AI's hunger for power sparks US private gas plant boom
As U.S. tech companies race to build the data centers fueling the AI boom, they are increasingly putting up their own power plants — off the grid and running on gas — to get online faster.
Analysis by the research firm Cleanview identified around 60 data centers planned for the coming years with a combined 97 gigawatts of "behind-the-meter" generation into the early 2030s — around the total installed capacity of Mexico.
The climate implications could be enormous.
The precise figure depends on how many are built, how efficient the turbines are and how often they run, but even with very conservative assumptions, the plants would easily top 200 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
