Outside Study Confirms Natural Gas Needed to Run Data Centers
by Stephen D. Haner
Yet another analysis of the energy dilemma facing Virginia, this one commissioned by a Democrat-controlled legislative panel, has concluded that the use of natural gas to make electricity is going to have to grow over coming decades, not shrink. Virginia’s anti-hydrocarbon energy laws are doomed to fail because of the data center industry.
The new 150-page report takes its own look at Virginia’s future energy demand and the best mix of generation to meet it. It reaches the conclusions Dominion Energy Virginia also reached in its most recent integrated resource plan (IRP). Data centers by themselves are driving an enormous future demand curve, as Dominion claimed. The abandonment of coal and natural gas demanded by the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) creates an energy deficit, even if the data center growth proves slower than the current projections.
In fact, this report projects natural gas will remain necessary beyond the mandated retirement dates in the VCEA even if the data center growth doesn’t happen. It plugs the gap in some scenarios by using hydrogen in place of natural gas in thermal energy plants. But that remains an unproven, experimental technology not used at scale anywhere. An entire new very expensive infrastructure would be needed to create and transport the hydrogen to power plants. Only fantasy technology can comply with the fantasy VCEA.
The nuclear plants it envisions are somewhat closer to reality, but still years if not decades away. “In the absence of policy, there is still a significant role for coal and gas generation, comprising another ~30% of demand,” the consultant reports. This on a slide marked “No Data Center Growth, No VCEA.” Carbon emitting sources are even more prominent on scenarios that include the demand growth.
https://www.thomasjeffersoninst.org/outside-study-confirms-natural-gas-needed-to-run-data-centers/
