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New MatterChat Model Helps AI to ‘See’ the Language of Science
From writing emails to generating computer code, much of the artificial intelligence prevalent in our daily lives has succeeded by mastering one domain: text. However, this leaves a major blind spot in the physical sciences, where models depend on the high-resolution, three-dimensional data of the physical world, like the intricate lattice of atoms in a crystal. Delivering on the promise of using AI for science requires teaching these data-driven text models to seamlessly “talk to” physics-based models. Now, a new AI framework from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), called MatterChat, solves this problem by creating a specialized “bridge.” It connects the conversational power of a Large Language Model (LLM) with a physics-based AI that models “interatomic potentials”: the complex physical forces between atoms. The resulting system already significantly outperforms general-purpose AI tools like GPT-4 at predicting material properties, and the team hopes it can accelerate scientific discovery by serving as a robust research partner that provides grounded insights and generates step-by-step instructions for synthesizing novel materials. A paper describing this work was recently published in Nature Machine Intelligence. “Traditional simulations can provide the physical rigor required for materials science, yet their computational cost remains prohibitive for high-throughput screening. Conversely, while LLMs excel at rapid knowledge synthesis, they inherently lack the ‘structural vision’ to interpret materials directly from their underlying atomic coordinates,” said Yingheng Tang, a postdoctoral researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Applied Math and Computational Research Division (AMCR) and lead author on the paper. “MatterChat was built to solve this dilemma, empowering LLMs with a structural ‘vision’ that allows researchers to leverage their full potential for solving complex, real-world materials challenges.” Empowering language models to solve complex challenges in materials science To build MatterChat, the Berkeley Lab team drew inspiration from technologies like Vision Question Answering (VQA) and Text-to-Image (T2I) generation. In these tasks, AI must translate high-level text concepts into visual images, or vice versa. Doing so requires developers to build tools that “bridge” two fundamentally different forms of data. The researchers adapted this concept to the physical sciences. With MatterChat, they created a “bridge model” that successfully connects an LLM’s general knowledge with the deep understanding of the atomic-scale world encoded in scientific interatomic potentials. Until now, researchers using LLMs to solve materials problems usually had to feed them raw data files as if they were just strings of text. It’s like asking an AI to understand a complex 3D engine based only on a parts list: the LLM can read the names, but it can’t “see” how the atoms fit together in space. MatterChat solves this by training a specialized AI bridge model, pre-trained on millions of crystal structures and an LLM, to align the LLM’s representation of the world with the interatomic potential’s representation of the world. The bridge model can translate physical insights into a format the LLM can actually understand. By giving the LLM these “scientific eyes”— a scientific “inductive bias” in the terminology of AI — the Berkeley Lab team has transformed it into a robust research tool capable of providing grounded scientific insights into complex materials challenges, such as predicting thermal stability or analyzing electronic band gaps. “We think of atoms as living in a physical space, but from a machine learning perspective, they are just vectors living in some very non-trivially structured manifold in a high-dimensional Euclidean space; and, of course, the same is true for the sentences and paragraphs that we use to express our ideas about those atoms,” said co-author Michael Mahoney, Berkeley Lab’s Scientific Data Division (SDD) AI Initiative Research Lead. “The bridge model basically gets those two structures to ‘talk with’ each other.” As a proof-of-concept of this general approach, the team trained their bridge model on a dataset curated by pairing nearly 143,000 stable atomic structures from the Materials Project with their corresponding physical properties. This training data was automatically assembled using the Materials Project’s API and deliberately enriched with properties fundamental to microelectronics design — like formation energy and bandgap — allowing MatterChat to learn the complex patterns connecting a material’s atomic blueprint to its functional performance. To validate their model, the researchers benchmarked MatterChat against a suite of other AI systems, from general-purpose LLMs to other specialized scientific AI methods. The results show that MatterChat consistently outperformed its competitors across a range of tasks. The model was more accurate in classifying material types and demonstrated superior precision in predicting numerical properties. For example, it excelled at predicting a material’s bandgap, a property critical for designing new electronics from high-capacity energy storage to next-generation computer chips. “Our design is significantly more efficient because we don’t have to build a massive AI model from the ground up,” said co-author Zhi (Jackie) Yao, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s AMCR. “Instead, we take two powerful, pre-trained models — a structural encoder for materials physics and an open-source LLM — and use them off-the-shelf. The only component we actually train is the lightweight ‘bridge model’ that translates between them. It’s the difference between building an entire car factory and simply designing a smart adapter that connects a world-class engine to a world-class navigation system. This approach is not only computationally efficient, but also makes the system modular, so we can easily upgrade components or adapt the bridge for other scientific domains in the future.” Crucially, this modular design highlights exactly how institutions like Berkeley Lab and the Department of Energy are carving out a highly valuable niche in the booming AI landscape. Rather than competing with Silicon Valley tech giants to build ever-larger language models from scratch, the lab is focusing on the specialized connective tissue that makes commercial AI useful for hardcore science. Because the bridge model approach underlying MatterChat is forward-compatible, it is perfectly positioned to leverage these parallel tracks of innovation. As Mahoney pointed out, “We expect that industry will continue to develop improved LLMs, and we expect domain scientists and facilities will continue to generate new data. An important part of scientific machine learning is not simply to solve problems on today’s data, but instead to develop general methods that will be forward-compatible with orders of magnitude more data, whether from scientific domains or from LLMs.” According to Yao, the MatterChat project, which was initially developed and enhanced with funding from a Berkeley Lab Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) Program, will now expand its capabilities. In a collaboration with Fermilab, MatterChat is already contributing to a U.S. Department of Energy Genesis Mission project — called Accelerating eXtreme Environment Specs-to-Silicon (AXESS) — that aims to speed up the development of next-generation, high-speed, radiation-hardened detectors for challenging particle physics experiments by using advanced 3D integrated circuits (chiplets) and AI-driven data analysis. In addition to the LDRD support, the team also credits supercomputing resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), located at Berkeley Lab, with MatterChat’s success. “We are incredibly grateful to NERSC; this research simply would not have happened without access to the Perlmutter supercomputer through their AI for Science program,” said Tang. Wenbin Xu, a NERSC postdoctoral fellow at the time, was also a major co-author of the work, as was Benjamin Erichson, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s SDD, highlighting the benefits of AMCR-SDD collaboration on AI for science. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Purplish: Wrapping up the session: the policies, the politics... and the poetry
What lasting impacts did the legislature actually make this year?
Indianapolis tabbed No. 3 Best Sports Business City by Sports Business Journal
Indy jumped eight spots since the inaugural rankings in 2023.
Indianapolis tabbed No. 3 Best Sports Business City by Sports Business Journal
Indy jumped eight spots since the inaugural rankings in 2023.
Virtual platform offers a valuable lifeline for rural primary care patients
An Indiana doctor built ChatRx, with e-prescribing built into its workflow, as an alternative to the long-drive, long-wait and high-cost alternative of in-person care delivery.
Column: Jack up taxes on California's rich? Popular liberal mantra, but bad idea
Sticking it to the rich sounds nice, but doesn't fix the problem
D4vd's League of Legends Arcane song seemingly removed from the official soundtrack on Spotify
It appears that Riot Games has chosen to remove D4vd's Remember Me from the League of Legends Arcane Season 2 soundtrack on Spotify.
How UNC Pembroke is addressing a shortage of science and math teachers in rural NC
UNC Pembroke is partnering with five rural North Carolina school districts to address a shortage of science and math teachers.
How UNC Pembroke is addressing a shortage of science and math teachers in rural NC
UNC Pembroke is partnering with five rural North Carolina school districts to address a shortage of science and math teachers.
Pop star Shakira is acquitted in a Spanish tax fraud case
A Spanish court acquitted Shakira in a tax fraud case, ordering the government to return more than $64 million in wrongly imposed fines.
SBJ ranks the 50 Best Sports Business Cities
It’s all about the ATL as SBJ’s fourth annual Best Sports Business Cities™ project gives Atlanta the No. 1 spot among 50 ranked markets.
This music streaming app nobody talks about actually beats the giants
I'm never going back to Spotify or Tidal
Eric André just dropped an insane classical album — and it's actually pretty brilliant
Eric André, host of the prank-filled "Eric Andre Show," conducted the Colburn Orchestra at a surreal concert blending genuine musicianship with comedy, promoting his new album "Film Scores for Films That Don't Exist."
LGBTQ+ comedians are redefining roasts as an art form in West Hollywood
Gay comedian Andrew Stier wanted to foster a community of queer comics when he moved to L.A., so he made a comedy show. What he got was a growing production revealing queer people are meant to roast.
Bengals News (5/18): Schedule Strength
The Bengals look like they could be in a good spot after some big initial tests.
Montana tribes combine traditional knowledge and Western science in climate plan
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are moving forward with their climate plan despite the loss of state support and federal funding.
Montana tribes combine traditional knowledge and Western science in climate plan
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are moving forward with their climate plan despite the loss of state support and federal funding.
The 'fibermaxxing' trend has health benefits worth the hype
There are a lot of wellness trends that make health experts roll their eyes in skepticism. But there is one big trend that many experts can get behind – with a few caveats: fibermaxxing.
Media Mention: Triangle Business Journal Features Emily Massey Profile in Inaugural Triangle Law Awards.
The Triangle Business Journal recently spotlighted attorneys who earned recognition in its inaugural Triangle Law Awards, including Ward and Smith Labor and Emp
Kyowa Hakko highlights Cognizin citicoline’s science-backed cognitive health benefits
Kyowa Hakko USA is spotlighting citicoline’s benefits for cognitive performance and long-term brain health through multiple complementary mechanisms. The supplier will exhibit its citicoline ingredient Cognizin at this week’s Complementary Medicines Australia (CMA) Innovation Day 2026 in Sydney, Australia (May 21). CMA Innovation Day is one of Australia’s annual industry gatherings for the nutraceuticals supply chain, showcasing the latest innovations shaping the market for vitamins, minerals, and supplements in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.
Those GTA 6 Preorder Rumors Appear To Be Another False Alarm
Reports stemming from alleged emails from Best Buy pointed to a Monday start for preorders.
Montana tribes combine traditional knowledge and Western science in climate plan
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are moving forward with their climate plan despite the loss of state support and federal funding.
BUSINESS MONDAY: Spotlight on Bizen Gourmet Restaurant & Sushi Bar in Great Barrington
The Berkshire institution is celebrating 30 years of blending authentic Japanese cuisine, ancient pottery traditions, and a philosophy rooted in craftsmanship, care, and community.
Mystery grows around absent congressman facing tough reelection
Tom Kean Jr.’s months-long absence from Capitol Hill is the talk of the town in Washington. Where is the man? No one is saying
Connections: Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for May 18, 2026, puzzle No. 602
Welcome to Connections: Sports Edition Coach — a spot to gather clues and discuss (and share) scores.
UCLA softball pummels South Carolina, advances to super regional
UCLA senior Megan Grant hit a grand slam and three other Bruins hit home runs during a 15-1 win over South Carolina Sunday to win their NCAA regional.
Pedro Pascal goes undercover for 'Star Wars' surprise at Disneyland
Pedro Pascal surprised fans with an undercover appearance as "The Mandalorian" at Disneyland on Saturday.
2026 Columbia Black Expo wraps with music, shopping and minority business spotlight
High school boys volleyball: SoCal Regional playoffs schedule
The SoCal Regional playoffs schedule for high school boys volleyball.
I started a publishing business outside my day job
Tse Hao Guang, a researcher and writer from Singapore, started a side project publishing literary pamphlets that spotlight emerging writers' works.
A prayer festival calls for more religion in politics, not less
A prayer festival on the National Mall in Washington, DC was partially organized and funded by the federal government. Its evangelical Christian messaging and call for more religion in politics not less, aligns with the Trump administration's fusion of faith and governance. NPR's Emily Feng went to the event to understand the audience for this approach, and she spoke with author Eric Metaxas, a speaker at the Rededicate 250 festival.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at considerthis@npr.org.This episode was produced by Henry Larson, with audio engineering by It was edited by Sarah Robbins and Daniel Burke.Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.
Spencer Arrighetti Dominates Again as Astros Shut Out Rangers
Another win for Spencer Arrighetti on Friday night at Daikin Park as the Astros continue their homestand. Arrighetti has been the bright spot in the Astros' ever-so-struggling pitching staff and challenging 2026 season, and Friday night was no different. He had another outstanding performance for the Houston Astros, earning another win.
Greensboro launches small business opportunity program
The city of Greensboro has launched a new program benefitting small businesses in Guilford, Rockingham and Randolph counties.
Greensboro launches small business opportunity program
The city of Greensboro has launched a new program benefitting small businesses in Guilford, Rockingham and Randolph counties.
Nine teams, four spots - Premier League set for European scramble
The Premier League title and relegation fights might be dominating the headlines, but the race for Europe is proving to be an equally chaotic and enthralling battle this season.
Live and Die by the Fastball – Marlins 3, Rays 6
On a national telecast through Peacock, the Tampa Bay Rays got a well deserved spotlight this Sunday, starting with the star of the show – Junior Caminero – clearing the fence: After giving up the lead, the Rays would battle back the second time through the order, and after loading the bases, Taylor Walls – […]
Indy 500 Qualifying Results: Alex Palou Barely Makes Top 12
Here is how the 13-33 starting spots in the Indy 500 will look following the first stage of Sunday's qualifying.
With Sen. Cassidy's primary defeat, Trump's revenge campaign continues
President Trump succeeded in his effort to defeat Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana’s Republican primary, a signal of the enduring strength of the president’s hold on his party despite his unpopularity with the wider American public.
Analysis: Fulham's European hopes peter out
After beating Aston Villa at the end of April, Fulham were firmly in the mix not only for European qualification but potentially for a Champions League spot. A loss at Arsenal was not unexpected, the manner of the defeat by Bournemouth was hugely frustrating but victory at the league's bottom side would have kept Marco Silva's side in contention going into the final day. A huge swing in goal difference and the most unlikely sequence of results would now be needed for Fulham to make the top eight.
County health officials confirm fifth measles case in Los Angeles
The resident was traveling internationally and arrived at LAX Thursday, May 14.
I connected Gemini with Spotify and elevated my music experience in no time
A match made in playlist heaven
Understanding the political push against NFL streaming
How it got to this point, and where it possibly goes from here.
‘Michael’ reclaims the top box office spot in its 4th weekend
The Michael Jackson biopic, “Michael,” is reclaiming the top spot in the North American box office. Studio estimates on Sunday show the film earned $26.1 million in its fourth weekend
TST Best Bets: May 17, 2026
The final spot in the NBA Conference Finals is up for grabs tonight, as the Detroit Pistons and Cleveland Cavaliers face off in what should be a thrilling Game 7 matchup. It’s been a rollercoaster ride of a season for the Pistons, who shocked the world by winning 60 games in the regular season to take the top seed in the Eastern Conference. Their playoff run first looked to set up for disaster, as they fell down 3-1 to the Orlando Magic before pulling off the unlikely comeback to escape the firs
LIVE FEED | Ligue 1 Multiplex
Ligue 1, Round 34, 17/05/24Welcome to GFFN’s live coverage of the 34th and final game week of the 2025-2026 Ligue 1 season! It’s all to play for for the final two Champions League qualifying spots...
Xbox Takes #1 Spot In Metacritic's Top 10 Video Games Of 2026 So Far
But bizarrely it doesn't top the Series X and Series S list
Spotlighting Mental Health Awareness Month
This week on In Focus, State Assemblymember Paula Kay and Mental Health Association of Rochester President and CEO Valerie Way join the show to discuss Mental Health Awareness Month.
Scientists reveal the sweet spot for sleep, if you get less — or more — you're aging yourself faster
Pittsburgh business incubator, Break IT, provides unique community opportunities
The Pittsburgh non-profit provides the opportunity for small businesses to turn dreams into reality.
Researchers built a switch 1,000 times faster than today's AI chips, and it barely generates any heat
The research, which was published in Science earlier this week, builds on another study published in Nature in January 2025. It demonstrates a new way to flip...
Trailhead Cannabis dispensary is open for business
Trailhead Cannabis is a family-owned dispensary that opened in late April next to Highway 371 by Brainerd and is looking to break the stigma of cannabis use.
MRN BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT: ONE Event Venue
Today on Business Spotlight brought to you by Bank of Springfield, Crissie Caccamo sits down with Garrett Riley, the new owner of ONE Event Venue, to talk about what this new ownership means for the future of the venue and to give viewers a chance to get to know Garrett a little better. ONE Event...
Harvard-Westlake rises to top in Southern Section Division 1 tennis
The Wolverines win the Southern Section tennis title, knocking off Orange County power Irvine University.
Science & Medicine: Strengthening your teeth
Imagine one day your child bites down on something and the enamel on one of their teeth starts to crumble. That can happen in a condition called molar incisor hypomineralization — otherwise known as chalky teeth.
One clinic tracks the heavy toll Trump's immigration crackdown takes on mental health
Zocalo Health, a clinic in Los Angeles, screens all its patients for depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. It documented a marked increase in those conditions since ICE enforcement actions began.
Toronto Tempo say UCLA star Kiki Rice has not disappointed
The Toronto Tempo used the first pick in franchise history to select UCLA star Kiki Rice and has no regrets as the rookie has immediately contributed.
L.A. mayor candidates seek Latino vote. Bass is ahead of Raman, Pratt
Latinos make up about 37% of the L.A. electorate. Mayoral candidates are putting out ads in Spanish, rallying endorsements and canvassing Latino neighborhoods.
Voter voices from the San Gabriel Valley on California governor's race
Becerra and Hilton have emerged as the candidates to beat. But dozens of interviews across the San Gabriel Valley, a prime campaign battleground, find many voters still undecided. And discouraged.
News Analysis: Trump spent two days with Xi in Beijing. Was he outplayed?
The Trump administration argues the trip was a success, having secured the display of conciliation and partnership the president had sought after years of increasingly dangerous acrimony.
World Health Organization declares Ebola outbreak in Congo a global health emergency
Health officials are working to contain a new Ebola outbreak in the DRC of a virus strain with no known vaccine.
Southern Section track and field roundup: Braelyn Combe three-peats
The Southern Section track and field championships featured a slew of record-setting performances on Saturday at Moorpark High.
Why Arizona Democrats are building a Project 2025-style policy blueprint
U.S. Reps. Yassamin Ansari and Adelita Grijalva are taking a lesson from President Donald Trump and Project 2025.
Connections: Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for May 17, 2026, puzzle No. 601
Welcome to Connections: Sports Edition Coach — a spot to gather clues and discuss (and share) scores.
High school baseball: City Section playoff results, schedules
City Section high school baseball Saturday playoff results and upcoming schedules.
The Best Android Auto Apps You're Probably Not Using
Android Auto has more to offer than just Spotify and Google Maps. There's a whole range of apps that you can use in your car. Here are a few of our favorites.
L.A. County health officials confirm fifth measles case this year
Officials have confirmed a measles case in a Los Angeles County resident who recently traveled internationally.
Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy loses in Republican primary, does not advance to runoff
Sen. Bill Cassidy is one of few remaining Republican senators who voted for President Trump's impeachment after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump endorsed his opponent, Rep. Julia Letlow.
Labour leadership jostling puts Brexit back under political spotlight
The UK's relationship with the EU is shaping up as a key issue for a possible Labour leadership contest and the coming by-election in the Makerfield.
Julia Letlow advances to Louisiana Senate GOP runoff, as Sen. Bill Cassidy trails
Cassidy and state Treasurer John Fleming are battling for second place and a spot in the June 27 runoff.
Chatsworth wins City Section Open Division volleyball championship
Chatsworth wins City Section Open Division volleyball championship. In softball, La Habra eliminates top-seeded Murriet Mesa in Division I playoffs.
Virginia Beach Neptune Wine Festival gives small businesses a chance to grow their reach
Small businesses at the Virginia Beach Neptune Wine Festival say the event offers visibility, new customers, and growth in a tough economy.
Spotlight: NWA Space and Science opens office space, public astronomy library and geology collection in Rogers
Inside a modest room nestled on the second floor of the Jones Community for Nonprofits in Rogers, the future of the Northwest Arkansas Space and Science Center is taking shape.
Spotlight: NWA Space and Science opens office space, public astronomy library and geology collection in Rogers
Inside a modest room nestled on the second floor of the Jones Community for Nonprofits in Rogers, the future of the Northwest Arkansas Space and Science Center is taking shape.
In Montgomery, thousands rally to defend voting rights
Thousands of people gathered in Montgomery, Ala., to mobilize support for voting rights amid outrage over racial gerrymandering.
Now What? With Carbon Pricing Eroded and Pipeline Politics Advancing, Here Are the Pathways for Climate Success
At the end of a whirlwind week of news on carbon pricing and electricity strategy, capping a madcap year of pretty much non-stop, dramatic change, the word across much of Canada’s climate and energy transition community is that climate policy in this country has been shredded. Eviscerated. Hit with a sledgehammer by policy rollbacks that have pushed the country’s 2050 net zero target “well out of reach”. That means it’s never been more important to look for the rays of hope and glimmers of possibility. To glimpse the seeds of the next set of strategies to get Canada’s climate pollution under control and the country into the accelerating global dash away from fossil fuels. And then, once we’ve spotted those possibilities, get on with the hard, day-to-day slog of trying to make them a reality. Nothing takes away from the frustration and the deep disappointment so many climate and energy hawks are expressing, the sense of betrayal by the author of Value(s) and the former UN special envoy for climate action and finance. But we knew two things as the week drew to a close. We’re looking at the world as it most definitely is. And we don’t get to give up finding the pathways to confront climate change and deliver faster, deeper carbon cuts that leave no one else behind. So really, the first question we all have to ask ourselves is: What’s next? Subscribe All the Oxygen in the Room The outpouring of anger and grief over the carbon pricing deal between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been absolutely understandable. So much of the climate community poured years, more than a decade, into dragging the current federal pricing regime across the finish line, then defending it from a deluge of three-syllable rhymes after the Trudeau government proved utterly incapable of delivering its own message. The policy foisted on us by neo-classical economists took up all the oxygen in the room, burned through years of climate response time that we won’t get back, while cornering climate hawks into the position that the best response to the crisis of our lifetimes is a new tax…in an era of historic anti-tax sentiment. I mean, really—what could possibly have gone wrong? Against that history, let’s appreciate columnist Max Fawcett’s point that even a modest carbon pricing agreement with a government as off-the-wall libertarian/conspiracist as Danielle Smith’s—those adjectives are mine, not Max’s—is a win worth savouring (as long as Smith keeps her promises for a change). But part of living in the world as it is (no, I’m not letting that go) is to be clear-headed about what we can and can’t control. And one thing we get to decide, after seeing this week’s carbon price festivities take up all the oxygen yet again, is whether we want to keep letting that happen. Particularly when success down that road depends on a factor that no one with a climate agenda can control or influence—a provincial carbon pricing mechanism that has been manipulated and eroded beyond its lowest possible denominator. Thankfully, that’s not the way it has to go. Not when we have so many other powerful, practical tools at our disposal, including the ones still available to us through this abominable Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta. Tools In Our Toolbox When I started roughing out this list, I didn’t expect it to grow to nearly a dozen bullet points. It’s probably still incomplete. Some of the greatest hits in today’s climate solutions toolbox include: • No Carbon Capture, No Pipeline: On Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney explicitly stated that there’s been no change to the MOU provision that there will be no West Coast pipeline without an industry commitment to build its massive, $16.5-billion carbon capture and storage (CCUS) hub in Northern Alberta, and vice versa. The two megaprojects were joined at the hip when the MOU was signed Nov. 27, and the implementation agreement this week affirmed that they still are. A parade of independent analysts have spent years pointing to the economic and technical flaws in CCUS, while the industry kept postponing its investment decision until it could arm-twist the government for more “clarity” (by which it meant even more lavish taxpayer subsidies) on the project. Now the industry itself is running away from the CCUS hub and insisting the pipeline should proceed without it, but Carney doesn’t seem to be budging from a central tenet of the MOU to which Smith has signed on. • No Subsidies, No Investors: Climate analysts and advocates have quite rightly been hammering away at Carney and his team, insisting that any new capacity the industry wants to build must proceed without new subsidies. The government has responded with a growing collection of funding and financing mechanisms for the very wide menu of industrial development and nation-building projects they say they want to take on, and that menu always includes fossil fuel infrastructure. But it’s hard to see how even the combined fiscal clout of the federal and supportive provincial governments will deliver the financial backing private investors would need when the business case for new fossil fuel development is evaporating before their eyes. Particularly when… • No Market, No Demand, No Investors: As our friend Markham Hislop at Energi Media (our apparently sleepless friend, given the massive volume of great material he’s been churning out) points out this morning, the biggest vulnerability in any pipeline deal is the assumption that Asian buyers will want the oil or liquefied natural ga that our fossil industry is so keen to send them. Hislop writes in part: Ottawa and Alberta are effectively betting that countries like China and India will continue increasing oil imports for decades as their economies grow and energy consumption rises. That assumption underpins the entire economic rationale for expanding oil sands production and building billions of dollars in new export infrastructure. But Asian energy systems are changing rapidly… China, India, South Korea, and other major hydrocarbon importers are now investing hundreds of billions of dollars into electricity systems built around wind, solar, batteries, nuclear, hydro, and expanded transmission infrastructure. Domestic “energy sovereignty” is increasingly replacing the old energy-security model based on stable oil and gas imports. Those investments are expected to sharply slow oil demand growth and eventually reverse it, even as overall energy consumption continues rising. There are also refining constraints. Many Asian refineries and petrochemical complexes are already optimized to process discounted heavy crude from the Middle East and Latin America. That raises serious questions about how much additional Canadian bitumen Asian markets can absorb at profitable prices. Small wonder that there’s still no private sector investor for the project, despite Smith’s government desperately beating the bushes to put together a deal. For now, Alberta is acting as proponent and covering early start-up costs for a pitch to the federal Major Projects Office, which could actually turn into the next tough hurdle for Smith and her pipeline to jump. • Canada Day Looms: How ironic that Canada’s birthday this year could become a major chokepoint for the provincial premier who’s been working so diligently to tear the country apart! The July 1 target date for Alberta’s pipeline proposal is baked into the MOU, was reaffirmed by the implementation plan, but it hadn’t dawned on me that it cuts both ways. As one very smart colleague wrote in an email yesterday, “they’ve thrown the ball into Alberta’s court to get the project proposal on the table really quickly and to have to do a whole pile of work to put together a massive, complicated project that would typically take years to assemble, and they’ve given them weeks to do it.” That makes July 1 a looming deadline that Smith won’t be able to run away from politically, especially with the separatists in her party and her caucus breathing down her neck. (See previous ref to off-the-wall.) But if Alberta comes in with a sloppy, incomplete submission, even after Carney bent over backwards to simplify the application process and the rules that govern it, it may be harder for the province or the industry to blame Ottawa and insist on the faster process they claim their investors are demanding. (Oh, wait—which investors would those be??) • We’ll See You In Court (Then We’ll See You Again): If Carney did cave, that would be just one more reason for Indigenous and other affected communities to take the government and the process to court—Just as Alberta First Nations did, successfully, in response to Smith’s half-baked separation referendum. Veterans of the Harper era have been warning that a shoddy process around fossil fuel infrastructure or other major projects will be a recipe for the very delays that process seeks to avoid. And now more than ever, with renewable energy and energy storage eating fossil fuels’ lunch in import markets around the world, a delayed pipeline or LNG terminal may be as good as a cancelled one. • Charged Up, Ready to Go: With its goal of doubling Canada’s electricity supply to meet a doubling of demand by 2050, the national electricity strategy that Carney unveiled Thursday has a lot to like. With its explicit language about speeding the shift from fuels to more efficient and affordable electricity, global investment and deployment patterns that already favour that shift, an emerging bidirectional power grid, the role of front-line options like rooftop solar and heat pumps, the emergence of electric vehicles as behind-the-meter energy storage, and the domestic jobs and manufacturing to make it all happen, the document doubles down on the essential cornerstone of a faster shift off fossil fuels. The strategy envisions a more prominent role for gas and nuclear power. But some of those provisions were already in the Clean Electricity Regulations that climate hawks are now fighting so hard to defend, inserted as a compromise in a futile attempt to mollify the industry and its political representatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan. But once again, gas will be a tougher sell when it’s more expensive and now so much more unpredictable than the clean alternatives. The new nuclear technologies are still speculative and deeply vulnerable to cost overruns. Increasingly, utilities, developers, and investors know it. Carney declared Thursday that “it doesn’t do us good to be sitting in court all the time with provinces. It doesn’t do us good to be talking past each other. What does do us good is to come together with specific projects.” There are no guarantees, but so much of the language and narrative-building in the electricity strategy suggests the lion’s share of those projects will be renewable. • The Party Has Already Started: The electricity strategy only rarely digs down to specific projects, but provinces representing three-quarters of Canada’s population are already embracing a faster transition. Hydro-Québec is working on a 10-year, $185-billion renewable energy and grid buildout by 2035. Ontario recently brought 10 provinces and territories together in a National Energy Corridor Agreement to boost interprovincial and -territorial transmission infrastructure. And the MOU implementation agreement commits Alberta to facilitate investment in renewable energy projects, a big step back from its continuing, punitive restrictions on renewables development. The electricity strategy envisions much of the financing and infrastructure that will be needed to pull those advances together into an integrated whole. • Delivering on Affordability: The MOU implementation plan has little or nothing to say about affordability (are you surprised?), but the electricity strategy does, with a top-line pledge to reduce home energy costs for seven out of 10 Canadian households by 2050, a total saving of $15 billion across the board. It’s just a start, but it puts affordability on the government’s narrative map. If they’re serious and deliberate about patching together a least-cost energy strategy, it’ll have little if any room for oil, gas, or nuclear—not with powerful evidence, for example, that electricity prices are higher when those prices are set by gas. • Smith Proves that Canada Works: By signing a deal that makes it harder to claim the federal government is blocking a new pipeline, Smith has helped prove Carney’s constant anti-separatist refrain that “Canada works”—incurring the rage, no doubt, of her own political base. Canada also needs to work for anyone who depends on a clean environment, healthy and thriving ecosystems, and safe, stable climate. But with Smith and her separatist constituents setting up as a fifth column for annexation by Donald Trump’s United States, let’s set aside any notion that 51st state status for Canada is a recipe for anything other than climate disaster (and so much else). Resisting and withstanding Trump (just 170 more sleeps until mid-term elections, which is a damn sight better than the 730 we started with) doesn’t mean a free pass for a pipeline, but we can still appreciate it that keeping Canada whole and sovereign is still Carney’s Job One. • The Words Not Spoken: Apart from a commitment to export a million barrels of “low-emission” Alberta bitumen per day (memo to Smith and Carney: You realize that that’s less than the industry is already exporting??), the MOU implementation plan says nothing about the international trade and economic sovereignty deals that Carney has been travelling the world to negotiate. It didn’t have to. Carney doesn’t need permission from Danielle Smith, her American enablers, or her separatist allies to continue building the alliances that will ratchet down our economic dependency on our unstable, unreliable neighbour to the south. But every connection he builds with countries outside North America helps align our economy and our future with a faster shift off fossil fuels. Little if any of this was on our bingo cards a year or two ago. But it’s the pathway that has opened up to us. And if it gives Canada any climate or energy gains at all in an era still dominated by Trump and his increasingly ridiculous tariffs, his loutish trade negotiations and his continuing annexation threats, we have to take the wins. Not least because they’ll be the point of departure for what we can achieve in 2027, 2029, and beyond, as Trump’s grip and this era begin to loosen and then fade. What is Carney Doing? If this line of thought is right—and it’s a possibility, not a prediction—it means that Carney’s actions and decisions are largely about buying time. Time for Trump’s power to wane. Time for Alberta’s separatist/conspiracist virus to spread, mutate, die out, or at least die back, with help from a vaccine of federal steadiness and calm (appropriate enough, for a movement populated largely by vaccine deniers) that no conspiracy theory can dismiss. And time for the government’s trade and investment agenda to deliver results—even knowing that some of those results will bring impacts that front-line communities will not and should not accept. In the immediate moment, none of this changes the way the wider climate community has to respond, from campaigners to investors to front-line practitioners. All of our voices are still essential. But those voices will be stronger and more confident if we have a clearer sense of the brutal game we’ve been pulled into, and a plausible path (or two it three) for playing it to the win we need. This conversation also underscores our biggest task for the remaining years of what was supposed to be the “decisive” decade for climate response: if we can shift the energy narrative in Canada, make it a mainstream view that the country’s preoccupation with oil and gas has us falling farther behind a changing world, we’ll see far better results in the 2030s and beyond. For many veteran climate advocates, taking on that part of the fight will begin with recognizing that most of our friends and family, neighbours and colleagues already understand that climate change is real and right in front of us: they’re looking away and staying silent because they don’t have what climate communicator Katharine Hayhoe calls “efficacy”. As Hayhoe recently pointed out in a feature interview with The Energy Mix, it amounts to science denial to keep hammering away at the dire news about global warming without also helping audiences understand what they can do about it, with multiple studies telling us why that won’t work. Far better to open those conversations with the dominant crises like energy security, food security, emergency preparedness and business continuity, affordability, and financial security that have knocked climate change far lower on the list of public priorities, and will likely keep it there. We Knew This Would Happen Climate hawks have always known this day would come. For decades, we warned that everyone had to pay attention to climate change right now, because it would be much tougher to respond once the crisis itself started affecting our daily lives. We were right, and here we are. But now, thanks to decades of hard work, communities and countries have an alternative to doubling down on fossil fuels. “In 10 years everyone will have ‘always known’ that solar and batteries were going to win,” Morgan Solar Executive Chair Mike Andrade writes on LinkedIn. With the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz roiling energy priorities around the world, Canada and the United States are among the shrinking number of countries that are still very keen on fossil fuel development. Understanding that gap is a first, essential step in spotting the opportunities ahead, and averting the deep economic as well as environmental and social risk we face if we don’t seize them. Thanks for reading The Energy Mix Weekender! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Subscribe Mitchell Beer traces his background in renewable energy and energy efficiency back to 1977, in climate change to 1997. Now he and the rest of the Energy Mix team scan 1,200 news headlines a week to pull together The Energy Mix and The Energy Mix Weekender. Chart of the Week BYD Eyes 20 Dealership Locations After Canada Greenlights Chinese EV Imports ‘Sledgehammer’ Carbon Price Deal Boosts Emissions by 230Mt, Aims for Fall 2027 Pipeline Approval ‘Worse Than Harper’: Regulatory Rollback Would Stop Canada from Assessing Project Impacts, Critics Warn Electricity Strategy Aims for Doubling by 2050, Allows ‘Flexibility’ for Gas Power Plants Opposition Mounts as O’Leary’s Data Centre Approved in Drought-Stricken Utah Diluted Carbon Price Misses ‘Reality of the World We’re In’, Could Impede Diversified Trade: Climate Institute $200B in Clean Energy Investment Will Need On-Time Delivery, Reliable Policies, Trade Association Says ‘Sovereign Pipeline’: CEO Pitches to Keep Trans Mountain in Government Hands What a Supercharged El Niño Could Mean for Canada Canada’s future is electric, and here’s how a power grid superhighway would get us there (Toronto Star) The Perilous Waters of Hecate Strait (Globe and Mail) Saudi Aramco profits jump despite conflict in Middle East (The Guardian) Farmers confront rising cost of fertilizer and fuel as spring seeding under way (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Clarkson forecasts 24% decline in offshore oil, gas capital expenditures (Oil & Gas Journal) Pipe Dreams: How Oil and Gas Fail to Deliver Economic Development in Africa (Oil Change International) Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition (Climate Home News) Iran war threatens the dream of a post-oil economy in the Gulf (Washington Post) U.S. Oil, Gas Work Force Hits Lowest Level Since 2022 (Rigzone) Why Polestar Is Doubling Down on Net Zero as Rivals Pull Back on EVs (Bloomberg) Why this Michigan utility plans to sell its hydro dams for $13 (E&E News/Politico) Levees can no longer save New Orleans (Vox)
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Small business owners voice concerns over data privacy legislation
Days after National Small Business Week, entrepreneurs and small business owners were back on Capitol Hill, turning the spotlight on a technical issue: data privacy.
Small business owners voice concerns over data privacy legislation
Days after National Small Business Week, entrepreneurs and small business owners were back on Capitol Hill, turning the spotlight on a technical issue: data privacy.
Small business owners voice concerns over data privacy legislation
Days after National Small Business Week, entrepreneurs and small business owners were back on Capitol Hill, turning the spotlight on a technical issue: data privacy.
Small business owners voice concerns over data privacy legislation
Days after National Small Business Week, entrepreneurs and small business owners were back on Capitol Hill, turning the spotlight on a technical issue: data privacy.
Small business owners voice concerns over data privacy legislation
Days after National Small Business Week, entrepreneurs and small business owners were back on Capitol Hill, turning the spotlight on a technical issue: data privacy.
Small business owners voice concerns over data privacy legislation
Days after National Small Business Week, entrepreneurs and small business owners were back on Capitol Hill, turning the spotlight on a technical issue: data privacy.
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