It has become hard to overstate the impact AI and data centers are having on the power sector.
This is an industrial revolution on an extraordinary scale. And we're all part of it.
If you use one of these – if you're creating and using data – you're, in fact, driving it.
The videos, posts and AI chatbots we now all interact with require immense physical infrastructure—infrastructure that uses incredible amounts of electricity.
How much are we talking? You need think on the scale of entire cities.
For example, PJM Interconnection, the nation's largest electricity grid serving 67 million customers, recently said it projects a 32-gigawatt increase in power demand by 2030—of which 30 gigawatts is from data centers.
That increase is equivalent to adding 20 million new homes to the grid in the next five years.
The Southwest Power Pool, the grid operator for the Great Plains states, said it projects peak demand to be as much as 75 percent higher in just a decade.
Everywhere, power demand is soaring but our efforts to meet it are struggling. Most of the country is on track to be short of power by the end of the decade.
If we're going to meet soaring demand while enabling this economic opportunity, we're going to need to build. New power plants, new transmission lines and pipelines. But we also must build on the shoulders of the generating capacity we have in place—not in place of it.
As secretary of Energy Chris Wright said: "we've got to not only grow new production, but we've got to stop digging the hole, which means stop shutting down existing, viable, economic plants."
The era of closing well operating coal plants must end.
If you're looking for a reliability and electricity affordability backstop for this incredible energy moment, look no further than American coal country.
