Meta's all-of-the-above strategy shows why powering AI is so complex

In just 48 hours last week, a series of Meta announcements outlined the staggering scale and complexity of powering artificial intelligence. They included a request for up to 4 gigawatts of nuclear power, 760 megawatts of new solar contracts across four states, and the site selection for a $10 billion data center in Louisiana that will be powered initially by natural gas with the potential for CCS or hydrogen.

The flurry illustrates an emerging reality in the tech industry: companies are pursuing every available energy resource — which each come with a different timeline — as they race to build AI computing infrastructure.

"Advancing the technologies that will build the future of human connection — including the next wave of AI innovation — requires electric grids to expand and embrace new sources of reliable, clean and renewable energy," wrote Meta in a December 3 blog post announcing its search for nuclear developers.

"Power availability has become the name of the game," said Brent Morgan, Meta's principal for energy strategy, in a recent interview with Latitude Media. With 12 GW of renewable energy projects in its portfolio — 8.5 GW of which are currently operating — the company is exploring a range of resources and partnerships.

"Half of these deals are through 'green tariffs' with traditional utilities," explained Morgan. "We have a long track record of partnering constructively and over the long haul with our incumbent utilities, and that type of partnership is going to be needed as we look at the increasing demand for power going forward."

That demand is pushing tech companies to secure multiple types of generation, including fossil gas. 

In a post on the announcement, Entergy highlighted a partnership with Meta to bring 1.5 GW of new renewables online to serve the project. It did not mention the 2.6 GW of gas that it wants to build as well — 1.5 GW of which would serve the Meta data center.

In a filing with the Louisiana Public Service Commission, Entergy said the combined-cycle gas plants will be “capable of approximately 30% hydrogen co-firing with the capability of supporting 100% hydrogen firing in the future with upgrades, and all will have the ability to incorporate a CCS component in the future.”

Peter Freed, a founding partner at Near Horizon Group and Meta's former director of energy strategy, sees the Louisiana project as emblematic of the difficult choices ahead.

"I don't know how you get through the next decade without thinking about gas plus CCS seriously," said Freed, speaking last week at Latitude Media’s Transition-AI conference. "Louisiana is one of the small handful of states where CCS is going to work relatively quickly." 

He said that while Meta faces a "business imperative" to expand quickly, the company is "doing just about everything you can with that project" by combining gas generation with renewables and carbon capture pilots.

According to McKinsey projections, the U.S. data center market could see 50 GW of demand by the end of the decade. Freed believes there's headroom in the existing natural gas fleet to help support that growth.

"I've been looking at an interesting analysis from both Rhodium and McKinsey about headroom inside the existing natural gas fleet in the United States. We've got somewhere between 100 and 200 GW of available gas energy on the system that we can work with," said Freed. "If we start thinking about addressing capacity constraints through load flexibility or battery deployments, we can unlock some of that available capacity much sooner to power these facilities."

But getting that power where it's needed won't be simple. Morgan points to transmission constraints and lengthy interconnection queues as major bottlenecks. 

"In PJM, the nation's largest electricity market, the backlog has become so severe that it's forcing companies to rethink their approach to powering facilities," he said. "We really need to find ways to kind of unlock the interconnection queue and figure out how to get these projects built more quickly through cluster studies."

And Freed agrees, pointing out that hyperscalers are announcing more projects than ever in 2024. 

"I believe 2025 is going to be a pivotal year, when many projects initiated in 2024 will begin breaking ground,” Freed said. “Given a three- to four-year deployment timeline for data centers, those loads will really begin coming online in 2027 and 2028. That's the beginning of an interesting window that coincides with economy-wide electrification."

That rapid growth is forcing the industry to get creative with power sourcing — and make tradeoffs. 

Morgan notes that Meta has already been experimenting in Texas with dispatching utility-scale batteries based on carbon signals, rather than purely economic signals. The company is also exploring advanced geothermal through its partnership with Sage Geosystems — all while planning for future nuclear deployment in the 2030s.

"We're going to need more tools in the toolbox than just wind and solar," said Morgan. "We're agnostic as to technology. As long as it's affordable, reliable, we're pursuing it."

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