Jack Stevens: We Can’t Get There with Hydrocarbons Alone

The energy challenge for the US in the foreseeable future is to produce enough electricity to quench the nearly insatiable demands of perfecting AI and bringing data centers online.  Our standing in the world depends upon how well we accomplish that.

It’s not going to be easy. According to the US Department of Energy, a data center will devour 50 times the electricity of a typical office building. And Bloomberg Intelligence tells us that data centers will absorb 17% of total US electricity by 2030.

Clearly, this is not the time to be choosey about sources of power. Yet that is exactly what Congress has done as part of its passage of the president’s budget bill. The bill timed out tax incentives for development of solar and wind projects enacted by 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act. Now, only clean energy projects that start construction by June of next year will be eligible for them. The practical effect will be a 50% reduction in green energy projects brought online. And heretofore, at least, wind and solar were the quickest and cheapest projects to deploy.

That leaves us with the option of developing gas-fired power plants. Were members of the House and Senate who voted for the bill aware that the US is now experiencing a shortage of gas turbines and that it takes a lead time of five years to get one? The shortage is so serious that the largest utilities are considering aftermarket turbines to meet their build-out goals.

So, the rollout of new power plants seems fated to slow to a trickle. One hopes that Congress will revisit the issue and undo the unnecessary burden it placed on clean energy. Otherwise, we will be facing an electricity capacity shortfall.