Big Tech's Private Power Plants Will Drive Up Your Energy Bill, Experts Warn
OPEC Sees Oil Demand Growth Outpacing Supply Through 2027 AI-generated misinformation is already moving… Haley Zaremba is an energy journalist and researcher with more than a decade of professional experience covering global energy systems, land and natural resources, and… As urged by President Donald Trump, tech companies are starting to build power plants alongside their new data center campuses to provide their own energy.
The Trump administrationhas promisedthat this approach will help to shield ratepayers from skyrocketing power prices as data centers move into the neighborhood, but experts contend that it will do the opposite.
As data centers continue to rapidly increase in number and size thanks to the artificial intelligence boom, the amount of energy needed to power those data centers is skyrocketing.
AJune reportfrom Business Insider found that "if all data centers permitted through 2025 come online, they will use between 224.3 terawatt-hours and 358.8 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, an increase of 50% over the previous year across the range." To put that staggering figure in perspective, that's about as much energy as all of Mexico -- a country with a population of more than 130 million people -- uses in a year.
Until now, data centers have almost entirely been powered by local energy grids, and neighboring consumers have seen their energy prices skyrocket in response to the overnight demand spike.
"We are witnessing a massive transfer of wealth from residential utility customers to large corporations -- data centers and large utilities and their corporate parents, which profit from building additional energy infrastructure," Maryland People's Counsel David Lapp told Business Insider last year.
"Utility regulation is failing to protect residential customers, contributing to an energy affordability crisis." SetOilPrice.comas a preferred source in Googlehere.
As a response to this affordability crisis, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle haveramped up pressureon tech companies to foot their own energy bills.
Increased pressure from lawmakers, as well as long wait times to connect to existing energy grids, are pushing hyperscalers to develop their own alternative power sources.
While some of these are clean energy enterprises orhybrid gas-plus-renewables models, most of them are gas-powered.
While it would stand to reason that this approach would relieve pressure on power grids and therefore shield ratepayers from energy price hikes, the real-world impact is actually the opposite when the data centers arepowered by natural gas-- which is the case in the vast majority of these new data center campuses.
"Natural gas is a market-traded commodity, meaning data centers that gobble up lots of natural gas will naturally compete with other gas customers, increasing prices," explains UtilityDive in a recentreport.
| Product | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Brent Crude | $102.14/bbl | +0.34% |
| WTI Crude | $96.90/bbl | +0.21% |
| EN590 Diesel | $846/MT | +0.18% |
| Jet Fuel A-1 | $1090/MT | +0.55% |
| Mazut M100 | $450/MT | -0.15% |
| Bitumen 60/70 | $470/MT | +0.08% |
| Sulphur Gran 99.5% | $470/MT | -0.44% |
| Urea 46% Gran | $650/MT | +1.12% |
| NPK 16-16-16 | $460/MT | -0.28% |
| Nat Gas TTF | $15.42/MMBtu | +0.92% |
Comments
Post a Comment