Monday, 14 September 2026

Finnish company Korkia is broadening its investment approach in Chile to offer 'powered land' for data centers, sites where land, permits, and grid access are already secured or well advanced, according to ESS News.

Korkia intends to pair these sites with new renewable generation and battery energy storage systems so that data center loads can be served without adding strain on the grid, ESS News reported.

Chile sits among four primary markets where Korkia is pushing these developments, together with Finland, Sweden, and the UK, per ESS News.

Several Chilean assets underpin the strategy. The Terrazas hybrid project in the Coquimbo region pairs 280 MW of solar with 1,240 MWh of storage, according to ESS News. In Ñuble, the Mellizas project combines a 218 MW solar plant with an 800 MWh BESS and has secured environmental approval, ESS News reported. In the Valparaíso region, the Beltrán standalone storage system, sized at 750 MWh, has reached ready-to-build status.

A further project, Paicaví, planned for La Pintana in the Metropolitan Region, is a 150 MW / 750 MWh battery system carrying an estimated investment of USD 90 million, per ESS News.

At group level, Korkia reports an advanced global portfolio of 15 GW spanning large-scale solar, wind, BESS, and data center land, with another 9 GW of renewable and storage projects in early development, according to ESS News.

The UAE is weighing moving parts of two of its largest infrastructure projects underground to guard against future attacks, Semafor reported.

One is a 5-gigawatt AI data center project underway with US technology partners, according to Semafor. The scheme was originally planned as a 10-square-mile campus in Abu Dhabi, but is now likely to become a network of facilities dispersed across the country, with air defense systems and some underground construction among the modifications under consideration, per Semafor.

The second project is the relocation of Dubai's main airport to a site south of the city. Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths told the Financial Times that the plan may include underground fuel storage tanks. The design changes will not shrink the target of ferrying 250 million passengers a year through the new hub, Semafor reported.

Iowa's two largest investor-owned utilities burned significantly more coal in 2025 than the prior year, as statewide electricity generation rose and regulators pointed to data centers and factories as the drivers of new load, according to Inside Climate News.

At MidAmerican Energy Co., the largest investor-owned electric utility in Iowa, coal accounted for 27% of the resource mix in 2025, up from 21% in 2024, Inside Climate News reported. Interstate Power and Light, a subsidiary of Alliant Energy Corp., saw coal's share climb from 12% to 20% over the same period.

Statewide electricity generation rose from 70.5 million megawatt-hours in 2024 to just over 74 million in 2025, according to Inside Climate News.

The heavier reliance on coal came with a sharp increase in air pollutants. Alliant and MidAmerican together reported a more than 50% jump in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions between 2024 and 2025, per Inside Climate News.

MidAmerican media relations manager Geoff Greenwood cited the role of coal generation in maintaining reliable service to the utility's 1.3 million electric customers in Iowa.

The demand pressure has a named source. The Iowa Nuclear Energy Task Force, convened this year by Gov. Kim Reynolds, attributed the growth in electricity demand to data center development and the expansion of manufacturing facilities.