--- description: Find out why Tyler Norris is on TIME's 2025 list of the 100 most influential leaders driving business climate action. title: Tyler Norris: The 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders of 2025 image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc06b30bfc5059c9a/6998cb171500fb89b6aa6b95/Leaders-Tyler-Norris2.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Oct 30, 2025 # Tyler Norris ## Video: TIME100 Climate 2025 | Leaders Compilation [Watch (HLS stream): TIME100 Climate 2025 | Leaders Compilation](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/qIdHTBY3.m3u8) (7:02)  _Published 2025-10-30_ Incoming Head of Market Innovation, Advanced Energy Team, Google by [Justin Worland](/author/justin-worland/) ## Justin Worland Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Senior Correspondent  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Photo: Bill Snead—Duke University) Tyler Norris speaks just as you might expect a renewable-­power developer turned academic would talk. Phrases like maximum nameplate ­capacity and new load integration glide off the tongue. He delves into the details of how electricity markets are designed and waxes poetic on the challenges facing the U.S. electric grid. To the untrained ear, it sounds so wonky that it must be trivial. But, to the contrary, the research Norris published with Duke University this year on how data centers consume electricity has shaken the power sector and recast the conventional wisdom about the future of U.S. emissions. His work has helped inspire startups to launch new solutions and spurred big tech companies to look for new ways to tackle data center power demand. All of that disruption and innovation comes from ­Norris’ asking a relatively simple question: What if data centers could modulate when they use energy? To understand the significance of that question, it’s important to grapple with unfolding dynamics in the U.S. power sector. Across the country, data centers are popping up to feed the growing demand for AI. And with that, the hunger for electricity is surging. To meet that need, utilities and power companies have rejiggered their plans, to keep coal-fired power plants running and build new natural gas facilities. But Norris’ research, published in February, found that the impact of limiting data-center demand for a small amount of time—less than a day over the course of a year—would be large enough to add a significant share of planned new data centers without new power plants. “People were looking for a solution that seemed achievable,” he says of why his research resonated. Since then, the research has become a focal data point in U.S. energy and climate discussions. Founders of well-funded startups and grassroots activists alike have cited it in conversation. “It’s taken on a life of its own,” says Norris. Like many developments over the past year, the growth in electricity demand from data centers is a bleak one for climate goals. But, in challenging times, the best leaders, like many of the honorees on this year’s TIME100 Climate list—from an entrepreneur who has created a business out of restoring tropical forests to politicians stepping into the void left by the U.S. federal pullback—turn challenges into opportunity. Perhaps nowhere in the climate space is there greater opportunity to do so than with AI-driven growth of electricity demand. In aggregate, big companies have committed to spending hundreds of billions on AI, including whatever it takes to find the necessary power. If used correctly, the AI spending could catapult the U.S. to a cleaner electricity system. Fittingly, this fall, Norris will leave his position as a Duke University researcher to join Google’s advanced energy team—an opportunity to take some of his thinking to one of the world’s biggest purchasers of energy for data centers. The idea behind Norris’ now famous paper came almost too simply: he connected the dots between the old-school utility industry and innovative technology players. In a series of closed-door sessions in 2024 hosted by Duke, representatives from electric utilities and state regulators questioned whether data centers really require peak power levels 24/7, or if there might be some flexibility. It was an unconventional question: in the 20 years that data centers have been a significant part of the grid, their developers have consistently demanded the highest levels of reliability. But AI is different—and Norris knew it. Training AI models, which accounts for a significant chunk of the AI energy usage, can be stretched over longer periods of time if necessary. And, in some cases, AI queries can be delayed without much inconvenience. So Norris set out to measure what that would mean in aggregate. The answer was stark. Researchers pointed out that peak-demand electricity can happen for just a few days a year—either in summer or winter depending on your location. So by reducing AI data-center consumption for a cumulative period of a little less than one day over the course of a year—by pausing or slowing nonurgent computation during peak hours—the U.S. could add 76 gigawatts of new data-center load without building any new generation. (For reference, the entire state of Florida has less than 70 ­gigawatts of power capacity.) Grow the time period just a little, to roughly four days a year of cumulative time, and 126 gigawatts of new data-center demand could be added to the grid without new power generation. “A very modest amount of flexibility from new loads can enable a very substantial addition of new-load capacity,” says Norris. The paper caught on like wildfire. Startups like ­Emerald AI, a platform that allows data centers to adjust their power consumption on demand, founded by one of this year’s TIME100 Climate honorees, Varun Sivaram, used the analysis to support the company’s launch. In the financial community, the research has helped reframe the AI-power challenge. Goldman Sachs released a paper in August citing Norris to explain how the grid “crisis becomes an opportunity.” And, over the summer, Google announced partnerships with the utility Indiana Michigan Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority to cut power consumption from data centers in their service territories at key times. While much of this work had been percolating before the paper, the research offered a proof point, helping make these initiatives exciting and investable. Academic research has been and continues to be an absolute necessity to understand climate change—both the problems and the solutions. But, with emissions rising rapidly, there’s a premium placed on the ability to scale solutions quickly—and few companies have committed as many resources to the challenge as Google. “You can count a handful of institutions that are doing as much innovative work in clean energy as Google is right now,” says Norris. That work took off 15 years ago as the company helped bring corporate power purchase agreements (PPA) to life. PPAs are vehicles for companies to sign long-term deals to buy renewable energy at a fixed price. But at the time, most corporations—even big ones—simply didn’t get involved in long-term energy purchases. Google paved the way, creating the framework that allowed companies to buy in, helping the approach take off. With Google’s support, PPAs drove a massive boom in U.S. clean-energy deployment. This strategy has worked to this day. Last year, even as the company’s energy usage grew with its rising AI footprint, Google’s data-center energy emissions fell—the result of those continued clean-energy purchases. The company’s carbon emissions grew more than 50% from 2019 to 2024, though that growth came largely from its suppliers and end users rather than its own operations. And alongside rising energy demand, the AI boom has created another opportunity to innovate. With just a quick glance, it’s easy to pick out Google’s fingerprints on a slew of the most promising clean-technology developments of the past year. In May, the company signed an agreement to buy fusion power from Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a major boon not just for CFS but also for the nascent energy source. That month, Google also won approval in Nevada to supply a data center with geothermal power provided by Fervo Energy. And, in August, the company entered a deal to bring electricity to the grid from Kairos Power’s small modular reactors, a new form of nuclear technology. “We can’t solve the energy challenges of this century with the technologies from last century,” says Michael Terrell, head of advanced energy at Google and a member of the 2025 TIME100 Climate list. “We need to have a broader set of solutions, and that’s something that we’re committed to pioneering.” Google, with its big balance sheet and expert staffing, can make tackling the coming electricity crunch look easy, but it will be anything but. For one, only some of the big tech companies have doubled down on commitments to zero-carbon electricity. Others have instead embraced natural gas as a quick fix. And there are hundreds of smaller companies, less vulnerable to public scrutiny, that aren’t thinking about climate at all. Even still, creating the right technology is only a small part of a much bigger puzzle. Market structures need to be redesigned to incentivize new technologies and approaches to take off, requiring the participation of regulators and politicians. A wider set of corporate energy buyers need to prioritize cleaner energy­—even if climate isn’t as much of a public topic as it was just a few years ago. And, importantly, electric utilities need to buy in—a tall order considering they make their money by building new infrastructure, including and especially fossil-­fuel infrastructure. While many have shown interest in innovative solutions to slow demand, utilities are by and large still pushing to build new power plants. “It’s going to be hard, like trying to turn an aircraft carrier around,” says Norris. “But unless there is a concerted effort to choose another direction, there will very likely be a massive expansion of new fossil-fuel capacity in the U.S. and elsewhere.” Tyler Norris: The 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders of 2025 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326543/tyler-norris/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326543/tyler-norris/"},"headline":"Tyler Norris","datePublished":"2025-10-30T11:30:16.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T01:01:04.925Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326543/tyler-norris/","keywords":["TIME100 Climate 2025","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc06b30bfc5059c9a/6998cb171500fb89b6aa6b95/Leaders-Tyler-Norris2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Justin Worland","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/justin-worland/"}],"creator":"Justin Worland","articleSection":"Climate","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc06b30bfc5059c9a/6998cb171500fb89b6aa6b95/Leaders-Tyler-Norris2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/climate/","name":"Climate"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time100-climate-2025/","name":"TIME100 Climate 2025"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326543/tyler-norris/","name":"Tyler Norris"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"TIME100 Climate 2025 | Leaders Compilation","description":"","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/qIdHTBY3/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2025-10-30T11:00:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/qIdHTBY3.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326543/tyler-norris/","duration":"PT7M2S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326543/tyler-norris/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```