For the last few months I've been going through public documents, permits, and satellite images to track the largest data centers in the US.
Today I published the first story about what I've learned.
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Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, tech companies have spent huge sums of money building data centers.
In just three years, spending on data centers in the US has gone from $13.8 billion to $41.2 billion per year—an increase of 200%.
I’ve been skeptical of the AI power demand story at times.
But in the years since I first started writing about it, many AI infrastructure projects have gone from the realm of press releases to actual operating projects.
The growth of grid-scale batteries in the US continues to explode.
Over the last 12 months, the country added 13.2 GW of battery capacity—50% more than a year ago.
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The main reason for the growth of grid batteries in the US is the falling cost of the technology in recent years.
In the last decade batteries have become really cheap. In 2010 the average lithium-ion battery cost $1200 per kilowatt-hour. Today they cost $115 on average.
As prices have fallen, batteries have also been able to compete with natural gas peaker plants.
These traditional fossil fuel power plants are expensive to build and uneconomic in many cases given they are designed to only run 10-20% of the year when demand is highest.
"A better analysis would use the cost of generating power in order to isolate the impact of renewables. We can get a better estimate of that by using the wholesale price of electricity"
And there's no correlation between wholesale electricity prices and renewables in Europe.
In the final hour of the House's bill negotiations, far-right conservatives secured a deal with the President that every clean energy company and advocate should know about.
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The final bill allows solar and wind project developers to qualify for the full tax credits if they start construction within the next year.
Developers can "safe-harbor" by spending 5% of a project's cost.
Those of you who have been following along closely know all that.
But here's the problem. The executive branch still has so much control over clean energy projects around the country and the implementation of the tax credits.
And in the final hour, Trump promised to effectively harass solar and wind developers and put them through hell...
The US will need ~450 GW of new electricity generation capacity by 2030 to meet rising demand from data centers, reshoring, etc.
And the Senate is about to vote on a bill that could wipe out ~500 GW of potential energy generation capacity.
The latest Senate bill would phase out the investment and production tax credits (ITC and PTC) for any project that is placed in service after December 31, 2027.
So I analyzed how many projects would be at risk.
2,332 solar and wind projects with a combined capacity of 547 GW are expected to come online in 2027 or later, according to our project tracker at Cleanview.
The vast majority of these projects would be at risk of cancellation if the current Senate bill passes.