NPR’s Scott Simon speaks with Michael Thomas, CEO of Cleanview, about his new report on tech companies’ plans to build their own off-grid power plants to provide energy for data centers.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Companies that include Amazon, Google, and OpenAI are racing to build data centers across the country to fuel the growth of artificial intelligence. But these facilities need massive amounts of energy, and this has people who live nearby concerned about their electric bills. President Trump says he’s got a solution for these tech giants.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Build your own power plants. And everybody thought I was kidding. They said really? You can do that? How would you do that? I said, we’ll get you your fast permits, then you’ll build your own plants.
SIMON: That’s the president at a White House roundtable this week, where a number of tech executives pledged to do just that. But many energy experts are skeptical. Michael Thomas is the founder and CEO of Cleanview, a market research company that tracks data centers and clean energy development. He joins us now from Boulder, Colorado. Thanks so much for being with us.
MICHAEL THOMAS: Thank you so much for having me.
SIMON: Is the president right? Would that work? Would it lower electricity prices?
THOMAS: It would certainly help if tech companies would pay their own way. There’s no doubt that that is good policy. But it wouldn’t bring down prices primarily because the main reason that electricity prices have risen over the last five years or so is not data centers, but the rising cost of building the grid and maintaining it, wildfires and hurricanes that have forced us rebuild the grid in many cases. And data centers are increasing bills in some places, like in the mid-Atlantic. But in most parts of the country, a data center is not the reason that your power bill rose by as much as 25 or 30% over the last couple years.
SIMON: Tell us, please, about the Colossus facilities in Tennessee. These are data centers for Elon Musk’s xAI company. How are they being powered?
THOMAS: In 2024, Elon Musk was told that it would take years to connect to the power grid, and rather than wait for that power connection, they instead brought in mobile gas generators. They brought in so many that, at one time, it was the world’s largest data center training AI. And that resulted in a huge amount of pollution because these mobile gas generators were running at all hours of the day and burning natural gas. But what it did is it achieved their goal of speed to power. They were able to build the power plant in four months. And so as result, that encouraged a lot of tech companies to follow suit and try this faster path.
SIMON: Should companies be using solar panels and other sources of energy?
THOMAS: There’s no doubt that they could be using more. We’d also be using wind, which generates power at night and often when solar panels aren’t producing. But the idea that we could just put them on the roof of a data center ignores the enormous power requirements of these data centers. We would need probably thousands of acres of solar to be next to a data center in order to power it. But that’s also why it’s so important to use the power grid, ’cause the power grid in the U.S. spans thousands of miles. And so you could have a solar or wind farm generating power hundreds or thousands of miles away and feeding into that data center.
SIMON: Well, what are the concerns of people who live near new data centers about the energy that’s going to be necessary?
THOMAS: So one of the primary concerns with this approach of building their own natural gas power plants is pollution. So one of the most staggering stories that I found in my research was about a data center in New Mexico. So this is a data center that’s being built by OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT. This single data center would emit 14 million tons of CO2 per year. That’s as much as the entire state of New Mexico reduced their emissions by over the last 20 years. And so a single data center would wipe out 20 years of climate progress. They also result in a lot of local pollution that can ultimately send people to the hospital and result in higher rates of asthma and other issues.
SIMON: But at the same time, do you foresee anybody saying, well, let’s slow down?
THOMAS: No. If you look at what companies are saying, if you look at what the president is saying, if you look at what many local governors and senators are saying, I think the message is, in general, we need to speed up. And part of the reason for that is that everyone is perceiving themselves as in this great race, both against each other, but then they also frame it as a great race against China.
SIMON: Michael Thomas is the founder and CEO of Cleanview. Thanks so much for being with us.
THOMAS: Thank you so much for having me.
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