The Coming Big Boom in Natural Gas Power Generation

Back in October, I wrote a piece in the Daily Caller in which I commented on the spate of announcements by Big Tech firms that they are contracting with nuclear power companies to provided dedicated electricity supplies to their datacenters for AI and other new technologies.

I followed that up a couple of weeks later with a piece at Forbes in which I discussed the timing issues for these Big Tech firms hoping to rely on nuclear power to provide their needs. Given that it takes 12-20 years to permit and build a nuclear facility, companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta faced long lead times during which they will have to find alternative sources of electricity while their nuclear dreams are coming to fruition.

All of these companies have net-zero goals and love to virtue signal about being green. Thus, they love to talk about their long-term nuclear plans, but are reluctant to boast about what they’re going to do in the near term.

They all understand that wind and solar cannot provide the cheap, reliable, 24/7, 365 days per year power generation their datacenters must have to keep their technologies and social media platforms running. But they have to obtain the dedicated power from somewhere and do it fast.

Once those key factors are taken into account, my conclusion back in October was that this AI/datacenter revolution must almost inevitably result in a massive expansion of natural gas power plants in the United States.