Gas, Coal, Renewables Battle Over Power For Meta's New Data Center

Forbes

6 days ago

Power lines in California.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook, are planning a new AI data center, the company's largest yet, in Richland Parish, Louisiana. The local utility company, Entergy, has plans to build three new gas-fired power plants to supply the additional electricity needed for the data center.
Also reported last week was that Meta got some pushback from a U.S. Senator, who challenged the benefits of using natural gas to power the new data canter.
The new data center is an enormous infrastructure layout of 4 million square feet, which is equivalent to 70 football fields, and costing $10 billion. The three new gas plants would have a total capacity of 2,260 MW (megawatts).
But there are alternative power sources, such as renewables (wind, solar and battery storage), geothermal, and nuclear. What are the pros and cons? Let's look at each of these.
First, natural gas is appealing because the U.S. produces an enormous amount of gas, the most in the world, of over 115 Bcfd (billion cubic feet per day). Also, gas power plants provide 43% of grid electricity in the U.S., so it would be an extension of technology that the country already relies upon.
Second is coal. The U.S has about 200 coal-fired power plants remaining, but these are due to be turned off by 2040. Coal burns dirty in both particulates that can cause asthma in the young and the old, plus greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are twice as intense as burning natural gas. President Trump recently signed an executive order to resuscitate coal to revitalize an industry that has collapsed, presumably because he doesn't recognize the dangers of burning coal (his drill, baby, drill mantra testifies to this).
If Trump's new order were to force all of the 200 remaining coal power stations to continue operating, instead of closing by 2040, this would reduce the total of 1,000 GW of new electricity needed by 2040, but only by a fraction 6% - 10%.
A new analysis by Rystad Energy is telling. Table 1 shows in four major precincts that fossil sources of electric power are flattening or falling, except for Asia-Pacific (excluding China). In contrast, renewables are rising and catching up in their percentages. New nuclear energy is at the commercial starting gate, by both accounts.
Table 1.
Rystad argue that global power demand will increase strongly this year and in years ahead. But they predict fossil fuels will peak shortly in the power sector. They also expect that the growth rate of low-carbon sources, meaning renewables, will soon meet the increase in power demand.
Third is nuclear. Trump also unleashed on May 23 executive orders on accelerating nuclear technologies. As energy secretary Chris Wright summarized, 'With the emergence of AI and President Trump's pro-American manufacturing policies at work, American civil nuclear energy is being unleashed at the perfect time. Nuclear has the potential to be America's greatest source of energy addition. It works whether the wind is blowing, or the sun is shining, is possible anywhere and at different scales.'
AI is quoted as justification for nuclear, especially when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow. But this is inaccurate as grid-scale storage batteries (BESS) can resolve this problem. For example, in the state of South Australia renewables plus batteries have has been providing 72% of grid electricity, and this is expected to rise to 100% by 2027. Renewables plus batteries have proven the stability of renewables commercially.
Rystad Energy has reported that BESS set a record 200 gigawatt-hours (GWh) globally last year, implying a growth rate of 80%. Beginning at 0.5 terawatts (TW) in 2024, total BESS capacity will rise by almost ten times to over 4 TW by 2040.
Three other things have been overlooked in Wright's statement above. First, the cost of new nuclear reactors, whether traditional reactors or SMRs, is substantially higher than renewable energies (see below). Second is the ubiquitous threat of being exposed to nuclear radiation, either from nuclear accidents or from underground storage of nuclear waste. Third is that nuclear energy, including SMRs, is at the commercial starting gate.
But the lure of nuclear remains for some. Valar Atomics, a California startup company, has plans to test a small SMR at an energy research center in Utah by next summer.
Fourth is renewables. As well as commercial success in Australia, 90% of new energy in the U.S. in 2024 was provided by wind and solar renewables. The status of global renewables can be seen in Table 1 above. Renewables are rising and catching up in their percentages to fossil sources of electric power, while in the U.S administration renewables are the sounds of silence.
There are three clear advantages of renewables. One is commercial success of current operations. Two is cheaper cost, particularly PV solar and storage batteries, as laid out below.
Three is maturity of technology. Fervo Energy's enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) has proven an exciting pilot case involving 2 wells in Nevada that produce 3.5 MW of power to a local utility and Google. They've also drilled about 20 new wells out of about 100 planned in a project at Cape Station in Utah. Much of this 500 MW of power has already been contracted to California and Shell, which will begin in 2026. The future is promising but right now it's at the commercial starting gate.
Nuclear SMRs are also unproven commercially—a recent contract was canceled by a Utah community when the SMR price was 50% higher than agreed to.
One way to compare costs of electricity sources for data centers is by calculating the unsubsidized levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) operations in 2023. These are shown in Table 2, where each category has a range of LCOEs.
LCOE takes into account all of the costs associated with building, operating, and maintaining a power plant, as well as the amount of electricity the plant is expected to produce over its lifetime. These are unsubsidized numbers, which implies that the numbers for renewable energies could be lower if installations are leveraged with tax credits available from the Inflation Reduction Act.
Table 2. US Levelized cost of electricity in 2023.
It has been reported that battery costs in China are coming down by 40%. With this, the table shows the cost advantage lies with renewables plus grid-batteries.
A similar table has been provided by CSIRO in Australia. A study by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) has concluded that 'The LCOE [levelized cost of electricity] cost range for variable renewables with integration costs is the lowest of all new-build power technologies in 2023 and 2030'. The costs include solar or wind production, transmission, and storage of electricity. After 2030, CSIRO finds SMR nuclear energy would be at least three times more expensive than renewable energies in Australia.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Last Wednesday, the senator sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, querying the carbon footprint of the new data center in Louisiana.
Meta had committed to net-zero emissions in all of its business activities, such as its operations and supply chain, and even use of its products by consumers. As it turns out though, their carbon footprint is larger now than it was in the 2020 commitment.
The letter wanted to know how much energy would be used by the data center, and especially how much GHG emissions would arise from the gas-fired power source. Apparently, Meta has previously tried to offset its traditional electricity usage by equivalent purchases of renewable energies. The environmental response to this is simple: empower the new data center by solar and battery storage rather than natural gas.
The future will see many such data centers, driven by AI, constructed in the U.S. Decisions will have to be made over and over again about empowering these new data centers, and the roadmap outlined above will be constructive.