Years of destructive fires are forcing utilities to prioritize wildfire resilience as they plan the next generation of the U.S. electric grid.

Why it matters: Utilities aren't just expanding the electric grid — they're designing it to withstand a more fire-prone climate.

• This year's wildfire season is exceeding the 10-year average for both the number of fires and acres burned.

The big picture: The U.S. is embarking on one of the biggest grid expansions in decades just as wildfire risk is becoming a defining challenge for utilities. Today's planning decisions may determine how resilient tomorrow's grid becomes.

• Utilities are combining weather models, wildfire behavior, infrastructure data and population impacts to help prioritize resilience investments, Nadia Panossian, an electrical engineering researcher at the National Laboratory of the Rockies, tells Axios.
• Undergrounding — burying power lines underground — can also improve resilience to hurricanes, winter storms and other hazards, Seth Guikema, a University of Michigan professor of civil and environmental engineering, tells Axios.
• He says utilities also have to manage aging infrastructure, which in many cases is "the bigger challenge than building new."

State of play: Wildfires are already affecting how utilities operate.

• They disrupt the power system by damaging equipment, forcing utilities to cut power, and reducing solar generation when smoke blocks sunlight.

Yes, but: Preventing outages is no longer enough. Utilities now have to incorporate wildfire resilience into grid projects.

Case in point: California was one of the first states to require investor-owned utilities to publish wildfire resilience plans, Panossian says.

• Other states have adopted similar approaches as wildfire risk grows.
• Panossian says utilities are moving beyond "basic minimum maintenance" toward longer-term upgrades that account for future wildfire risks.
• Some California utilities are already experimenting with microgrids that can disconnect from the main grid and keep supplying power during outages as wildfire risk grows, Guikema says.
• But those investments "can be cost-prohibitive — and that's the challenge," he adds.

Catch up quick: Utilities have already learned costly lessons about wildfires.

• California utilities have spent billions on wildfire mitigation.
• PG&E emerged from bankruptcy after Camp Fire-related liabilities.
• Utilities across the West now conduct public safety power shutoffs. "They shut the power off because you'd rather have a short-term power outage than a catastrophic fire," Panossian says.

What we're watching: The grid is poised for a major expansion. The U.S. needs thousands of miles of new transmission to connect renewables, storage and data centers.

• Much of the U.S. grid also needs to be replaced. As utilities evaluate those upgrades, Panossian says, they're looking for opportunities to build wildfire resilience into those projects.
• Guikema says utility planning is, in many ways, a cost-risk trade-off. "How much are we willing to increase our utility rates to do undergrounding and things like that?" he says.
• In some cases, he says, regulators — not utilities — are limiting resilience investments because of cost concerns.

The bottom line: California has shown utilities what wildfire planning looks like. As wildfire risk spreads beyond the West, those lessons are shaping how the next generation of the U.S. grid is built.

There's a growing push to use new technology to boost U.S. copper processing amid surging demand from the AI boom.

Why it matters: The U.S. has decent copper resources, but the majority of processing happens in large, toxic smelters overseas, much of it in China.

• Copper wires are the building block of electrical systems for data centers, the power grid and vehicles.

The big picture: The Trump administration has made production of domestic critical minerals a priority, and the U.S. Geological Survey added copper to its critical minerals list in November. But substantial funding has yet to follow.

• "I think we'll see some new [federal] activities with regards to that metal," says Brandon Tinianov, managing director, building technologies at advisory Clark Street Associates.

What they're saying: "The U.S. is copper rich and refining poor," says Gigascale Capital founding partner Victoria Beasley, whose firm has backed startups Red Metals and Skouria.

• "Copper is AI. If we don't have copper, we are at major risk for all aspects of that, from power to bits and flops," says Clark Street CEO Stephen Empedocles.
• Bringing copper processing to the U.S. is a more solvable challenge than reshoring supply chains for minerals like rare earths, experts say.

Zoom in: A crop of startups are building new processing technologies and facilities, with backing from major VCs and miners.

Red Metals, backed by Future Ventures and Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, is outfitting its 42,000-square-foot facility with processing, refining and casting equipment, Red Metals CEO Jackson Switzer says.

• It also secured a $3.5 million equipment financing facility with CSC Leasing to fund the project's first phase, says Switzer.

Still Bright has built pilot-scale reactors in Newark, New Jersey, that use a reusable reagent to electrochemically process copper, with capacity of two tons a year.

• Still Bright is weighing a $40 million Series A round in 1Q27, CEO Randy Allen says. It's backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, SOSV, and Fortescue.

The VC arm of BHP, which runs one of the world's largest copper mines in Northern Chile, has backed processing startups Jetti, Ceibo and PH7 Technologies.

Follow the money: It's hard to quantify VC dollars in copper startups, but mining tech funding rebounded after 2024 as deeptech gains favor amid AI-driven pressure on software.

• Still, Gigascale's Beasley says: "I think it's an underinvested category, and not just from a venture standpoint, but from a total U.S. infrastructure standpoint."

🌊 Scoop: Sizable Energy is raising $25 million to store and generate electricity at sea. Go deeper

🤖 Exclusive: Riven Systems, an NYC-based startup using AI and automated lab testing to improve minerals processing, raised $7.9 million in pre-seed funding, the company told Axios Pro. Go deeper

🔋 Scoop: Long-duration battery developer Form Energy raised its latest funding at a $1.75 billion pre-money valuation, Axios Pro learned. Go deeper

🪨 Exclusive: Princeton Critical Minerals has raised $16 million in equity and grant funding to increase lithium production, CEO Sean Zheng told Axios Pro. Go deeper

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🗓️ Via Bloomberg, a gas pipeline to supply a large Oracle data center project in New Mexico has been delayed until early next year.

• Why it matters: The Project Jupiter data center is "one of the most crucial in [Oracle's] massive Stargate contract with OpenAI," the story notes.

🧀 NOTUS has a nice look at data centers' prominent role in the Wisconsin governor's race.

• Why it matters: It's an intense skirmish in wider political battles over data centers, and major developers are keen to build there, NOTUS reports.

💡 Via Reuters, PJM has proposed a "new framework that would force data centers to use back-up generators when electricity supply on the grid approaches dangerously low levels."

• Why it matters: It's the largest U.S. grid and a region that's especially challenged by a mismatch of demand growth that's outpacing new supply.

Those are the odds that 2026 ends as the warmest year on record, per the research group Berkeley Earth's latest analysis.

• It reflects an El Niño weather pattern that's rapidly strengthening.