By Timothy Gardner, Valerie Volcovici and Leah Douglas
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden’s administration is asking huge expertise firms to spend money on new climate-friendly energy era to cowl their surging demand, U.S. Power Secretary Jennifer Granholm advised Reuters.
The talks come as a shocking surge in electrical energy demand has been pushed by the adoption of applied sciences like generative synthetic intelligence that require power-hungry information facilities. This improvement may complicate Biden’s goal of decarbonizing the ability sector by 2035 to battle local weather change.
“We have been speaking with information firms. The massive ones have commitments to net-zero and wish to see clear baseload energy,” Granholm stated in an interview with Reuters.
She stated the administration had mentioned the likelihood that firms may band collectively to utilize small modular reactors for nuclear vitality, and will concurrently place orders to cut back prices.
“If the tech firms are coming in and are going to drag clear energy from the grid, they need to convey the ability with them,” she stated.
“And so a number of that dialog is occurring proper now amongst tech firms and utilities, tech firms and nuclear firms.”
She didn’t title any of the businesses concerned.
Information facilities may use as much as 9% of whole electrical energy generated within the U.S. by the tip of the last decade, greater than doubling their present consumption, the Electrical Energy Analysis Institute stated in a report final week.
NuScale, the one small modular reactor firm with a license to construct from U.S. regulators, needed to cancel its solely challenge final 12 months on the Power Division’s Idaho Nationwide Laboratory.
Granholm stated the NuScale didn’t have enough agreements to purchase energy from the challenge. “That is a lesson: If you are going to have new nuclear it’s a must to have clear offtake of the ability,” Granholm stated.
The White Home final week introduced new measures to spur improvement of latest U.S. nuclear energy vegetation, a big potential supply of carbon-free electrical energy the federal government says is required to fight local weather change. However no new U.S. nuclear vegetation are presently being constructed.
The youngest U.S. nuclear energy reactors, on the Vogtle plant in Georgia, had been years delayed and billions over price range after they entered business operation in 2023 and 2024.
Granholm stated tech firms had been additionally trying into different clear vitality applied sciences, together with geothermal.