|
As was often the case in 2024, data centers were a major theme this week at NetZero Insider, with four of our stories diving into the energy industry’s efforts to meet rapidly rising demand from the facilities.
James Downing wrote about a report from the Virginia legislature showing how much potential growth the world’s largest data center market is forecasted to see in the coming 15 years. In “unconstrained scenarios,” the state’s power demand would more than double by 2040, but even meeting lower demand forecasts would prove difficult. The report also noted that the new data centers are going to lead to more natural gas plants (almost 10 GW in the smaller forecast) as the state’s climate law does not apply to electric co-ops that serve much of Data Center Alley.
NetZero’s K Kaufmann had a pair of stories looking at how very different ends of the power industry are working to meet data center demand. The Large Public Power Council told her about its members’ efforts to meet growing demand from the sector, where its leadership argued that public power offers the best model to serve tech’s growing energy appetite. In another story, she has the details on Google’s partnership with Intersect Power to co-locate data centers near new clean energy the developer is building. The developer has a “Field of Dreams” business model where it builds renewables in the areas that offer the best quality of resources and seeks to co-locate load like data centers nearby, thus avoiding the need to deal with generator interconnection processes and regional grid expansion.
Finally, our John Cropley has a story on how two blue chip industrial firms are working to meet data center demand. GE Vernova reported that it booked 9 GW of manufacturing slots for new natural gas power plants. ExxonMobil said it plans to build a large behind-the-meter generation facility burning natural gas and sequestering most of its carbon emissions below ground to serve data center demand.
Artificial intelligence has been a big focus in energy news because of its demand for electricity, but Time has a story about how it could make buildings more efficient. Buildings represent 18% of global energy use, and AI could help maximize the efficiency of aging HVAC systems that are currently slow to respond to weather changes, which can lead to severe energy waste.
Read more stories in this week’s Intelligence Report:
|
Share
Tweet
Share
Forward