The Easy Path to Carbon-Free Computing Power: How NU E Power Aims to Make Things Easier for Companies Like Amazon and SAP

Solar power disappears every night, but a data centre cannot. That engineering mismatch is turning Google, Amazon and other technology giants into some of the world's most important buyers of battery storage, financing gigawatt-scale systems to keep increasingly power-hungry AI infrastructure supplied around the clock.

A few months ago, I wrote about Meta buying future electricity from solar collectors in orbit. It was one of those stories that made the AI power problem feel almost absurd. Computing demand had grown so quickly that putting part of the power station 36,000 kilometres above Earth could pass for a reasonable meeting agenda. The more immediate response is happening on much less exotic ground. Google, Amazon and other large technology companies are…

The Easy Path to Carbon-Free Computing Power: How NU E Power Aims to Make Things Easier for Companies Like Amazon and SAP

Amazon: Comprehensive Power Purchase Agreements and the Decision to Use Nuclear Power As the largest commercial purchaser of renewable electricity, Amazon faces the challenge of meeting the growing energy needs of its cloud division, AWS, while remaining carbon-neutral. In the Canadian province of Alberta alone, Amazon secured 400 MW from the Travers Solar Project—the country’s largest photovoltaic plant—through a 15-year contract. To offset wea…