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Artificial intelligence is hungry for power, and the companies behind the technology are hungry for it nuclear reactors stand up to feed him. But nuclear reactors take a long time to build, and AI will need many energy years before they are ready. And where will it come from? Natural gas in the United States. The AI revolution will pump more carbon into the air.
A new report from the Financial Times detailed the future natural gas boom. As climate change worsens, the world has turned away from polluting energy sources like coal and natural gas. The US electric grid has been making progress in renewables, and gas-based power generation has slowed over the past half-decade.
In 2024, it exploded thanks to data centers and AI. According to the Financial Times, the dependence of the US electricity grid on gas will only increase. America will add more than 80 new gas-fired power plants by 2030. This is 20 percent more than what was added in the last five years.
President Biden announced on January 14 executive order this has paved the way for further expansion of artificial intelligence and energy infrastructure. The order ordered the Pentagon and DOE to lease federal land to private companies seeking to build “gigawatt-scale AI data centers.”
As part of the deal, companies that want to build on federal land must do so with so-called clean energy. “To support these efforts, the Department of the Interior will identify lands that are eligible for clean energy that it manages and can support data centers at DOE and DOD sites, while also strengthening permitting processes for geothermal projects,” he said. “DOE will take additional steps to promote distributed energy resources, deploy clean generation resources at existing interconnection points, and support the safe and responsible deployment of nuclear power.”
Data center energy use is expected to triple by 2028, according to a recent report from the US Department of Energy. “This increase in data center electricity demand, however, must be understood in the context of greater demand for electricity. The adoption of electric vehicles over the next few decades is driven by a combination of offshoring of manufacturing, the use of hydrogen, and the electrification of industry and buildings. the report says.
Meta is researching nuclear power, but he needs power now. The tech company is spending $10 billion on a data center in Louisiana and $3.2 billion on three new gas plants to power it. Microsoft is partnering with Constellation to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant’s third reactor unit. Last week, Horoscope announced the acquisition of Calpinegiant gas power company, for $27 billion.
Pumped more than American gas stations 1 billion tons of carbon air last year. This is the highest value ever recorded. There are ways to reduce the carbon produced by natural gas plants, but the more than 80 slated for construction will not be equipped with carbon capture systems.
According to the DOE, gas-fired power plants and data centers are black boxes. “While US data centers are more likely to trade electricity generation, power purchase agreements and various carbon credits, the lack of transparency around the details of these activities for all US data center operators precludes their inclusion in the overall analysis,” DOE. the report says.
“In addition to limiting the scope of this report, this lack of transparency highlights that data center growth has occurred with little thought given to how best to integrate these emergency loads for power generation/transmission expansion or broader community development.”
In announcing Meta’s Louisiana data centers, Entergy—the company’s energy partner—he said would add clean, efficient power plants to its system to meet growing energy demand. The exact details of his gas plants were not great. “Meta has pledged to match its electricity use with 100% clean and renewable energy and will work with Entergy to bring at least 1,500 MW of new renewable energy to the grid through the Geaux Zero program,” he said.
The Geaux Zero program is a local tariff that encourages the purchase of solar energy. Getting some renewable energy doesn’t mean it’s going to stop pumping carbon into the sky, Meta just promised to get some solar to go with it.
The dream, of course, is for all these new data centers and AI systems to run on renewable and nuclear power. The reality is that nuclear power is slow moving. It can take a decade to get a conventional reactor up and running, and many of the smaller advanced systems are untested, unpowered and unproven.
It is possible that big technology is on the verge of a nuclear revolution thanks to the incentives created by artificial intelligence. But the reactors will have to burn a lot of natural gas to get there before they can start.
