Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Podcast

So, What Does AI Really Mean for Decarbonization?

Jesse hosts a panel discussion at the annual meeting of Princeton’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.

A data center.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The rise of artificial intelligence and the associated expansion of data centers is driving surging demand for new power supply. Earlier this fall at the annual meeting of Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Jesse sat down with a panel of experts to discuss how society can meet the growing energy demands of AI while staying on track broader decarbonization efforts.

How will we power the growing demand from AI and data centers? What role can nuclear power really play? Will AI lock us into a new generation of gas power plants? Are regulators prepared for what's coming? Jesse dives into all this and more with Allison Clements, former commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Matt DeNichilo, partner at energy investment firm ECP, and Lucia Tian, head of clean energy and decarbonization technologies at Google.

Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University. Rob is off this week.

Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.

Here is an excerpt from the conversation:

Allison Clements: FERC, the agency, which, I was one of five commissioners, has jurisdiction over what resources sign up for and retire from participating on the grid. And over the last decade, two decades, what has happened is, as this 1.5 terawatts of generation have gotten in line, it’s just overwhelmed the interconnection system. The interconnection processes weren’t designed for anything other than central station, dispatchable, most recently gas plants, combined cycle gas plants, peaking plants, closer to load, you don’t need as much network upgrades.

There’s lots of room on the grid because there was an investment in the grid many decades ago. But now we’ve got this situation where there’s all these resources who want to sign up, and they can’t get on. In fact, this has been going on for a long time. And most of the supply resources waiting to get on today do have site control, do have the financial and commercial readiness. There’s some that we’re still clearing out from the days of the Wild West, where people would just sign up six interconnection applications and see what happened, which would cause a lot of problems for everybody else when they would drop out of those lines.

So, what do we do about it? FERC has passed a couple of different rules to clean up regional transmission planning. A comment about planning during this morning’s session that utilities plan so much — well, if we had been planning for an increasingly electrified economy 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, we would have a lot more transmission, a lot more space on the grid to give access to these resources.

We have taken action as an agency to try and fix that through one rule. We’ve also taken action as an agency to try and fix the interconnection lines themselves through some nuts and bolts requirements to make it harder to get through, so you don’t come until you’re ready to go. But those rules and policy changes that are very positive aren’t going to have impact for, let’s say, five years, seven years. I mean, the reality is we’re not going to be picking new transmission lines from these processes we’ve developed until at least 2029.

2024 — what do we do for the next five years, right? Even these really exciting new deals with SMR, advanced geothermal, we’re looking in the 2030 timeline. Well, the existing grid is really inefficient, and if we can use AI to improve it, that would be really, really important in validating and making this a positive cycle of affirmation.

The last thing I’ll say is, what are those inefficiencies? The lines between regions, the lines between PJM, which is the region we’re sitting in today, a grid operator, and the New York State grid operator, and the New England grid operator at the interties, the transfers, are very inefficient and they’re often counter to good economics. We have no hardware and software solutions, grid-enhancing technologies, advanced transmission technologies that can automatically double existing capacity, or existing room, extra room on the grid. We have surplus interconnection. We have the opportunity to put more resources behind existing points of interconnection and use that system more efficiently. So, the reality is to solve the power for AI, we need the AI to come back and help us do it.

This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …

Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.

As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Energy

The EPA’s Backdoor Move to Hobble the Carbon Capture Industry

Why killing a government climate database could essentially gut a tax credit

Lee Zeldin.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Trump administration’s bid to end an Environmental Protection Agency program may essentially block any company — even an oil firm — from accessing federal subsidies for capturing carbon or producing hydrogen fuel.

On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed that it would stop collecting and publishing greenhouse gas emissions data from thousands of refineries, power plants, and factories across the country.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue
Adaptation

The ‘Buffer’ That Can Protect a Town from Wildfires

Paradise, California, is snatching up high-risk properties to create a defensive perimeter and prevent the town from burning again.

Homes as a wildfire buffer.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The 2018 Camp Fire was the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, wiping out 90% of the structures in the mountain town of Paradise and killing at least 85 people in a matter of hours. Investigations afterward found that Paradise’s town planners had ignored warnings of the fire risk to its residents and forgone common-sense preparations that would have saved lives. In the years since, the Camp Fire has consequently become a cautionary tale for similar communities in high-risk wildfire areas — places like Chinese Camp, a small historic landmark in the Sierra Nevada foothills that dramatically burned to the ground last week as part of the nearly 14,000-acre TCU September Lightning Complex.

More recently, Paradise has also become a model for how a town can rebuild wisely after a wildfire. At least some of that is due to the work of Dan Efseaff, the director of the Paradise Recreation and Park District, who has launched a program to identify and acquire some of the highest-risk, hardest-to-access properties in the Camp Fire burn scar. Though he has a limited total operating budget of around $5.5 million and relies heavily on the charity of local property owners (he’s currently in the process of applying for a $15 million grant with a $5 million match for the program) Efseaff has nevertheless managed to build the beginning of a defensible buffer of managed parkland around Paradise that could potentially buy the town time in the case of a future wildfire.

Keep reading...Show less
Spotlight

How the Tax Bill Is Empowering Anti-Renewables Activists

A war of attrition is now turning in opponents’ favor.

Massachusetts and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Library of Congress, Getty Images

A solar developer’s defeat in Massachusetts last week reveals just how much stronger project opponents are on the battlefield after the de facto repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Last week, solar developer PureSky pulled five projects under development around the western Massachusetts town of Shutesbury. PureSky’s facilities had been in the works for years and would together represent what the developer has claimed would be one of the state’s largest solar projects thus far. In a statement, the company laid blame on “broader policy and regulatory headwinds,” including the state’s existing renewables incentives not keeping pace with rising costs and “federal policy updates,” which PureSky said were “making it harder to finance projects like those proposed near Shutesbury.”

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow