by Kevin Killough
For years, tech giants in California and Washington have been leading the push to eliminate fossil fuels from the grid. For example, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Apple are members RE100 Climate Groupan organization of enormous corporations that aims to accelerate “changes towards large-scale zero-emission networks by 2040.”
In 2018, Apple announced that it was powered entirely by renewable energy worldwide.
“This achievement includes retail stores, offices, data centers and facilities located in 43 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, China and India,” – the company boasted in a press release.
At first glance, it may seem that the company has managed to base its operations entirely on wind and solar energy, which probably suggests that it is technically feasible. The press release includes photos of yaks grazing next to solar panels and highlights a number of wind and solar projects the company has built or planned to build.
However, the company has never been able to power facilities such as data centers, which require electricity 24/7 without interruption, using intermittent power from wind and solar. Although the company doesn’t mention it in its press release, Apple explains how it achieved “100% renewable energy” in its annual “Apple reports on environmental progress” Apple is investing in “high-quality carbon credits to offset remaining hard-to-decarbonize corporate emissions.” In other words, Apple is powered by fossil fuel energy, but other low-emission companies sell Apple credits to offset Apple’s high-emission energy.
fresh era
Today, these same tech companies are struggling with electricity demand in their data centers and artificial intelligence putting increasing pressure to produce more electricity in a grid deprived of energy as a result of phasing out coal-fired power plants.
Microsoft reported a 30 percent escalate in emissions in 2023 compared to the 2020 baseline, the “Wall Street” daily reportedand currently requires its suppliers to employ 100% carbon-free energy by 2030. The company attributed this growth to the construction of data centers.
The issue was the topic of Tuesday’s hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., the committee chairman, said annual electricity demand across the United States has remained steady over the past two decades. “We’re here today because it feels like this era is quickly coming to an end,” Manchin said.
From 2021 to 2023, the International Energy Agency increased its forecast for global electricity demand to 2050 by 16 percent, equivalent to 7,300 terawatt hours. According to the Energy Policy Research Foundationthat’s more than twice the total electricity production from solar and wind in 2022. To put this into perspective, average American house consumes 899,000 watt-hours of electricity per month.
In the US, the escalate in demand for electricity is driven by artificial intelligence and the electrification of transport through the introduction of electric vehicles. Increased production capacity resulting from the Inflation Reduction Act also causes an increased load on the network.
“New factories are popping up almost every week producing advanced energy and semiconductor technology,” Manchin said. Citing data from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Long-term assessment 2023Manchin added that by 2030, demand in the US will escalate by 90 gigawatts.
At the same time as electricity demand is rising, in part because of President Biden’s climate agenda, EPA adopted fresh rules regarding power plants, which will probably lead to the decommissioning of the last coal-fired power plants in the country and discourage investment in fresh gas-fired power plants.
Biden “wants to force operators to shut down these plants before the end of their useful lives. It’s a disgrace. We can’t regulate how we produce more electricity,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.
Barrasso said America’s withering electricity supply is also making the U.S. less competitive with China. While the United States has closed 100 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants since 2015, China has added 262 gigawatts. This will make the country more attractive for investment in the development of artificial intelligence because, Barrasso said, it will be able to guarantee enough reliable and affordable electricity to operate the facilities.
“The race for artificial intelligence is a race America cannot lose,” Barrasso said.
Semiconductors
Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, said the CHIPS Act of 2022, which would provide billions for semiconductor research and production incentives, would make the U.S. less dependent on China for semiconductors, which he said is a national security threat.
“They are in everything we produce that has to do with defense,” Risch said.
As with data centers, chip manufacturing plants need constant power, which makes reliable power from nuclear, fossil fuels, or hydropower vital to supporting these industries. Mark Mills, executive director of the National Center for Energy Analytics, explained that downtime is very costly for chipmakers.
“If you cut off power for milliseconds, you cause astonishing economic disruption,” Mills said.
Scott Gatzemeier, vice president of U.S. expansion at semiconductor maker Micron Technology, said he had to recover the chip plant after a minor power outage lasting milliseconds caused tens of millions of dollars in lost production.
One way to ensure grid reliability when there is not enough fossil, nuclear or hydropower available is to employ incentives to induce major energy consumers to employ electricity during periods of low demand from other consumers. Mills said these programs are impractical for semiconductor plants because they operate 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
“You can’t ask them, ‘Can you turn it off now because the wind isn’t blowing?’” Mills said.
He said batteries are not an ideal solution to the problem because “they don’t produce energy. They keep it.” They are also 100 times more expensive than other forms of energy storage, such as liquefied natural gas tanks or coal heaps. Batteries would also require “tens of trillions of dollars” of investment and key mineral supply chains that the world cannot currently produce on that scale, Mills said.
Manchin said the testimony revealed the scale and severity of the U.S. electricity shortage
“I think we need to continue to raise the alarm because I see a real, catastrophic situation happening in our country,” Manchin said.
Manchin discussed the political fallout from the “war on coal” that began under President Barack Obama in West Virginia and has led to many job losses.
“I’ll tell you this politically. “That made my state, West Virginia, registered over 75% Democrat – old-line conservative Democrats, but they were still Democrats – and because of that, in one decade it was 80% Republican,” Manchin said.
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Kevin Killough is a reporter for Just the News.
“Data Center” photo by imgix.
