AI will spew gas fumes for years before the nuclear revolution takes off

Artificial intelligence is power-hungry and the companies behind the technology are striving to make it happen Standing on nuclear reactors To feed him. But building nuclear reactors takes a long time, and AI will need massive amounts of energy for years before it is ready. So where will it come from? In the United States, natural gas. The AI ​​revolution will pump more carbon into the air.

A new report from the Financial Times details what’s to come Natural gas boom. As climate change worsens, the world has moved away from polluting energy sources such as coal and natural gas. The US power grid has been making progress in renewable energy sources, and gas-based energy production has slowed over the past half-decade.

In 2024, it explodes thanks to data centers and artificial intelligence. According to the Financial Times, the US electricity grid’s dependence on gas will rise. America will add up to 80 new gas power plants by 2030. That’s 20 percent more than were added in the past five years.

On January 14, President Biden issued Executive order This paved the way for further expansion of artificial intelligence and energy infrastructure. The order directed the Pentagon and the Department of Energy to lease federal lands to private companies looking to build “gigawatt-scale AI-powered data centers.”

As part of the deal, companies looking to build on federal land must do so using so-called clean energy. “To support these efforts, the Department of the Interior will identify lands it manages suitable for clean energy that can support data centers at Department of Energy and Department of Defense sites, while enhancing permitting processes for geothermal projects,” the order said. “The Department of Energy will take further steps to promote distributed energy resources, promote the siting of clean generation resources at existing interconnection points, and support the safe and responsible deployment of nuclear energy.”

According to a recent report from the US Department of Energy, energy use in data centers is expected to triple by 2028. However, this increase in electricity demand in data centers should be understood in the context of the much greater demand for electricity that is expected to rise. . “They will occur over the next few decades through a combination of electric vehicle adoption, manufacturing relocation, hydrogen use, and the electrification of industry and buildings,” the report said.

Meta is researching nuclear power, but she needs the power now. The technology company is spending $10 billion in Louisiana on a data center and $3.2 billion on three new gas plants to operate it. Microsoft is partnering with Constellation to get the third reactor unit at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant working again. Last week, Constellation She announced that she was buying CalpineA huge gas power generation company, for $27 billion.

American gas stations pump more than 1 billion tons of carbon In the air last year. This is the highest value ever recorded. There are ways to mitigate the carbon produced by natural gas plants, but many of the 80 plants scheduled to be built will not be equipped with carbon capture systems.

According to the Department of Energy, gas power plants and data centers are black boxes. “While U.S. data centers increasingly engage in on-site electricity generation, power purchase agreements, and trading in various carbon credits, the lack of transparency around the details of these activities for all U.S. data center operators prevents their inclusion in a comprehensive analysis,” the DOE report said.

“Besides limiting the scope of this report, this lack of transparency highlights that data center growth is occurring with little attention to how best to integrate these emerging loads with the expansion of electricity generation/transmission or for broader community development.”

In announcing Meta’s Louisiana data centers, Entergy – the company’s energy partner –He said It will add clean and efficient power plants to its system to meet the growing energy demand. She wasn’t big on the finer details of her gas stations. “Meta has pledged to match its electricity use with 100% clean, renewable energy and will work with Entergy to bring at least 1,500 megawatts of new renewable energy to the grid through the Geaux Zero program,” the press release said.

The Geaux Zero program is a local tariff that encourages the purchase of solar energy. Buying some renewable energy doesn’t mean carbon will stop pumping into the sky, but Meta has promised to buy some solar energy to go with it.

The dream, of course, is for all these new data centers and AI systems to run on renewable and nuclear energy. The truth is that nuclear energy moves slowly. It can take a decade to manufacture a conventional reactor, and many smaller, cutting-edge systems have not been tested, deployed, or proven effective.

Big Tech could be on the cusp of a nuclear revolution thanks to incentives created by artificial intelligence. But it would have to burn a lot of natural gas to get there before the reactors are operational.