#49: Data Centers and Fossil Fuels with Candice Bernd & John Kendall

For this week's episode Candice Bernd and John Kendall join Matt and Sam to talk about their reporting and research into the nexus of the fossil fuel industry and the build-out boom of data centers across Texas and Pennsylvania. We discuss the repurposing and co-location of coal and fracked natural gas plants with the data centers, along with the lobbying efforts being done to situate the apparently futuristic AI technology as a lifeline to the historic fossil fuel industry. We hear about the populist localism inspiring some of the movements emerging to protest the data centers, but also how those same coalitions might be mobilized to protest green energy transition. READINGS:--"AI Data Center Development in Frackland" - Phases, 2025: https://phases.substack.com/p/ai-data-center-development-in-frackland--"Crypto’s Cryptic Texas Takeover" - Candice Bernd, 2025: https://www.texasobserver.org/crypto-energy-grid-texas-bitcoin-water/--"The Fossil-AI Nexus: Petrostate Capitalism, Computing Power, and the Production of Powered Land" - Justin Kollar, 2026: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/400945937_The_Fossil-AI_Nexus_Petrostate_Capitalism_Computing_Power_and_the_Production_of_Powered_LandCandice Bernd is a special investigative correspondent for the Observer covering climate justice and grassroots movements. She is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Austin whose work has also appeared in The Nation, The American Prospect, In These Times, Salon, Truthout, and Earth Island Journal. She is the author of Blood, Soil, and Oil: Far-Right Acceleration in the Age of Climate Crisis.John Kendall is a postdoctoral researcher in energy geographies at Penn State. Currently, his research is primarily focused on the political and industrial ecologies of natural gas and petrochemical development in northern Appalachia. His most recent publication, written for the think tank Common Wealth, analyzes how the fracking boom continues to thwart decarbonization initiatives in the US.Sam Law is an Austin-based researcher and organizer focused on the data center buildout across Texas — the water, energy, and permitting fights behind the AI boom — and, more broadly, on how AI is reshaping surveillance, policing, and war. He’s also a cultural anthropologist, writing a book on an autonomous social movement in Mexico.