Tech Looks to Renewables to Power Data Centers
Technology companies searching for sources of abundant, low-emissions power for AI-capable data centers are teaming up with renewable energy developers (The Wall Street Journal, subscription).
What’s going on: In North and South Carolina, tech giants, including Amazon.com, are partnering with Duke Energy on projects “that could boost technologies such as smaller nuclear reactors. Another early-stage technology that could get tech industry backing: batteries that store clean power for days, instead of hours,” while some firms are exploring geothermal energy.
Why it’s important: “Tech companies are already the biggest purchasers of wind and solar power, but it isn’t enough to meet the round-the-clock needs of data centers. A search on a generative AI platform like ChatGPT uses at least 10 times the energy as a standard one on Google. Emissions from the global build-out of data centers between now and 2030 could equal about 40% of the entire U.S. economy’s annual emissions, Morgan Stanley estimates.”
- The AI appetite is pushing available power sources—and the already strained electrical grid that delivers this energy—to the limit, highlighting the need to bring online more emissions-free energy projects.
Innovative collaboration: In one partnership, a Nevada utility company would purchase geothermal energy from a startup that “drills wells to generate power using heat from under the earth’s surface.”
Could AI help? In time, technology companies say, AI could help them limit their emissions. One way: by more efficiently deploying power.