The AI generation is giving fracking a 2nd act, a shocking twist for an trade that, even all the way through its early 2010s increase years, used to be blamed through local weather advocates for poisoned water tables, man-made earthquakes, and the cussed endurance of fossil fuels.
AI corporations are development huge knowledge facilities close to main gas-production websites, incessantly producing their very own energy through tapping immediately into fossil fuels. It’s a pattern that’s been overshadowed through headlines concerning the intersection of AI and healthcare (and fixing local weather alternate), however it’s one that might reshape — and lift tricky questions for — the communities that host those amenities.
Take the most recent instance. This week, the Wall Side road Magazine reported that AI coding assistant startup Poolside is setting up a knowledge middle advanced on greater than 500 acres in West Texas — about 300 miles west of Dallas — a footprint two-thirds the scale of Central Park. The power will generate its personal energy through tapping pure fuel from the Permian Basin, the country’s most efficient oil and fuel box, the place hydraulic fracturing isn’t simply commonplace however in point of fact the one sport on the town.
The venture, dubbed Horizon, will produce two gigawatts of computing energy. That’s similar to the Hoover Dam’s whole electrical means, aside from as a substitute of harnessing the Colorado River, it’s burning fracked fuel. Poolside is growing the power with CoreWeave, a cloud computing corporate that rents out get right of entry to to Nvidia AI chips and that’s supplying get right of entry to to greater than 40,000 of them. The Magazine calls it an “power Wild West,” which turns out apt.
But Poolside is a long way from by myself. Just about the entire main AI gamers are pursuing equivalent methods. Remaining month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman toured his corporate’s flagship Stargate knowledge middle in Abilene, Texas — round 200 miles from the Permian Basin — the place he used to be candid, pronouncing, “We’re burning fuel to run this information middle.”
The advanced calls for about 900 megawatts of electrical energy throughout 8 constructions and features a new gas-fired energy plant the use of generators very similar to those who energy warships, in keeping with the Related Press. The corporations say the plant supplies handiest backup energy, with maximum electrical energy coming from the native grid. That grid, for the report, attracts from a mixture of pure fuel and the sprawling wind and sun farms in West Texas.
However the other folks residing close to those initiatives aren’t precisely comforted. Arlene Mendler lives around the boulevard from Stargate. She advised the AP she needs somebody had requested her opinion prior to bulldozers eradicated an enormous tract of mesquite shrubland to make room for what’s being constructed atop it.
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“It has utterly modified the way in which we had been residing,” Mendler advised the AP. She moved to the world 33 years in the past looking for “peace, quiet, tranquility.” Now development is the soundtrack within the background, and vivid lighting at the scene have spoiled her middle of the night perspectives.
Then there’s the water. In drought-prone West Texas, locals are specifically fearful about how new knowledge facilities will have an effect on the water provide. The town’s reservoirs had been at more or less half-capacity all the way through Altman’s seek advice from, with citizens on a twice-weekly out of doors watering agenda. Oracle claims each and every of the 8 constructions will want simply 12,000 gallons according to yr after an preliminary million-gallon fill for closed-loop cooling methods. However Shaolei Ren, a College of California, Riverside professor who research AI’s environmental footprint, advised the AP that’s deceptive. Those methods require extra electrical energy, because of this extra oblique water intake on the energy vegetation producing that electrical energy.
Meta is pursuing a equivalent technique. In Richland Parish, the poorest area of Louisiana, the corporate plans to construct a $10 billion knowledge middle the scale of one,700 soccer fields that can require two gigawatts of energy for computation by myself. Application corporate Entergy will spend $3.2 billion to construct 3 huge natural-gas energy vegetation with 2.3 gigawatts of means to feed the power through burning fuel extracted via fracking within the within sight Haynesville Shale. Louisiana citizens, like the ones in Abilene, aren’t extremely joyful to be encircled through bulldozers across the clock.
(Meta may be development in Texas, despite the fact that in other places within the state. This week the corporate introduced a $1.5 billion knowledge middle in El Paso, close to the New Mexico border, with one gigawatt of means anticipated on-line in 2028. El Paso isn’t close to the Permian Basin, and Meta says the power might be matched with 100% blank and renewable power. One level for Meta.)
Even Elon Musk’s xAI, whose Memphis facility has generated really extensive controversy this yr, has fracking connections. Memphis Mild, Gasoline and Water – which recently sells energy to xAI however will in the end personal the substations xAI is development – purchases pure fuel at the spot marketplace and pipes it to Memphis by way of two corporations: Texas Gasoline Transmission Corp. and Trunkline Gasoline Corporate.
Texas Gasoline Transmission is a bidirectional pipeline wearing pure fuel from Gulf Coast provide spaces and several other main hydraulically fractured shale formations via Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Trunkline Gasoline Corporate, the opposite Memphis provider, additionally carries pure fuel from fracked resources.
In the event you’re questioning why AI corporations are pursuing this trail, they’ll inform you it’s no longer on the subject of electrical energy; it’s additionally about beating China.
That used to be the argument Chris Lehane made final week. Lehane, a veteran political operative who joined OpenAI as vp of world affairs in 2024, laid out the case all the way through an on-stage interview with TechCrunch.
“We imagine that within the not-too-distant long term, a minimum of within the U.S., and in point of fact around the globe, we’re going to want to be producing in the community of a gigawatt of power every week,” Lehane mentioned. He pointed to China’s huge power buildout: 450 gigawatts and 33 nuclear amenities built within the final yr by myself.
When TechCrunch requested about Stargate’s choice to construct in economically challenged spaces like Abilene, or Lordstown, Ohio, the place extra gas-powered vegetation are deliberate, Lehane returned to geopolitics. “If we [as a country] do that proper, you might have a possibility to re-industrialize nations, carry production again and likewise transition our power methods in order that we do the modernization that should happen.”
The Trump management is definitely on board. The July 2025 govt order fast-tracks gas-powered AI knowledge facilities through streamlining environmental allows, providing monetary incentives, and opening federal lands for initiatives the use of pure fuel, coal, or nuclear energy — whilst explicitly except renewables from toughen.
For now, maximum AI customers stay in large part ignorant of the carbon footprint at the back of their dazzling new toys and paintings equipment. They’re extra all in favour of features like Sora 2 – OpenAI’s hyperrealistic video-generation product that calls for exponentially extra power than a easy chatbot – than on the place the electrical energy comes from.
The corporations are counting in this. They’ve located pure fuel because the pragmatic, inevitable resolution to AI’s exploding energy calls for. However the velocity and scale of this fossil gasoline buildout merits extra consideration than it’s getting.
If this can be a bubble, it received’t be lovely. The AI sector has transform a round firing squad of dependencies: OpenAI wishes Microsoft wishes Nvidia wishes Broadcom wishes Oracle wishes knowledge middle operators who want OpenAI. They’re all purchasing from and promoting to one another in a self-reinforcing loop. The Monetary Instances famous this week if the basis cracks, there’ll be numerous dear infrastructure left status round, each the virtual and the gas-burning type.
OpenAI’s skill by myself to fulfill its responsibilities is “more and more a priority for the wider financial system,” the opening wrote.
One key query that’s been in large part absent from the dialog is whether or not all this new means is even vital. A Duke College find out about discovered that utilities in most cases use handiest 53% in their to be had means right through the yr. That means important room to house new call for with out setting up new energy vegetation, as MIT Generation Evaluation reported previous this yr.
The Duke researchers estimate that if knowledge facilities decreased electrical energy intake through more or less 1/2 for only some hours all the way through annual height call for sessions, utilities may just deal with an extra 76 gigawatts of latest load. That might successfully take in the 65 gigawatts knowledge facilities are projected to wish through 2029.
That roughly flexibility would permit corporations to release AI knowledge facilities sooner. Extra importantly, it will supply a reprieve from the frenzy to construct pure fuel infrastructure, giving utilities time to expand cleaner possible choices.
However once more, that might imply shedding flooring to an autocratic regime, according to Lehane and lots of others within the trade, so as a substitute, the pure fuel development spree seems prone to saddle areas with extra fossil-fuel vegetation and depart citizens with hovering electrical energy expenses to finance nowadays’s investments, together with lengthy after the tech corporations’ contracts expire.
Meta, as an example, has assured it’s going to duvet Entergy’s prices for the brand new Louisiana era for 15 years. Poolside’s hire with CoreWeave runs for 15 years. What occurs to consumers when the ones contracts finish stays an open query.
Issues might in the end alternate. A large number of personal cash is being funneled into small modular reactors and sun installations with the expectancy that those cleaner power possible choices will transform extra central power resources for those knowledge facilities. Fusion startups like Helion and Commonwealth Fusion Programs have in a similar fashion raised really extensive investment from the ones the entrance strains of AI, together with Nvidia and Altman.
This optimism isn’t confined to personal funding circles. The thrill has spilled over into public markets, the place a number of “non-revenue-generating” power corporations that experience controlled to move public have in reality anticipatory, marketplace caps, in response to the expectancy that they’re going to sooner or later gasoline those knowledge facilities.
Within the period in-between — which might nonetheless be many years — essentially the most urgent worry is that the individuals who’ll be left preserving the bag, financially and environmentally, by no means requested for any of this within the first position.
