The boom of artificial intelligence has a turbo question of electricity and all those who are anyone in the American energy sector want a piece of the action.
The last competitor is Chevron, the second largest oil and gas company in the country, which sees opportunities in the construction of power -powered power plants that will feed the energy directly at the data centers.
Chevron is working with the engine n. 1, an investment company based in San Francisco known for conducting a battle by successful prosecutor against Exxon Mobil in 2021. Companies claim to have ordered critical equipment, scored potential sites and may have their first online system inside Three years.
“It is an opportunity for us to help meet the moment and face this growing need for reliable and convenient power,” said Mike Wirth, CEO of Chevron, in an interview.
Chevron’s announcement is the last example of how much the promise of AI – a voracious electricity consumer – is remodeling the economy. Oil producers are recalibrating their strategies and spread in the generation of energy, a company that many of them had previously swore because it was much less profitable than perforation and oil and gas processing. Just last month, Exxon said that this also wanted to enter the sector of the sale of electricity at the data centers.
But in a reminder that the prospects for the artificial intelligence data centers and the growing demand for electricity are highly uncertain, the vessels of technology and energy collapsed on Monday. Investors were nervous by extraordinary progress in artificial intelligence made by an unknown Chinese start-up, Deepseek, who claimed to have obtained his earnings using a modest number of computers chips that consumed relatively little energy. The actions of the Nvidia chip manufacturer collapsed by 17 percent and the Stock of Constellation Energy, a large energy producer, closed more than 20 percent.
“There is always the potential for markets to surprise you,” Wirth said. But he added that being early to the market and keeping his costs low would protect Chevron from the possibility that the growth of the demand for power is not up to current expectations.
His company is almost not alone.
Many energy manufacturers are inflating and many are investing specifically in natural gas generation capacity. Constellation, which has a large fleet of nuclear power plants, has agreed this month to buy rival Calpine, which has many natural gas systems, for $ 16.4 billion. And last week, Nextera Energy said he was planning to build more electrical power plants powered by gas.
Expectations on how quickly the demand for US electricity will increase vary widely. What is clear is that it is likely that data centers consume much more than the power of the country than they do today. A recent study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has estimated that the structures are ready to use up to 12 % of US electricity in 2028, compared to 4.4 percent in 2023.
Chevron and the engine n. 1 said they had reserved seven Gas turbines from GE Vernova, one of the companies created by the breakdown of General Electric. The equipment should be delivered starting from 2026. Chevron and engine n. 1, who did not say what they intend to spend, have been in negotiations with potential customers and expect to build up to four gigawatt of gas generation capacity.
Natural gas electrical power plants cost about $ 2 billion for Gigawatt, Morgan Stanley has recently estimated.
In this case, the plants would be next to the data centers that feed. Like Exxon, partners expect their structures to be connected to the electrical network, so that plants can rise and work faster. Years can be needed for grid managers to approve connection requests.
In the end, however, they aim to guarantee grid connections, said Chris James, the engine chief investment officer n. 1. “An interconnection of the grid allows us to be able to supply grilled energy when it needs it,” he said.
The giants of technology such as Microsoft and Google have set objectives to obtain all their energy from sources that do not contribute to climate change after taking into consideration the acquisition of carbon and other technologies. But some technological companies now say that they will be difficult to obtain all the power they need in the coming years without relying on natural gas, which produces carbon dioxide when it is burned. Serra gas is the main cause of climate change.
“It is this valley between today and then that it leaves a lot of people to scratch your head and realizing that if they don’t support you with gas, the answer could be worse,” said Jesse Noffsinger, a partner of the consultancy company McKinsey & Company.
Chevron and engine n. 1 said their plants could be built in different regions. They excluded the eastern coast due to the constraints of infrastructure and feedback of potential customers.
Companies also sought sites Able to welcome carbon and kidnapping carbon dioxide emissions, James said.
However, companies do not plan to incorporate that technology or renewable energy at the beginning.
“We are very confident that over time how the political environment is clarified, since we make good progress in the development of technology, that some of these other alternatives will be part of it,” said Wirth.