Is the AI Boom Leading to More Natural Gas-Powered Utilities? (msn.com) 26
New power plants burning natural gas are being built all across America, reports the Washington Post, calling it a gas boom "driven in large part by AI."
They blame tech companies like Microsoft and Meta — which "looked to gas amid a shortage of adequate new clean energy" — while noting that those companies "say they plan to offset their development of natural gas capacity with equal investments in clean energy like solar and wind." [E]ven coal is making a comeback. But the biggest push is for gas, with more than 220 plants in various stages of development nationwide. They are often pitched as a bridge until more clean power is available, sometimes with promises the plants will eventually be equipped with nascent technology that traps greenhouse gas emissions. But the timeline for installing such "carbon capture" is vague. "These companies are building these massive new gas plants that are going to be there for 30 to 50 years," said Bill Weihl, a former director of sustainability at Facebook and founder of the nonprofit ClimateVoice. "That's not a bridge. It is a giant bomb in our carbon budget...."
Public filings from some of the big tech companies driving this development show their greenhouse gas emissions are soaring... "The last few years have revealed that a global energy transition is more complex and less linear than anticipated," Microsoft's board wrote in urging rejection of a December shareholder resolution demanding the company confront the climate risks of AI. "While urgency builds for decarbonization, so does the demand for energy."
Shareholders rejected the resolution. Microsoft is battling with environmental groups over its plans to build a multibillion-dollar data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, powered with electricity from natural gas. Their petition warns Microsoft's project "will push our state's climate goals out of reach, locking us into 30 more years of fossil fuels." The company said in a statement that it remains committed to erasing its emissions by adding substantial clean power to regional power grids. "By the end of 2025 we expect to meet our goal of adding new sources of carbon-free electricity to the grid equal to 100 percent of the electricity used by our datacenters," the statement said.
Meta says it is doing the same in Louisiana [where it's building a new 4-million-square-foot data center] and is "committed to matching our electricity use with 100 percent clean and renewable energy."
The article includes two revealing quotes:
They blame tech companies like Microsoft and Meta — which "looked to gas amid a shortage of adequate new clean energy" — while noting that those companies "say they plan to offset their development of natural gas capacity with equal investments in clean energy like solar and wind." [E]ven coal is making a comeback. But the biggest push is for gas, with more than 220 plants in various stages of development nationwide. They are often pitched as a bridge until more clean power is available, sometimes with promises the plants will eventually be equipped with nascent technology that traps greenhouse gas emissions. But the timeline for installing such "carbon capture" is vague. "These companies are building these massive new gas plants that are going to be there for 30 to 50 years," said Bill Weihl, a former director of sustainability at Facebook and founder of the nonprofit ClimateVoice. "That's not a bridge. It is a giant bomb in our carbon budget...."
Public filings from some of the big tech companies driving this development show their greenhouse gas emissions are soaring... "The last few years have revealed that a global energy transition is more complex and less linear than anticipated," Microsoft's board wrote in urging rejection of a December shareholder resolution demanding the company confront the climate risks of AI. "While urgency builds for decarbonization, so does the demand for energy."
Shareholders rejected the resolution. Microsoft is battling with environmental groups over its plans to build a multibillion-dollar data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, powered with electricity from natural gas. Their petition warns Microsoft's project "will push our state's climate goals out of reach, locking us into 30 more years of fossil fuels." The company said in a statement that it remains committed to erasing its emissions by adding substantial clean power to regional power grids. "By the end of 2025 we expect to meet our goal of adding new sources of carbon-free electricity to the grid equal to 100 percent of the electricity used by our datacenters," the statement said.
Meta says it is doing the same in Louisiana [where it's building a new 4-million-square-foot data center] and is "committed to matching our electricity use with 100 percent clean and renewable energy."
The article includes two revealing quotes:
- "It is like everyone just gave up," said Aaron Zubaty, CEO of Eolian, a large clean energy developer that works with data centers.
- American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers (who represents the oil and gas industry in Washington), said "The words that have replaced 'energy transition' are 'AI' and 'data centers'. We're transitioning from the energy transition to the energy reality ... We're going to need a lot more oil and gas."
Meanwhile in China... (Score:1)
Re: Meanwhile in Europe... (Score:1)
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Is there? [cleanenergywire.org]. Doesn't look great to me.
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Do you know that retail energy is typically administered to decouple, explicitly in law, supply and demand of electricity from retail pricing? Can you imagine utilities with vast oversupply lobbying state boards to raise rates, because salesmanship?
A lot of waste (Score:4, Insightful)
And not a lot of reward. Until we have a killer app for AI, this is just the tech sector stoking their own egos with their endless supplies of cash.
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Do you know how economists say that they make simplifying assumptions such as a monotonically increasing utility function for mathematical tractability reasons? What if ChatGPT can do the math to substitute utility functions that allow for intransitive choice rankings by using sinusoidal perturbations? Then if you rerun your models with intransitive utility functions, do you get surprising results like optimal capital allocation can increase with consumption? And do you think everyone will just ignore this
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Until we have a killer app for AI
We have plenty of "killer apps" for AI. The thing is AI is a method, not an app. We've been using it for over a decade for all manner of things, it just wasn't plastered in the news until we started mocking LLMs for being unable to count.
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You mean, killer apps like
- ChatGPT
- Dall-E
- GitHub Copilot
And a ton of others. These tools may lack maturity, but they are already...killer apps. They're good enough *today* to save people a ton of time and money.
You might not think there's a killer app, but pretty much the rest of the world disagrees with you. https://masterofcode.com/blog/... [masterofcode.com].
Bill Weihl has already lost (Score:3)
"That's not a bridge. It is a giant bomb in our carbon budget...."
CARBON BUDGET!?!?!?!
There are two very different sets of rules; corporations, especially AI ones, do not have or respect any "carbon budget". That's someone else's problem.
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To be fair corporations only do what we want them to do. If we could all collectively tell them to shove their stupid AI up their ass then they'd be sending no carbon to the air for this purpose. But we don't. (Okay we on Slashdot do, but the wider population doesn't).
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To be fair corporations only do what we want them to do.
Who is the "we" in that sentence?
I'm pretty sure I'm not part of it. It seems to only include people who have a lot more money than me. Corporations do what billionaire investors want them to.
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Don't worry.
By the time we have transformed to planet-wide power station, we will have AI corporations to sort all of this out.
The problem literally solves itself with every power station we build.
But... but... but... (Score:2, Insightful)
I was assured by the AI shills here that the AI companies are not, in fact, boiling the oceans, and are something something clean energy, and even if it were, something something future efficiencies make the temporary setback of a dead planet totally worth it.
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Were you? Can you show us an example of where an AI shill here said that AI was all powered by clean energy? Or the other thing I guess you probably made up?
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Do you think Microsoft counts the carbon credits it gets from using hydropower in Washington against the natural gas plants in other states?
Stupid to try to simplify it to that level (Score:3)
Ultimately gas power plants become more economical than (pure) battery storage plants for growth, essentially increasing their expected service factor and distributing capital costs over more hours of operation. Solar works pretty well with a modest battery support, and is likely to maintain significant growth especially in the southern US. Wind will be interesting to watch; without subsidies or clean energy initiatives it is pretty hard to pencil out, at least the last time I had access to detailed numbers a few years ago.
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Ultimately gas power plants become more economical than (pure) battery storage plants for growth, essentially increasing their expected service factor and distributing capital costs over more hours of operation.
I'm not clear on what you're trying to say here. I don't see any meaningful way to compare gas plants with battery banks - the former generates power while the latter stores it.
Also, when you mention "economical", do the economic calculations factor in the negative health impacts, loss of habitat, increases in destructive weather events, etc, which result from AGW? Or are they the propagandistic 'voodoo economics' calculations much loved by corporate con artists - the ones that externalize every cost possib
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Until the environmental effects are fully integrated into the costs it is not an economic decision point. You also have challenges like the Moss Landing battery fire as you compare environmental tradeoffs. Personally, I am adding a non-economical amount of solar and battery for my home to reduce grid reliance, but utilities have a different set of priorities.
What had destroyed the economics of gas fired "peaker" plants is solar + battery being incentivized. That analysis changes though as you 1) reduce i
Build double the power in PV + electrolysers (Score:2)
Buying cheap indulgences is useless, but if they actually match every gas plant with double the power in nearby PV and electrolysers it can run pretty close to carbon neutral. Would put an honest price on renewable power.
Of course, then it's a bit expensive.
Scumbag (Score:4, Interesting)
American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers (who represents the oil and gas industry in Washington), said "The words that have replaced 'energy transition' are 'AI' and 'data centers'. We're transitioning from the energy transition to the energy reality ... We're going to need a lot more oil and gas."
I still can't get over that we're living in a reality where the guy who runs a company promoting the transition to sustainable energy [tesla.com] helped get a president elected who is intent on kissing the fossil fuel industry's ass.
Seems like lately every rich tech bro finally got around to watching that scene from Titan A.E. [clip.cafe] and thought "Damn, that's not a bad idea."
The ultimate reality check for alternative energy (Score:5, Interesting)
I really hope that this ends up winnowing out the field of renewable energy sources to the true winners. We've had a great boom in the ideas, innovation and efforts, all great stuff, now it's time to call in the bills.
I'd like to see where they can stand on actually offering to power a giant datacenter or whatever with these alternate sources -- put up your best offers: X GW for $Y/MWH for Z years, contractually set. That's what the natural gas folks will do.
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If you look at the last available Sankey energy flow diagram (2017) from Lawrence Livermore National Labs (llnl.gov) for Wisconsin, do you too see that two-thirds of electricity is rejected, and that the totality of coal going into electricity generation is essentially wasted? Why can't nuclear plus natural gas alone supply all the demand? And if you're going to tolerate that amount of waste, why not move some of that coal to natural gas for harm reduction's sake?
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You don't get true winners with "free market" moves like this. And I put that in quotes precisely because there's nothing "free" about the market. What you get is a choice of energy decided by politics subsidies and availability of resources.
What may be natural gas for one country, may be solar for another. What may be cheap - barely taxed, or even subsidised natural gas (because something something jobs) for one administration, is a green new deal for another.
There is no winner in the technology space. The
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Congress hasn't recently passed any multi trillion dollar spending packages to promote natural gas production. Frackers are doing it pretty much on their own.
Not a problem, AI helps solve global warming (Score:2)