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Exxon Mobil AND Chevron are entering the race to power artificial intelligence data centers as the two oil majors bet that tech companies will eventually switch to natural gas to meet their massive energy needs.
Exxon exposed plans this week will build a natural gas plant to power the data center. The oil major says he would then take advantage of it carbon capture and storage technology that reduces the plant's greenhouse gas emissions by 90%.
“We are working with other large industrial companies to rapidly deploy a solution that provides both high reliability and low-carbon power to meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence computing power,” CFO told Wall Street analysts on Wednesday Exxon, Kathryn Mikells. without revealing the names of the companies with which the oil company cooperates on the project.
The gas plant will not be reliant on the electrical grid and will be utility-independent, allowing for faster installation than traditional power generation projects, Mikells said. Exxon did not disclose the client or project timeline.
Exxon has made significant investments in building a carbon capture network along the Gulf Coast with more than 1,500 km of pipelines to transport CO2 from several industrial customers to permanent storage sites. According to estimates by major oil companies, the decarbonization of AI-based data centers could account for up to 20% of the total carbon capture and storage market by 2050.
Chevron is also working on ways to power data centers, Jeff Gustavson, president of the oil company's new energy division, said at the Reuters NEXT conference on Wednesday.
“This is something our company can very well participate in,” Gustavson said. Chevron is a major domestic gas producer with power generation equipment and very large tracts of land that could be used for data centers, the executive said.
Gas instead of atom
Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft AND Meta they mainly purchased wind energy and solar energy for their data centers as they strive to mitigate the climate impact of their operations. But the demand for power artificial intelligence is getting bigger and bigger that technology companies are looking for sources of electricity that are more reliable than renewable energy.
Consequently, technology companies have shown growing interest in nuclear energy. Microsoft is helping you get started Three Mile Island nuclear reactor back to the Internet by purchasing energy from power plants. Amazon AND Alphabet's Google unit invest in new generation small nuclear reactors. Meta recently called on companies to submit this proposals to build new nuclear power plants.
But the fossil fuel industry and energy analysts have been arguing for months that this will ultimately be the case for the tech sector accept natural gas because it simply takes too long to build nuclear power plants.
Exxon CEO Darren Woods issued a challenge to nuclear power on Wednesday and said his company is better positioned than any other U.S. company to meet artificial intelligence energy needs in the near and near future.
“If you're betting on nuclear power and something happens, we've got a long way to go,” Woods told Wall Street analysts on Wednesday. The small nuclear reactors Commercialization, in which technology companies are investing, is not expected to occur earlier than the 2030s.
Exxon has no intention of entering the power generation business, its CEO said. Woods said the company plans to leverage its expertise by running large projects to help install power generators for data centers in the early stages of artificial intelligence development.
Woods said that once early work is completed, Exxon will focus on capturing and storing data center emissions and supplying decarbonized natural gas to AI-enabled power plants.