Guest essay by Steve Goreham
A boom in artificial intelligence (AI) investments now drives the United States electricity market. New data centers and upgrades to existing data centers are creating a vast demand for power. However, major AI firms are opting for natural gas plants to provide electrical power, rather than renewable energy.
Since ChatGPT released their conversational AI chatbot in November of 2022, the world of artificial intelligence has exploded. ChatGPT showed that machines can learn the complexities of human language and interaction. Within five days, the chatbot had attracted over one million users. ChatGPT ushered in the modern AI revolution, producing trillions of dollars of investment in the US and around the world.
Artificial intelligence uses vast amounts of computing power and databases with trillions of parameters to solve problems and make predictions. Generational AI can create text, images, music, and videos. These capabilities require enormous data centers filled with thousands of servers using high-speed graphics processing units (GPUs).
Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Tesla, and other firms are investing billions to build new data centers and to upgrade existing facilities. According to USA Datacenters, America had fewer than 2,700 data centers at the start of 2024. Now, about 3,900 data centers are operating, an increase of more than 40 percent in 18 months.
Data centers traditionally support the internet and cloud storage. At the start of 2024, data centers consumed about 4% of US electricity. But when servers are upgraded with thousands of high-speed GPUs to deliver generational AI, they use six to ten times as much power. It is estimated that by 2030, US data centers will consume 20% of the nation’s power. And the overwhelming majority of electricity for these AI facilities will come from new natural gas power plants.
Green energy advocates want renewables to power the AI data centers, but wind and solar systems fall far short. AI computers operate 24-hours a day, which can’t be supported by the 30% capacity factor of wind or the 15% capacity factor of solar. Gas plants are designed to deliver their rated output over 90% of the time.
Nuclear plants may be able to power AI in some cases. Retired nuclear facilities in Palisades, Michigan, and Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, are being restarted to drive AI. But a start-up nuclear plant costs up to 10 times as much as a gas-fired power plant. It can take more than five years to bring a nuclear plant on-line, compared to 1-2 years for a gas plant. Small modular nuclear reactors promise breakthroughs in cost and cycle time, but these remain unproven technologies.
Wind and solar also suffer from transmission costs and delays. These systems are scattered over wide areas, requiring new transmission towers and lines to be built across the countryside to aggregate enough power for a large data center. In contrast, gas plants provide concentrated generating power that can be built near the data center and existing transmission lines.
Elon Musk’s Tesla is a leading provider of solar systems and grid-scale batteries. But Tesla chose 35 on-site gas turbines to supply electricity for its Colossus xAI supercomputer facility in Memphis, Tennessee. Colossus was built and expanded to 200,000 GPUs in less than six months in 2024 and claims to be “the most powerful AI training system yet.”
The Colossus build is an example of BYOP, or “bring your own power.” Rather than using electricity from the grid, leading technology firms are building their own natural gas plants on-site to power data centers.
AI data centers are huge facilities. EdgeConneX plans to build two data centers in New Albany, Ohio, to be completed by the fall of 2027, using existing warehouse space and new construction. The facilities will total 1.2 million square feet, covering an area larger than 20 football fields. These data centers will be powered by on-site gas plants.
More than 100 gas-fired power plants are planned for deployment in Texas, including 108 new plants and 17 expansions. The projects will provide 58 GW of electrical power. Sixty percent of the projects aim for completion by the end of 2028. These new facilities, if completed, will deliver more than three times as much electricity as all of the wind systems currently operating in Texas, the leading US wind state.
Earlier in July, President Trump joined state senator Dave McCormick at the Energy Innovation Summit in Pennsylvania. At the conference, they announced private investments of more than $90 billion in AI data centers and new or expanded power-generating systems. Amazon, Blackstone, CoreWeave, Pennsylvania Data Center Partners, PowerHouse Data Centers, and other firms will build AI infrastructure in Carlisle, Lancaster, Pittsburgh, and other Pennsylvania locations.
Pennsylvania is one of the largest producers of natural gas. Recently, the price of gas in Pennsylvania has been too low for local firms to make a profit. But most new AI installations will be powered by gas plants, to be constructed by PPL Corporation, Frontier Group, and others, providing new high-demand customers for gas producers. Westinghouse Electric also plans to build ten new nuclear reactors in the state, to be on-line by 2030.
Meta claims to be building the largest data center in the Western Hemisphere. The facility will be located in Richland Parish in northeast Louisiana, 250 miles north of New Orleans, and will cover 3.5 square miles or 2,250 acres. When completed in 2030, the installation will use twice as much electricity as the city of New Orleans. Entergy Louisiana is building three large gas-fired power plants at the Meta site at a cost of more than $3 billion.
The artificial intelligence revolution now drives the US electricity market. Most new AI data centers will be powered by newly constructed natural gas facilities. The Net Zero electricity transition is being left in the rear-view mirror.
Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and author of the bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.
Originally published in the Tennessee TriStar Daily on July 25, 2025.
I think wind and solar are favored by greens as they don’t work all that well. Conservation is a positive virtue, after all.
They think they’re already as smart as anyone could want- thus, no need for AI. 🙂
With AI the evil Dems no longer control the narratives, which means they and the foghorn of the subsidized government-influenced Corporate Media are out of the picture. Their LYING TRUTHS will evaporate.
You fail to include where AI gets its data.
AIs use the “preponderance of the evidence” meaning something that appears hundreds of times due to replication and republication is much more heavily weighted that one completely accurate data set (aka report).
As an aside, the “preponderance of the evidence” ultimately leads to a 97% consensus.
The typical time to build out a greenfield data center is 2-3 years. The typical time to build out a greenfield CCGT is 2.5 years. Fits.
xAI got it done in under half a year in Memphis because
Based on Voglte 3&4, the time to build a Gen 3 nuclear is more than 10 years. Doesn’t fit.
Single cycle efficiency at most 40%,
Combined cycle 60%, at 100% output, for 40 years.
Single cycle should be outlawed for AI centers
NUCLEAR PLANTS TOO EXPENSIVE?
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/nuclear-plants-too-expensive-1
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In France, the turnkey cost of the 1,600 MW Flamanville plant was $13.7 billion, or $8,563/installed MW
Plants built by Russia, China and South Korea are about $5,500/installed MW
Expensive nuclear plant building is strictly a “rules-based” Western thing.
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Nuclear Plants by Russia
According to the IAEA, during the first half of 2023, a total of 407 nuclear reactors are in operation at power plants across the world, with a total capacity at about 370,000 MW
Nuclear was 2546 TWh, or 9.2%, of world electricity production in 2022
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/batteries-in-new-england
Rosatom, a Russian Company, is building more nuclear reactors than any other country in the world, according to data from the Power Reactor Information System of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA.
The data show, a total of 58 large-scale nuclear power reactors are currently under construction worldwide, of which 23 are being built by Russia.
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In Egypt, 4 reactors, each 1,200 MW = 4,800 MW for $28.75 billion, or about $5,990/kW,
As per a bilateral agreement, signed in 2015, approximately 85% of it is financed by Russia, and to be paid for by Egypt under a 22-year loan with an interest rate of 3%.
That cost is at least 40% less than US/UK/EU
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In Turkey, 4 reactors, each 1,200 MW = 4,800 MW for $20 billion, or about $4,200/kW, entirely financed by Russia. The plant will be owned and operated by Rosatom
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In India, 6 VVER-1000 reactors, each 1,000 MW = 6,000 MW at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant.
Capital cost about $15 billion. Units 1, 2, 3 and 4 are in operation, units 5 and 6 are being constructed
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In Iran, Rosatom started site preparation for a nuclear power plant at the Bushehr site.
Phase 1: Unit 1 went on line in 2012.
Phase 2: 2 VVER-1000 units, each 1050 MW. Construction started March 2017. Units 2 and 3 to be completed in 2024 and 2026.
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In Bangladesh: 2 VVER-1200 reactors = 2400 MW at the Rooppur Power Station
Capital cost $12.65 billion is 90% funded by a loan from the Russian government. The two units generating 2400 MW are planned to be operational in 2024 and 2025. Rosatom will operate the units for the first year before handing over to Bangladeshi operators. Russia will supply the nuclear fuel and take back and reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooppur_Nuclear_Power_Plant
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Russia is the only country with nuclear powered ice breakers.
The biggest ones steadily go through up to 7 METERS of ice.
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Rosatom, created in 2007 by combining several Russian companies, usually provides full service during the entire project life, such as training, new fuel bundles, refueling, waste processing and waste storage in Russia, etc., because the various countries likely do not have the required systems and infrastructures
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Remember, these nuclear plants reliably produce steady electricity, at reasonable cost/kWh, and have near-zero CO2 emissions
In the US, they have about 0.90 capacity factors, and last 60 to 80 years
Nuclear does not need counteracting plants. They can be designed as load-following, as some are in France
We, the USA, and really all the world, should be building nuclear like mad, IMHO.
What companies build turbine generators? I think GE used to.
Gas plant output can be 100%, 24/7/365
As a FLEET, they can have capacity factors of 90%, with proper maintenance, the same as coal, wood-burning, nuclear, coal, oil, and hydro plants with large reservoirs.
Why in hell would anyone ever want to use unaffordable, weather-dependent wind, solar and batteries?
Story Tip>>>
How AI helps manage solar intermittency – TNGlobal
and Grok’s answer to the same headline:
AI can effectively manage solar intermittency—variations in solar power generation due to weather, time of day, or seasonal changes—by optimizing energy systems through predictive analytics, real-time control, and integration with complementary technologies. Here’s how AI contributes:
By combining these capabilities, AI transforms solar intermittency from a challenge into a manageable variable, enhancing grid reliability and maximizing renewable energy use. If you’d like me to search for specific case studies or dive deeper into any of these areas, let me know!
A lot of AI hooey, based on wacko, woke sources
Sell that crap in Socialist Spain
In case of no wind (such as a multi-day lull) and no sun (such as at night) shut down the data/AI centers?
HIGH COST/kWh OF W/S SYSTEMS FOISTED ONTO A BRAINWASHED PUBLIC
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-cost-kwh-of-w-s-systems-foisted-onto-a-brainwashed-public-1
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What is generally not known, the more weather-dependent W/S systems, the less efficient the traditional generators, as they inefficiently counteract the increasingly larger ups and downs of W/S output. See URL
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reductions-due-to-wind-energy-less-than-claimed
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W/S systems add great cost to the overall delivery of electricity to users; the more W/S systems, the higher the cost/kWh, as proven by the UK and Germany, with the highest electricity rates in Europe, and near-zero, real-growth GDP.
See URL
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reductions-due-to-wind-energy-less-than-claimed
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At about 30% W/S, the entire system hits an increasingly thicker concrete wall, operationally and cost wise.
The UK and Germany are hitting the wall, more and more hours each day.
The cost of electricity delivered to users increased with each additional W/S/B system
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Nuclear, gas, coal and reservoir hydro plants are the only rational way forward.
Ignore CO2, because greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere is essential for: 1) increased green flora to increase fauna all over the world, and 2) increased crop yields to better feed 8 billion people.
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Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to increase command/control by governments, and enable the moneyed elites to get richer, at the expense of all others, by using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media to spread scare-mongering slogans and brainwash people.
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Subsidies shift costs from project Owners to ratepayers, taxpayers, government debt:
1) Federal and state tax credits, up to 50% (Community tax credit of 10 percent – Federal tax credit of 30 percent – State tax credit and other incentives of up to 10%);
2) 5-y Accelerated Depreciation write off of the entire project;
3) Loan interest deduction
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Utilities pay 15 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from fixedoffshore wind systems
Utilities pay 18 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from floating offshore wind
Utilities pay 12 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from larger solar systems
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Excluded costs, at a future 30% W/S annual penetration on the grid, based on UK and German experience:
– Onshore grid expansion/reinforcement to connect distributed W/S systems, about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to quickly counteract W/S variable output, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, which leads to more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to provide electricity during 1) low-wind periods, 2) high-wind periods, when rotors are locked in place, and 3) low solar periods during mornings, evenings, at night, snow/ice on panels, which leads to more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– Pay W/S system Owners for electricity they could have produced, if not curtailed, about 1 c/kWh
– Importing electricity at high prices, when W/S output is low, 1 c/kWh
– Exporting electricity at low prices, when W/S output is high, 1 c/kWh
– Disassembly on land and at sea, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites, about 2 c/kWh
Some of these values exponentially increase as more W/S systems are added to the grid
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The economic/financial insanity and environmental damage of it all is off the charts.
No wonder Europe’s near-zero, real-growth GDP is in de-growth mode.
That economy has been tied into knots by inane people.
YOUR tax dollars are building these projects so YOU will have much higher electric bills.
Remove YOUR tax dollars using your vote, and none of these projects would be built, and YOUR electric bills would be lower.
So this is AI, predicting that AI can solve these problems. Hmm.
You gotta have the faith in AI, just like solar and wind. /s
Well it is on the internet and everything on the internet is true. It says so on the internet.
“Demand Response Management” is simply socialist rationing. I almost puked each time I was forced to include it within a utility Integrated Resource Plan.
Is that requirement likely to continue? Or will the new administration change or modify it?
I don’t know but it sounds like a lot of BS to me. Putting lipstick on a pig. 🙂
Mr. Woods: Thank you, a good sales pitch. If AI actually worked, it would tell you not to try it! If AI tells you it can work with wind/solar/battery, you need a new AI.
“TNGlobal is the source of insights and network for tech and innovation between China and Asia-Pacific region.”
This is trustworthy?
Demand Response Management: AI predicts peak demand and aligns it with solar availability by incentivizing consumers to shift usage…
They are trained to keep a turkey in suspense…
…till tomorrow.
This is a grossly oversimplified and biased take. All major tech firms investing in AI infrastructure publicly support net-zero goals. The grid mix might temporarily shift toward natural gas, but the long term trend is still toward decarbonization. Wind and solar are the cheapest sources of energy globally, so it’s rather asinine to suggest that AI companies aren’t going to take advantage of that.
Texas is still investing heavily in wind and solar capacity – it’s growing in all directions due to demand. This framing suggests it is abandoning renewables in favor of gas generation.
The post framing is correct, but apparently not to your liking. Google Texas data center expansion and you will learn that Sailfish has announced a 2600 acre project with 5000MW of on-site generation (CCGT). The area between San Antonio and Austin has announced a new 1600 acre project, also with on-site generation (CCGT).
I don’t dispute that AI companies are pursuing on-site gas generation to bridge grid constraints, what I dispute is that this means that renewables are unviable and being left behind. Investment in renewables is growing, and all major tech firms investing in AI are committed to net-zero goals. They aren’t doing this altruistically, the economics of renewables are just too good to pass up. Wind and solar are now the cheapest sources of electricity, even if gas plays a stopgap role.
You started with a blatant lie:
“Wind and solar are the cheapest sources of energy globally”
And then added to it by stating it is: “growing in all directions due to demand.”
But you cannot answer who is making that demand.
It’s pretty obvious why. Good job you are a heavy sleeper.
Posturing will win you upvotes from the tractable sideliners, but it does not make for a compelling counterpoint. Try taking the attitude down a notch and offering something substantive.
Why do you think demand in Texas is growing? Speak plainly.
I asked you and you answer with a question. Upvotes seem rather important to you, not to me.
I spoke quite plainly: But you cannot answer who is making that demand
A few Texans is hardly global
The statement
“Wind and solar are the cheapest sources of energy globally”
is at best naive to a very select location but generally a complete fabrication by lefties and eco types.
If that was true power prices would be coming down as wind and solar added to the grid but they don’t. As every country has increased the grid share of wind and solar the price has increased. The only way left and greenies get data that says wind and solar is cheaper is by adding a bullshit number called the cost of carbon.
Demand for power in Texas is growing is because it’s population has grown to 31 million. Texas added nearly 320,000 new residents from abroad between July 2023 to July 2024. I didn’t think there was any doubt about the driver.
Texas’s residential power prices have risen some 40% over the last seven years while adding in that cheap renewable energy. Pity the suckers if they add much more 🙂
That’s a non-sequitur. Electricity prices are influenced by far more than generation type, including demand growth, global fuel markets, grid infrastructure, and policy. With rising demand (especially in places like Texas), underbuilt transmission, and global shocks like the Ukraine war and trade disruptions, prices would be rising even faster without the downward pressure from cheap renewables.
Citation needed. The claim is false. Analyses from Lazard, IEA, BloombergNEF, and the US Department of Energy consistently show wind and solar have the lowest LCOE of any new generation source, even without carbon pricing. LCOE includes capital, O&M, and fuel costs. On that basis alone, renewables beat gas and coal in most global markets.
Sounds like Texas needs to get even more renewable projects off the ground.
Funny how no place where renewables have been added, have prices for electricity gone down.
Funny how there is a linear relationship, that covers every country on the planet, whereby the higher the percentage of renewables, the higher the price of electricity.
The paper you cite has been well and thoroughly shredded as being at best a fraud.
It completely ignores the cost of providing back up for intermittent power sources, it also completely lies about the life expectancy of renewables vs fossil fuel plants, as well as the cost of batteries.
I’m not surprised that you cite it, given your blind adherence to the lies you have been instructed to spread.
For a website whose tagline could easily be, “correlation is not the same as causation” you all do seem to enjoy committing the fallacy a lot whenever it is convenient.
I also didn’t cite a “paper,” I referenced multiple independent organizations (Lazard, IEA, BloombergNEF, DOE) that all arrive at the same conclusion using standard economic metrics.
You can do better, put your best foot forward and really have a go at providing a substantive reply. This is weak stuff, let’s see what you’ve got.
You didn’t reference multiple independent organizations you referenced multiple activist organizations.
The statements coming out from DOE now with new administration will I suspect be very different.
And once again, AlanJ demonstrates that he knows nothing about anything.
Yes, correlation is not causation, however hundreds of data points, all with the same correlation is still significant, even if your handles tell you to believe otherwise.
Lazard, Bloomberg and the USDOE love to use Levelized Cost of Electricity. That works ok for power sources that are capable of producing levelized amounts of electricity with internal (and free) control of frequency and voltage such as coal and gas plants. But wind and solar plants do not and cannot produce level amounts of electricity and cannot contribute to but actually detract from frequency and voltage stabilization. That which wind and solar can produce requires large amounts of stable sources to allow them on grids and a lot of fussing about to keep the grid stable regardless of their erratic, unpredictable and unstable contributions. Also, the cost charged to consumers is greatly reduce by federal and state subsidies and payments even when they are producing nothing. A different scheme that considers all costs is needed to compare wind and solar with rotating generators. LCOE ain’t it and recent experience shows that their actual cost including imposed cost is very high.
Your argument would be more convincing if it came with any actual numbers or even a coherent alternative. Instead, you offer vague claims about “imposed costs” and grid instability without a single cited study, dataset, or independent analysis. LCOE is an industry standard baseline – what metric do you propose in its stead? Show your work.
The alternative is to not use renewables, especially since there is no need.
For someone who has never used numbers, the pathetic excuses you come up with are getting more and more amusing.
If you believe that statement I have a number of bridges for sale
“Analyses from Lazard, IEA, BloombergNEF, and the US Department of Energy consistently show wind and solar have the lowest LCOE of any new generation source, even without carbon pricing”
The problem you and the lefty zealots writing the so called analysis keep ignoring is you need all the backup generation for when the renewable output drops to zero. So the cost of renewables is the cost of having all the generation in alternatives plus the cost of the renewables.
That in a nutshell is why the cost with renewables NEVER goes down.
Well, yeah, you also need backup generation for when gas infrastructure fails as well, like it did during the 2021 freeze in Texas. Grid resiliency comes from diversity, flexibility, and redundancy, not just clinging to one source and pretending like it’s invincible.
The organizations I cited don’t ignore grid integration. They simply distinguish between generation cost and system cost, because they’re not the same thing.
The thing is, fossil fuel infrastructure doesn’t fail very often.
The problem in Texas a few years ago was caused by renewables, that as usual, had their output drop to zero. Since so much money had been wasted on your renewables, there weren’t enough fossil fuel plants to pick up the slack.
Add to that the brain dead requirement from the EPA to convert pumps on natural gas lines from being powered by natural gas, to being powered by electricity. So when the renewables dropped out, so did the pressure on the natural gas lines.
Do you remember why the gas infrastructure failed in 2021?
Someone put the pipeline heaters on electricity. WTG and WB were producing virtually nothing in that storm.
Yes, I remember, and so does every serious post-mortem of the 2021 Texas blackout, including from ERCOT, FERC, and NERC. The primary cause wasn’t someone “putting pipeline heaters on electricity.” It was widespread failure of gas infrastructure itself: wells froze, pipelines lost pressure, and gas plants went offline because they weren’t winterized despite recommendations after the 2011 freeze. Renewables performed at or slightly below expectations.
Please provide a list of countries or states where the price of electricity has declined as they have added renewable capacity.
Basically, any question or statement that you can’t answer or refute, is just dismissed as posturing.
How typical.
Demand for ruinables will end the moment the handouts stop. Is that plain enough? And I’m not even Amish. 🙂
As someone with over 30 years experience as an electrical engineer and manager in electric utility generation, transmission and distribution planning, financing, design, construction and O&M, winding up as CEO/GM of a small electric utility I tell you, Alan you are full of shit.
All that experience and you can’t offer a single substantive comment. Sad.
“Wind and solar are the cheapest sources of energy globally”.
This claim by Alanj is utterly absurd. The annual costs to the UK from attempting to reach Net Zero are estimated to exceed 100 billion pounds from 2030 onwards. This cost is just to decarbonise the electricity grid alone. Any attempt to reach genuine Net Zero for the entire economy will bankrupt Britain completely.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/07/28/the-frightening-cost-of-net-zero/#more-87910
He is not in the UK quite obviously. A remote greenie.
Citing the cost of a national net-zero transition isn’t the same thing as disputing the cost of generation. You’re lumping together grid upgrades, legacy system transitions, and other infrastructure investments, not just the price of generating power.
Those costs are all part of the costs of wind and solar which climate alarmists like to ignore which you have just done.
No, those are system-level transition costs, not the generation cost of wind and solar themselves. You don’t get to conflate building transmission lines, retiring fossil assets, and redesigning markets with the per-kWh cost of generating electricity from wind or solar. That’s like blaming EVs for the cost of repaving highways.
It’s the system that matters. The largest cost of renewable power, are the things that you need to replace it, the 70 to 80% of the time they aren’t working.
Then I guess FF generation don’t have to factor in any network costs then. Your numbers from your sources for FF generation are going to be a lot lower than your so called sources.currently show.
In the real world the cost of changes for a new technology need to be amortized over the cost of the switch to that technology. It might drop a bit over time but you are always going to have to build the network to that new standard to utilize the new technology.
Let me get this straight, you’re saying we have to include every possible network upgrade, storage solution, and grid reform in the cost of renewables… but not factor in the decades of sunk infrastructure, transmission lines, and grid standards built to favor fossil fuels? That is some pretty selective accounting you’re doing.
If you want to amortize full system costs, fine, but be consistent. Fossil fuel plants didn’t pay for the grid they rely on either. They benefited from decades of public investment and policy design tailored to centralized, dispatchable generation. Renewables are scaling into a system that wasn’t built for them and still coming out cost-competitive.
Japan did a costing of integrating Variable Renewable Electricity into a grid.
The cost is HUGE and far outweighs any imaginary savings from highly polluting and environmentally damaging wind and solar.
For some reason the chart didn’t attach.. Trying again..
Oh, and their “costs” don’t include some very real costs associated with the erratic nature of wind and solar and the need for 100% back-up from reliable sources.
This slide is wildly misleading. It slaps a Vietnam LCOE chart (with no clear source or connection) onto a discussion about Japanese grid integration costs. Two totally different contexts, mashed together for effect. And even then, the Vietnam chart shows solar and wind becoming cheaper than coal by 2025–2035.
The rest of the slide just lists well-known integration costs for variable renewables, which are costs that planners already factor in. What it doesn’t mention are the massive external costs of fossil fuels or the fact that Japan is actively expanding offshore wind, solar, and hydrogen and investing massively in them.
Everything you say is wildly misleading
Just because you cannot accept or understand that the implementation costs of this study of VRE into the VietNam grid shows just how horrendously expensive it is, is not my problem.
And, of course, another total LIE about wind energy in Japan.
And the fantasy of hydrogen.. Hilarious
You might want to look at your own chart a little more closely, it doesn’t say what you think it does. Solar is clearly growing, while oil and gas are shrinking. Coal has leveled off, and nuclear is beginning to rebound. That’s not evidence that renewables are a failure but evidence that Japan is transitioning, just like every other advanced economy.
And no one said Japan is already running on wind, I said it’s investing heavily in offshore wind, with 10 GW targeted by 2030 and up to 45 GW by 2040, according to Japan’s own Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. This chart shows installed capacity today, not future buildout or planned investment.
You’re waving around a graph that actually supports the point you’re trying to refute. Might want to zoom in next time.
Since those upgrades are only necessary because of the switch to renewables, yes, it makes sense to charge them to renewables.
You’re ignoring the massive public investment it took to build the fossil fuel system in the first place. The only reason renewables appear to “impose” new costs is because we’ve already paid, long ago, for the pipelines, power plants, and grid designed to serve fossil fuels. If you’re going to charge renewables for system upgrades, then you need to retroactively account for all the infrastructure and subsidies that made fossil fuels viable too.
Or, better yet, we can just compare apples to apples: use LCOE, which reflects the real cost to build and operate new generation today. On that basis, wind and solar win.
The generation cost of wind power in Britain is greater than the cost of gas, without even allowing for all of the other costs of wind power caused by its intermittency. This is before the cost of grid upgrades.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/07/27/new-offshore-wind-is-now-twice-the-price-of-gas/
The blog says “wind is twice the cost of gas,” but it’s using a maximum bid price, not the real cost. When you look at actual generation costs, offshore wind is cheaper than gas in the UK. UK offshore wind developers recently bid into Contracts for Difference at around £54–59/MWh, well below gas. These aren’t theoretical costs, they’re what companies are actually willing to build at.
Those contracts were awarded at inflation indexed 2012 prices to disguise the true cost of the contracts from the media and other useful idiots. The current 2025 cost of those contracts is 44% higher which makes these contracts much higher than gas. The upcoming price auction will almost certainly be higher in 2025 prices than those awarded last year.
The true cost of gas in the UK is inflated by a carbon tax. The quote comes from the link I provided. You also have to adjust for this when comparing wind and gas prices in the UK.
“It is generally accepted that wholesale prices tend to be set by the marginal cost of gas power. But as I noted the other day, the marginal cost of a CCGT plant, ie the fuel cost, is currently £49/MWh – so why the discrepancy between this and £80/MWh?
Carbon Pricing
The main factor is the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS), effectively a carbon tax. CCGT plant operators must purchase allowances to cover the amount of CO2 emitted. The current market price for these allowances is around £50/Tonne CO2.
This equates to a surcharge on CCGTs of about £18/MWh.
So although the cost of fuel might only be £49/MWh, the carbon tax increases this to £67/MWh.”
The cost of carbon is real (a fact that will be roundly denied by everyone here), but even if you ignore it, renewables still come out to be cheaper than fossil fuels. the UK government’s 2023 generation cost report showed offshore wind with an LCOE of around £44/MWh, and gas CCGT at over £85/MWh before carbon pricing. The fuel cost may be £49/MWh, but that doesn’t account for capital costs, O&M, insurance, fuel volatility, or capacity payments to ensure reliability. So even if you zero out the carbon tax, wind still beats gas on new-build economics.
That 2023 report is now grossly out of date and has no relevance to today’s prices..
If your claim is that the official 2023 UK generation cost data is “grossly out of date” less than two years later, then the burden’s on you to provide a newer, credible source that shows a reversal.
Also, offshore wind and solar have continued to dominate new capacity auctions, including in 2024, with strike prices in the £54–59/MWh range. Those are real-world bids, not projections, and they remain below the current all-in cost of gas. If the economics had flipped, we’d see it in auction outcomes and investment behavior. We don’t, because they haven’t.
So unless you’ve got a newer government-backed cost analysis showing gas has somehow become cheaper than wind (even before carbon pricing), all you’re doing is pointless hand-waving.
The 2025 prices that I have shown have come from the British government’s 2024 price auction adjusted to 2025 prices. Since 2023, the price of offshore wind has soared and the gas price has fallen. I have already shown this in previous posts. You seem to have serious problems in reading comprehension.
Physician, heal thyself. You’ve confidently quoted CfD strike price caps, not actual winning bids, and don’t seem to grasp the difference.
Thank you for confirming that you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. The prices that I have used are the actual 2024 winning bids adjusted to 2025 prices.
You’re waving around admin strike price caps adjusted to 2024 prices and calling them “winning bids” – one of us hasn’t a clue, but it isn’t me.
CfD contracts have always been stated in 2012 pounds for consistency and transparency across auction rounds. It’s not some trick to fool “the media and useful idiots,” it’s an accounting standard used across government energy policy. If you want to adjust to 2025 prices, that’s fine, but you need to adjust the gas price too, which has also risen sharply due to global volatility. When normalized, offshore wind still comes out cheaper or highly competitive, especially when accounting for fuel risk.
Baseless speculation. Good stuff.
The prices I have quoted are all 2025 prices. You are living in the past.
You’ve quoted 2025 CfD strike prices, not actual generation costs. Strike prices are caps for auction bids, not what developers actually build at. And your gas number is just the fuel cost, not the full cost of delivering power. So yes, they’re 2025 numbers, but they aren’t the numbers you need to be quoting.
Those strike prices are the generation costs which British consumers are actually paying. You seem to have confused maximum bid prices with actual strike prices. You appear to have misread the links that I have provided.
I’m not confused at all, and you seem to be wildly out of your depth. You’ve misread your own source. The article you linked is quoting the administrative strike price cap from AR6, the maximum price developers were allowed to bid, not the actual strike prices awarded. In fact, at the time of publication, no winning bids have even been announced, so it’s impossible for that figure to reflect what consumers are paying. If you’re going to call others out for reading comprehension, best not to trip over the headline of your own link.
How many times do I have to say this? I have used the winning bid prices from the 2024 auction adjusted to 2025 prices. These are the prices you referenced in your own link. Your reading comprehension is appalling and your grasp of basic arithmetic is nil. There is no point in continuing this conversation. You don’t even understand your own links.
I linked to the actual 2024 winning bid prices. You linked to a blog post showing the maximum allowed bids for a future auction, adjusted to a different year. That’s not what developers bid, and it’s definitely not what consumers are paying. Maybe try reading past the headline next time.
They are all part of the same dysfunctional, defective package.
All to solve a problem that never existed.
The cost of generation has to amortize the cost of getting it all up an running. Life Cycle Cost of Ownership.
LCOE was fabricated with the intent to deceive.
We don’t need to claim that renewables are unviable. We state it boldly with extensive proof thereof.
If it weren’t for government subsidies and mandates, nobody would be installing wind and solar.
Except in niche applications where it makes economic sense, not grid scale.
Whatever the economics is- and I think you’re wrong about that- what’s more important than economics is keeping their systems running dependably and they can’t get that with ruinables- and they know it- or they’d be investing all that money in more wind and solar.
AI companies are dumping billions into renewables. Your position is misinformed. If you can form a coherent opinion that isn’t completely wrong I’m open to hearing it.
AI that only works when the sun shines or wind blows.
That means probably less than a half-wit.
IQ average less than 50.. like most climate alarmists.
Good use of the word “dumping”. 🙂
“the economics of renewables are just too good to pass up.”
Yet Buffett said he only built them because of the subsidies.
The subsidies are just too good to pass up. ! 😉
Buffett said he built renewables because of the subsidies, not because they’re unprofitable without them, but because he’s an investor who maximizes return. That’s exactly how incentives are supposed to work: they accelerate adoption of economically viable tech in a market dominated by legacy infrastructure. Again, you all need a primer on how energy markets work before you try to jump into stuff like this (or you’re all being intentionally obtuse, which is always a real and distinct possibility when it comes to the contrarian set).
Built because of the subsidies.
Thanks AJ. ! 😉 🙂
He would not have built them without the subsidies, and got out of the ever repeating costs as soon as he could.
You are hilarious. !
Bnice is struggling to keep up. Be nice to him everyone, he’s trying.
“they accelerate adoption of economically viable tech”‘
They also allow a lot of of economically non-viable erratic crap to be built, causing massive manufacturing pollution, destroying habitats and environments and animal life around the world, and leaving a whole heap of un-disposable garbage in its wake.
Not that you care.
“They aren’t doing this altruistically….”
You do not know this.
If the economics of renewables are too good to pass up, then why massive government subsidies, why has the grid not transformed on its own over the past 20 years?
In 2022, 31% of Texas electricity was from renewables.
In 2023, 28.6% from wind alone.
The goal of the projects is to be 3x renewables, meaning the Texas expansion of renewables is falling behind.
The grid hasn’t “transformed on its own” because it is a lumbering beast that is heavily regulated, path-dependent, and slow to adapt. Subsidies are not a sign of failure, they’re a way to accelerate innovation and overcome legacy inertia. Renewables are leading new capacity globally precisely because the economics are that good, even on a historically tilted playing field.
You guys keep making this same stupid point ad nauseam as though it will grow sweeter with age.
Mr. J: In one comment, you say AI companies are uniform in SAYING they’re all for net zero, but you admit the big AI folks are buying their own NG plants. AI is big, growing industry, why do you bother wasting your time commenting here when you should be hounding those AI companies to live up to their PR? You might do some good (oh my, how did my fingers type that?).
AI companies are doing a lot of things – building NG as a stopgap measure is one of those things, they’re also investing heavily in renewables and renewable infrastructure. Most of the expected growth in demand from AI in the US is expected to be met by renewable energy even despite the current admin’s war on it, the economics are just too good.
And several more precious seconds wasted while AI companies lie to you about “stopgap” NG plants that are actually built to go forever. “Most of the expected growth … is expected….” Try to limit yourself to one fudge per sentence.
“due to demand.”
Whose demand?
That’s quite a Belief System you’ve got there. Maybe next time, try reality.
The grid mix might temporarily shift toward natural gas, but the long term trend is still toward decarbonization. Wind and solar are the cheapest sources of energy globally
Are you really claiming that the cheapest way to generate dispatchable power to where it is needed is wind and solar?
Produce some numbers. And explain why it is that a country, the UK, which is doing its best to move from conventional to wind and solar is subsidizing both on a grand scale, and why the prices from the bid rounds are so high. Paul Homewood has itemized
If its cheaper, why does it need subsidies? Why does it need regulation promoting it? Why not just leave it to the buyers to make the obvious decision and install the lowest cost best functioning technology?
The explanation is very simple. You cannot run a server farm with intermittent power supply, and you cannot afford making it reliable and continuous if you start with wind or solar.
The fact that some tech companies appear to be prepared to take a chance on mini-nukes with all the risks associated with them, mainly that they don’t yet exist, should tell you just how low they rate wind and solar. If mini-nukes are a less bad and lower risk alternative than a wind and solar farm, that really tells you how bad wind and solar are in real world applications.
No. Re-read what I’ve written, but this time with an eye toward genuinely trying to understand, instead of scoring contrarian points.
Because that’s how you accelerate deployment of new infrastructure; the same reason fossil fuels have received subsidies for decades. If you’re asking why governments subsidize emerging technologies, you might want to find a basic primer on how energy markets work.
Because gas and coal benefit from legacy infrastructure and favorable market design. Levelized cost tells you what’s cheapest to build and operate today, but market inertia doesn’t fix itself without policy help.
Of course not. That’s why tech companies plan short-term around gas or grid contracts, and long-term around grid upgrades, storage, and clean firm power. Because over time, renewables are cheaper and more sustainable. What is happening is a staged transition, not an either/or scenario.
Yeah, just keep telling lies. That’s the ticket.
I don’t recall the coal industry in 1800’s Britain requiring government subsidies, people switched over gradually as wood got more expensive and coal became cheaper as more mines opened. Likewise, we didn’t stop using whale oil until kerosene became widely available – also with no government subsidy involved.
If wind and solar were cheaper, or of any use whatsoever, they wouldn’t need government subsidies, people would be clamoring for them and the companies making them would be making a profit hand over fist. Who knows, maybe our beloved Dear Leader Two-Tier might hypothetically slap a “windfall tax” on them. But they aren’t, and wind and solar wouldn’t survive without subsidies.
We had a “legacy infrastructure” of burning coal in factories and homes. It was replaced without government subsidies. If renewables were cheaper, again, they would not need subsidies.
Quite a bit of historical romanticism you’re applying, here. Back in pre-industrial Britain, there was no centralized grid, no environmental regulation, no permitting process, and no coordinated energy policy. Comparing that to modern energy transitions is like comparing horse breeding to semiconductor manufacturing.
Today’s energy systems are massive public-private infrastructures shaped by market design, regulation, and decades of investment. Fossil fuels enjoy billions in annual subsidies, direct and indirect like tax credits, exploration write-offs, and government-funded infrastructure.
And that’s aside from the rhetorical slight of hand you’re employing: renewables don’t “need” subsidization to flourish, any more than the internet, or the US highway system or auto industry, or GPS and satellite technologies do. They benefit from subsidies to scale faster, overcome inertia in fossil-dominated markets, and reduce early-stage investment risk. This is the same strategy used for nearly every major infrastructure or tech transition in history from railroads to telecom to fossil fuels themselves.
All you have is rhetorical fake of hand.
Renewables need constant subsidy funding to even exist, plus mandated use and payments when they can’t produce or produce too much, and massively costly batteries to ever become remotely “dispatchable”
You could NEVER live your life relying totally on unsubsidised wind and solar.
Fossil fuel are absolutely necessary for your existence.
Socialists create problems, then proclaim that these problems prove that only more socialism can solve them.
The fact that the grid already exists, completely paid for by fossil fuel energy, should make renewables cheaper. Funny how renewable energy always makes things more expensive.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-climate-scaremongers-the-7trillion-fossil-fuel-con-trick/
They have been working on this so-called transition for over 2 decades. And with government largess.
Seems there may be a problem with this approach.
Another lie
“fossil fuels have received subsidies for decades”
Citation and evidence using your own claims you are asking of us.
The fact is most countries use FF as a revenue source with the government imposing a tax on it.
If you look at something like the IMF report you can see how they doctor the data to say there is a subsidy
https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies
Here is the key to the lie
“External costs include contributions to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions, local health damages (primarily pre-mature deaths) through the release of harmful local pollutants like fine particulates, and traffic congestion and accident externalities associated with the use of road fuels.”
Your social cost of carbon yet again disguised in new wording and we all love pre-mature deaths … try proving that pile of garbage 🙂
Wind and solar are actually FAR more filthy and toxic to the environment than fossil fuels could ever be.
They are extremely toxic in their manufacturing, producing vast lakes of toxic pollutants,
… they destroy landscapes and habitats in initial installation,
… they destroy avian and ocean and land wildlife ,
and at the end of their short erratically unproductive lives, they destroy the very Earth with leached chemicals and toxic fibres in massive landfills. (or are just left to rot and decay)
AlanJ is always whining, that unless one provides actual numbers, there arguments must be ignored.
Yet, he never provides numbers. Just vague pablum about how renewables are so great, because that’s what he wants to believe.
And when one does provide numbers he claims they are fabricated.
And yet another tired lie.
The fossil fuel industry is not receiving subsidies.
As usual, socialists like to declare any tax rate that is less than 100%, a subsidy.
Fossil fuels don’t get subsidies – at least, not in the West. They do in some developing oil and gas producing countries. Depletion allowances are not subsidies. Depreciation is not a subsidy.
Levelized cost does not tell you what is cheaper to build, for two, reasons.
One, as usually done it leaves out many of the costs of deployment, particularly the costs of making the product dispatchable and delivering it to the point of demand.
Two, it assumes all power generated is of equal value, whether there is demand for it or not, so it doesn’t take account of mismatches between high power generation due to fluctuating weather and low demand.
Done right, all costs included and only usable product counted, so that the product is comparable with conventional, both wind and solar are far more expensive. LCOE as usually done is not a valid indicator.
Read Rud Istvan’s piece here:
True costs of wind electricity | Climate Etc.
And even this does not take account of the overstatement of assuming all power generated is usable, when it isn’t.
As to the energy transition – the supposed transition from conventional and nuclear to wind and solar – there is no such transition. Wind and solar are being installed. But there is no move from conventional + nuclear to wind + solar. You think there is, put up the numbers.
Because that’s how you accelerate deployment of new infrastructure;
No. That’s the way you try, based on mistaken theories about what will happen to future costs and about the usefulness of the technological solution you are advocating. But when the tech doesn’t meet the narket need, you end uyp with a while elephant. In the case of wind and solar, on a grand scale. Its a typical government effort to pick winners. They almost always fail.
The real way you get infrastructure changes is take off subsidies, forced purchases, other regulatory measures, and allow companies to buy whatever is the best solution by ordinary investment criteria. Take off the subsidies and wind and solar will wither in months.
Read Paul Homewood’s piece on the UK to see the real picture.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/07/28/the-frightening-cost-of-net-zero/
Your argument rests heavily on Rud Istvan’s non-peer-reviewed analysis and a narrow definition of subsidies and fails to engage with real-world market data. Independent agencies (Lazard, IEA, BEIS) consistently show wind and solar are cheaper than new gas on generation cost. LCOE doesn’t capture system value perfectly, but neither do your criticisms engage with advanced metrics like LACE or system-level costing. Meanwhile, real auctions show offshore wind being built today at under £60/MWh while gas costs remain around £110/MWh. You’re arguing a theoretical worst-case when the market is doing just fine without it.
Fossil fuels did not receive subsidies for decades. Look up depreciation allowance in the tax code.
What is it with you alarmists that you are so willing to repeat any lie you are told to repeat.
First off, the only reason why wind and solar are being installed at all, is because the law requires it.
Secondly, wind and solar are by far, the most expensive form of power, when you factor in the costs associated with them being intermittent and unreliable.
You claim that AI providers are demanding wind and solar, yet so far, when given the choice, AI providers are choosing everything but wind and solar.
“but the long term trend is still toward decarbonization”
sounds like you’ve been living under a rock the last few years 🙂
I can tell because I’m here in Wokeachusetts, and that’s the way the state continues to preach.
“Wind and solar are the cheapest sources of energy globally,”
Which is why electricity prices are the highest in countries with large proportions of wind and solar.
And no, the cost of integrating variable renewable sources into a grid, is extremely expensive.
Wind and solar are also the most polluting form of energy from manufacture, through implementation to short-life disposal.
Correlation fallacy again. You all can’t get enough of it. Fallacies atop superficial half-baked, evidence free analysis is all you seem to have at your disposal. Sad.
Ignoring that in EVERY country that adopts large amounts of crap erratic electricity supply…
… PRICES SKYROCKET.
We all know who the denier is. !!
And you have shown you have zero clue about just how toxic the manufacture of wind and solar are.. or that you JUST DON’T CARE. !!
Correlation fallacy again.
Ok. Let’s discuss correlation.
Point 1: When a cause and effect relationship are proven, there is a correlation established.
Point 2: Correlation does not define causation.
A and B are correlated.
A causes B?
B causes A?
X causes both A & B?
A and B are independent and the correlation is coincidental.
Power generation has multiple factors, certainly, including government regulations and oversight (added to protect consumers, a different discussion), and infrastructure maintenance and upgrades.
The cause and effect are much easier to establish than with other divisive topics.
Yes the hydrocarbon energy system benefits from existing infrastructure. The infrastructure has been growing and evolving since Edison first turned on the lights in New York in 1882. Most of those costs have depreciated or been amortized over the past 143 years. How much of that was paid by utility companies, investors, consumers, and tax payers is data lost in the annuls of history, but it was not just tax payer dollars. Homeowners always pay to have their houses connected, either through direct billing or as part of the house purchase price. Utility bills include more than $/kWhr. Fact of life. Just look at your bill.
What WTG and WV are attempting to do with infrastructure is match in a few years what took 142 years to accomplish. It is a cause that this accelerated implementation will cost more than if it had evolved like the current system. Basic economics. Cause and effect.
The money has to come from somewhere: investors, tax payers, consumers. The only way to recover the investment costs is through higher prices. Again, basic economics, amortization. Cause and effect.
Couple this with (In England and elsewhere) WTG are paid to reduce output when demand is low. They are paid to not produce and that raises the price for what is consumed. Basic economics. Cause and effect.
LCOE is the basis for arguing in favor of grid scale WTG and WV systems. It is a flawed analysis as has been discussed. Causes of WTG and WV systems costing more to produce electricity are not included. There are unique infrastructure costs, e.g. batteries, that are not included, as well as grid expansion and long lines. There are other costs, too, but we shall leave it at that.
.Cause and effect are established. It is not a correlation logic fallacy. It is practical real world evidence.
Your quote belies your conclusion.
If SV and WTG are cheaper to build and run and can be erected more quickly, then why are any new gas fired power plants being built? It your suggestion that it is growing in all directions, why does Texas plan to achieve 75% dominance in energy production using hydrocarbons.
Every major tech companies publicly support net-zero goals, that is why Musk is building gas turbine generators. Keep in mind the life span of steam turban generators (60 years plus) is much longer than the best WTG (maybe 10 years) or SV systems (maybe 10 years).
Keep in mind LCOE is not the total life cost of ownership.
You’re making several misinformed claims here. First, new gas plants are still being built because they’re dispatchable and help meet peak demand, especially in rapidly growing regions like Texas. That doesn’t contradict the fact that wind and solar are now cheaper to build and operate per MWh, it just reflects the current need for grid balancing, not cost superiority.
Second, Texas isn’t planning to reach “75% dominance” using hydrocarbons, renewables already lead new capacity additions in the state, and wind alone provided over 25% of its electricity in 2023.
As for tech companies: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are investing billions into solar, wind, and storage, because the economics and long-term risk profile are better. Musk’s gas turbines at the border are a backup solution to an overloaded local grid, not a disavowal of renewables.
And finally, LCOE includes capital, O&M, fuel, and lifespan, it’s explicitly designed for like-for-like cost comparison. If you want to talk total system costs, fine, but be consistent and include the decades of sunk cost, subsidies, and infrastructure that fossil fuels have enjoyed.
All those projections. All those ever more complicated [and bogus] models did not see this coming.
I wonder what they did expect?
“Small modular nuclear reactors promise breakthroughs in cost and cycle time, but these remain unproven technologies.”
It seems that the “promise” SMRs offer is more a unrealistic possibility. An SMR company, Nuscale, got permission to build a cluster of their small pressurized water reactors (pretty much guaranteed to function) in Idaho but the project failed because the cost of the electricity they would produce was about four times higher than electricity available from conventional sources. The local utilities would not sign up for the power so the project failed. And this was based on projected costs, not actual costs which, in the nuclear business, are always much higher. In my present view, SMRs are most likely all hype presented to us by greedy investors, greedy SMR company executives who pay themselves large salaries for promoting the assumed wonders of their machines, and lazy and ignorant governments who know somewhere between little and nothing about electric power production and distribution alternatives but are happy to pay for costly dreams nonetheless.
I think you are right about SMR being unrealistic. Essentially scaled down factory built Gen 3. Cannot go the US Navy route because requires highly enriched uranium. NuScale already failed on ‘promised’ rather than actual costs.
It is interesting that Nuscale (SMR) has tripled in price since May.
It sounds like these gas plants (and the refurbished nuclear plants) are to be dedicated to the AI facilities funding them. I am wondering if FERC or state agencies will have the authority to redirect power to ordinary consumers if and when the regular grid fails. My gut instinct says yes, they will.
Interesting observation. Two observations as food for thought.
At least with TMI, one of the selling points at the beginning was the availability of local transmission infrastructure. Texas does its own thing, and maybe that has something to do with why those facilities are not grid connected. Other regions like being interconnected. But I guess we will see.
Nice to see orders for new natural gas generation, but manufacturer’s are booked up and reluctant to build new capacity. They know that when we the people foolishly put the democrats back in power it will be sunshine and breezes once again. The W&S economy destroying beast is stumbling but it hasn’t fallen.
Besides generating the electricity, who is making all the equipment needed for these data centres?
________________________________________________________________________________
Meanwhile local governments around the country are busy banning natural gas hook-ups in new construction.
Hot Air
NY State Mandates All New Buildings Under 7 Stories Must Be All-Electric Starting 1 Jan 2026
The facilities will total 1.2 million square feet, covering an area larger than 20 football fields.
Each standard football field, including end zones, is about 1.32 acres, so, approximately 23 acres. [My property is 20 acres.]
Old Shep’s house is 3 ft x 4 ft, or 12 square feet. So, we can say the EdgeConneX footprint will equal 100,000 dog houses.
Or about 90 Olympic swimming pools.
Natural gas is wasted on base power. It has other more important applications.Coal reserves are more abundant in the USA than NG, by 12 times. We (and all other countries interested in their own survival) will use coal, where the climate activists like it or not. The East is already doing this to such a large extent that the West is irrelevant. To date, there is not a single demonstrated climate variation that is human related, just ‘maybes’ and ‘parametrized possibilities’. We are sacrificing our future for a wish on a star.
In this case though, NG isn’t being used as base power, but for AI data centers. Also the turnaround time for these plants of 1-2 years would be tough to beat.
Story Tip
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/07/28/the-frightening-cost-of-net-zero/#more-87910
Paul Homewood has an excellent piece on the real full costs of the UK Net Zero project. With numbers.
AlanJ please read. Still think wind and solar are the cheapest form of generation?
Yes, I do, because they are. The blog post you linked conflates the cost of building a clean energy system (which includes grid upgrades, legacy phaseouts, and storage) with the cost of generating electricity. Wind and solar have the lowest LCOE of any new generation source, even without subsidies or carbon pricing. Throwing around scary-sounding national price tags doesn’t refute that, it just proves that large-scale transitions have system costs, like every other infrastructure shift in history.
A lie so good, that it has to be repeated over and over and over again.
Keep it up, perhaps after a few more iterations, maybe even you will start to believe it.
LCOE is not a valid parameter for comparison. What you have to compare is two technological solutions for getting the same job done.
You are trying to compare the cost of delivering power intermittently to a place where it is not usable with the cost of delivering what is needed, where its needed, reliably and consistently.
You want to compare two ways of delivering product, you have to compare the costs of delivering the same product. That is, you have to figure the costs of delivering dispatchable power to where its needed by a combination of wind, solar and storage.
Anything else if implemented in your financial statements will be accounting fraud. If offered to a Finance Committee in a business case it will result in immediately being shown the door.
Your more basic problem is that the narrative is failing. You can’t run modern economies on wind and solar. If you could, it would only deal with 25% of emissions, and only in Western countries, so it won’t help. You cannot convert transport to EVs and heating to heat pumps, and if you could, that too would not help. And the rest of the world, 75% of emissions and growing fast, isn’t on board, so Western efforts are pointless.
The narrative is breaking down. The paradigm case is the UK, where the most serious attempt at this nonsensical agenda is under way. Its being exposed as nonsense more and more clearly every month.
Levelized Cost of Electricity on its own has limitations, we know that. That’s why energy economists use LACE, SLCOE, and full system modelling to account for dispatchability and integration. Even with those system-level costs included, renewables, especially offshore wind, remain cheaper than gas in most markets. That’s why countries and utilities are retiring coal and gas, awarding new-build power via wind and solar auctions at lower rates, and investing billions in the space. The theoretical guesswork you cite doesn’t hold up when real markets speak with their money.
I wonder if New York State politicians and bureaucrats regret their socialist, no-growth and “no-gas” policies. By banning ‘fracking’ and vetoing gas pipelines they will be losing out on the economic boon of AI computing facilities now going to States with abundant natural gas and pro-free market conservative politics.
Probably the only good thing to come out of this AI bubble. At least when it bursts there’ll be something of value left.
It only takes “1-2 years for a gas plant”? Amazing. How long can we expect gas to be abundant? Are reserves still increasing or decreasing?
This all sounds good. I don’t think enough attention is paid to the life expectancy of the different generation types. There is too much made of the time it takes for nuclear to come on line. I am in favor of coal, gas and nuclear, we need a good mix of these three and not depend too much on just one.
Can we stop with all of this “wind is cheaper than fossil fuels” BS. So what? If it the wind isn’t blowing, then you could give it away and you’d still be sweating your ass off in the dark. Today in the MISO footprint, the peak load occurred at 17:30 at 120,952 MW. At 17:00 wind was providing a whopping 3829 MW, out of an installed capacity of nearly 30,000 MW. Coal, gas and atoms were carrying the load and keeping the lights on, thank you very much! And I suspect folks would be happy to pay whatever for that. Perhaps we should ask the Spaniards.
No one here has asked the question as to whether using 20% of our electrical energy for AI servers is sensible? We can stipulate that Gates wants to collect our data, but is AI used to answer questions other than the most trivial? AI does nothing that has not been done before. If you have used AI as a search engine, you have found that AI is putting together what is in its data base, and repeating your question back to you. AI uses algorithms designed (in some cases) by activists of political and other stripes. Is funding your favorite AI influencer worth 20% of our electrical energy?
The real reason AI will soon consume 20% or more of our electrical energy is — wait for it — MONEY flowing to the elite!
Coupled with greed, AU energy consumption truly knows no bounds.
When AI can formulate the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, which is answered with 42, then I will applaud.