Biggest ET Stories of the Summer: C&I Energy Transition Insights

Readers are most interested in how AI is transforming energy management and grid resilience in 2026.

Key Highlights

  • The 'Grid Short' reveals vulnerabilities in current infrastructure, with resource shortages like copper posing major challenges.
  • NVIDIA's $500 billion investment underscores the importance of AI and data centers in shaping future energy demands.
  • EnergyTech.com provides timely updates on critical developments impacting the C&I energy transition.

What kind of commercial and industrial energy customer stories are driving readers of EnergyTech.com? Surprise, surprise: it’s the rise of AI and the grid’s struggle to keep up with the looming electric load.

Our latest EnergyTech Transition E-Newsletter focused on the best-read stories for the summer of 2026. Read the latest ENL right here to find out which stories mattered most from June to September.

Remember the Big Short, where only a few smart investors saw the 2008 housing bubble and market collapse coming? Well, the so-called “Grid Short” is catching hardly anyone by surprise, as we gain troubling insights from a recent PJM Interconnection resource auction.

Our writer Eric Moody looks at copper shortages worldwide which is ever more critical as electrification expands to all facets of the C&I sector. Chip and supercomputing giant NVIDIA is so colossal it has put together $500 billion of potential private equity funding to build out future data center and AI computing capacity which features its infrastructure.

And there’s more. The EnergyTech Transitions is available right here, but you also can subscribe free and get three updates weekly on multiple fronts in the C&I energy transition.

About the Author

Rod Walton, EnergyTech Managing Editor

Rod Walton, EnergyTech Managing Editor

Managing Editor

For EnergyTech editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].

Rod Walton has spent 17 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. He formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.

Walton earned his Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. His career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World. 

EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

He was named Managing Editor for Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech starting July 1, 2023

Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.

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