“Grid growth cannot meet the demand for AI, so a pragmatic ‘all of the above’ strategy is needed – with gas as the critical bridge,” Cully Cavness, co-founder and CEO of Crusoe, told WIRED in a statement. “This is not a destination; it is the foundation on which we are building, investing in batteries, solar, wind and small modular nuclear reactors. We are not waiting for a zero-emission grid – we are building a path to get there.”
Other tech companies are publicly advocating for fresh gas investments. This week Microsoft signed the contract with oil giant Chevron to supply up to 2.5 gigawatts of gas power to a data center in West Texas.
For his part, Thomas believes that behind-the-meter power could become a mainstream power strategy for data center developers.
“It’s important to emphasize how innovative this is,” he says. “About a year ago this wasn’t something any company would do, and now it’s so popular. The speed is so much better than waiting for a network.”
Since the beginning of the AI arms race, Substantial Tech companies that previously shared aggressive climate goals have done just that He admitted to backtrackingas they increasingly build energy-intensive data centers. Despite the law 50 percent increase in total emissions over the past five years, Google said in last year’s sustainability report that it had reduced greenhouse gas emissions from its data centers by 12 percent. The company has publicly touted its commitment to renewable energy. In addition to the Armstrong campus, Google’s Texas investment includes a data center in Haskell County that will include: company press release“will be built next to a new solar and battery power plant.” Google is also pursuing a number of vast behind-the-meter renewable energy projects, as Thomas recently mentioned report.
With an administration at the helm that both supports the construction of data centers, disdains greenhouse gas reporting policies, and promotes U.S. natural gas, it seems likely that independent gas power will develop despite high emissions costs. In March, the White House gathered executives from seven major tech companies, including Google, to sign a nonbinding agreement agreement to protect ratepayers, including a commitment to “build, import or purchase the next generation resources and electricity needed to meet their new energy demands.” Experts told WIRED that the agreement was mostly symbolic because neither data center developers nor the White House have much control over policies that lower electricity bills.
Some lawmakers, however, are questioning Substantial Tech over the climate impact of their data center projects. Just days after the White House event, three Democratic senators sent letters to a number of artificial intelligence companies and data center developers, including xAI, OpenAIAND Metaexpressing concern about specific vast data center projects and their potential impact on the environment and climate. (Lawmakers didn’t send a letter to Google, but they did letter to Crusoe with a question about an unrelated project.) Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Martin Heinrich of Novel Mexico asked the companies’ executives to answer several questions about their data center plans, including why they chose to power the data centers with natural gas rather than renewable energy sources.
“There is no doubt that if we don’t do this, there will be climate shocks and huge economic impacts
limit global temperature increases to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” the senators wrote in their letter to technology executives, outlining the need to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to meet that goal. “I ask you to explain how your actions are consistent with this goal, and if not, why you think it doesn’t matter.”