Reality Check: We Have What’s Needed to Reliably Power the Data Center Boom, and It’s Not Coal Plants

Reality Check: We Have What’s Needed to Reliably Power the Data Center Boom, and It’s Not Coal Plants

After decades of relatively flat electricity demand, the US power sector is expecting demand to grow due, in large part, to new data centers. These energy-intensive facilities are reshaping the grid, with some utilities now projecting over 20 percent load growth by 2035. In places like Virginia, which constitutes 13 percent of all reported data center capacity globally and 25 percent of the data center capacity in the United States, data centers…