstart in Canada's third-largest province, expelled from his previous party for climate science skepticism, is within striking distance of winning power with promises to ditch environmental targets and unleash natural-resources development. The surge in support for John Rustad's Conservative Party of British Columbia ahead of the Oct. 19 election may have been helped by the popularity of the unaffiliated federal Conservatives. Victory would add to the roster of right-leaning premiers at odds with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government in Ottawa. A Conservative government in BC might mark a bigger shift than anywhere else in the country. The province is famous for environmentalism — Vancouver is the birthplace of Greenpeace and home to Canada's most famous climate activist, David Suzuki.  John Rustad, leader of the Conservative Party of British Columbia. Photographer: Ethan Cairns/Bloomberg By Brian K Sullivan and Coco Liu California wildfire risks are rising as the state's annual wind season gets underway with gusts rolling out of the north that can fan any flame into an out-of-control blaze, with threats expected to continue through the weekend.
The winds coming across the dry landscape and over the state's mountain ranges along with arid conditions have created a situation where any fire that gets started can rage out of control. The National Weather Service has raised red flag fire warnings in the valleys around Sacramento up to San Francisco's Bay Area and into the state's wine country. There is also a chance critical fire weather will extend into Southern California as Santa Ana winds may develop there over the weekend, said David Acuna, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, commonly called Cal Fire. Utilities in the state have already said they may need to cut power to homes and businesses to protect against fire threats. "The fuels are still dry and prepped to burn, whether it's light like grasses or heavy like timber, they are all dry,'' Acuna said. "They are all dry and ready to burn, and it's just as much as a tinderbox now as it was in July.''  Water is dropped from a helicopter as the Line Fire burns in San Bernardino County, California, on Oct. 1. Photographer: David Swanson/AFP/Getty Images Meanwhile, a new study has found forest fire emissions are rising globally. Carbon dioxide emissions from burning woodlands have surged 60% globally since 2001, as more and bigger blazes tore through fast-warming regions outside the tropics. The research, published Thursday in the journal Science, shows that wildfires are getting worse, particularly in one climate-sensitive area — the northern boreal forests, which span from Russia to North America. Fire emissions have almost tripled from those forests during the past 20 years, the authors of the report said. Electric vehicle sales have hit the brakes in Europe and the US in recent months, as cost-conscious drivers have opted for cars with exhaust pipes instead. Bucking the trend is ride-sharing giant Uber, which is not only adding zero emission models to its fleet, but also lobbying regulators to demand more EVs on the road. On Zero, Dara Khosrowshahi discusses the company's short and long-term green goals, and tells Akshat Rathi why he believes electric cars are good for business – not just for the environment. Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday. | 
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