This week’s conversation is a catch-up chat with Jason Kaminsky of kWh Analytics, an insurance firm that works with renewable energy developers. I reached out to Kaminsky ahead of the new year because as someone with an arms-length distance from development, I find he is able to speak more candidly about market dynamics and macro-level trends – as well as the fears many have in rural communities about energy project failures, like battery fires. Seeing as the theme this week felt like “data centers forever,” I also thought it would be good to get up to speed on what he’s most focused on in that space, too.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Okay so, Jason – is renewable energy actually benefiting from the data center boom?
Renewables are supporting our load growth boom. Data centers are about a third of the projected load growth. So it is certainly a key component of what is driving demand broadly, but not the only component. The other pieces worth considering are the electrification of transportation, the reindustrialization of America, and the electrification of residential homes. But data centers are getting enthusiasm because of how quickly people are trying to deploy them.
The unique benefit renewables have is that they’re able to deploy quickly, and you need the benefits that storage has to handle these load centers.
How rapidly is the data center buildout and its associated infrastructure buildout actually happening, and how rapidly is this demand curve actually rising?
Remember, we’re not a developer on the front line, and a developer on the front line might have a better answer to this. But I’d say most of the activity today in the data center space is still quite a ways out. It’s either linked to a new facility or the planning of a new facility. Now, granted, we’re seeing it quite late in the process because we’re the insurance company, and so from an operational perspective, we’re not seeing it in the numbers yet. But it is in the forecasts, which is what you’re seeing, as well.
When it comes to concerns about renewable energy development at the local level, the last time we spoke was about project risk and the extent to which projects face weather risks, fire risks. Do data centers face these same kinds of risks?
The data center development ecosystem parallels very closely with the project development ecosystem with renewables.
What I mean by that is you have a few mega-developers, like the NextEras of the world, but instead it’s Meta and Google building these massive centers, these 800-pound gorillas. Then you have these companies that are equivalent to [independent power producers], a lot of people building mid-size to small-size data centers, and either building them on spec or with long-term contracts. Within that you have very different community engagements and quality, different power generation strategies and siting strategies, but there’s no universal data center approach. It’s a very stratified data center ecosystem.
It probably compounds the problem because you have more land being used. There are stories like the X data centers not getting permits for their generators, and resulting local pollution. There have been concerns in the media about heat effects and the way data centers use so much water.
Before, though, renewables were the focus. Now data centers are the focus and renewables are just kind of along for the ride.
Has the conversation around the renewable energy sector and its project-level business risks evolved in the year since we last spoke? Have data centers changed the conversation?
I would say that from a micro perspective, as you start pairing these facilities with data centers, one of the things you have to think about from a risk management perspective and the insurance perspective is the lost revenue due to a failure.
Generally, that’s electricity sales. There’s something called business income insurance, which, if you have a loss of a facility, you pay for lost revenue. But if you’re paired with a data center and your lost income is now compute income, your business income exposure can be much higher. So the resiliency of an asset or the reliability of an asset becomes that much more valuable and expensive.
I don’t think we’ve seen a lot of that yet in our ecosystem, but I think it’s coming.
What is your biggest prediction in the renewable energy space next year?
I think that the risk of China building more data centers than us and getting ahead of us in the race for AI – and the risk of energy inflation – is going to make some of these problems easier to solve from a risk perspective.
My hope is that the fear of being left behind and the fear of risk associated with energy inflation will lead to legislators allowing for more quick-to-deploy, cheap and clean power going to the grid. Renewables will find a way onto the grid. With just a little bit of legislative guidance and pathway, a lot can happen.
