AI’s real bottleneck is electricity. Who will pay for it?
Summary
Amazon and Google have signed long-term agreements to buy nuclear power as AI and data centre electricity demand grows. Companies are also backing reactor upgrades and restarts, but new nuclear capacity takes years to deliver, creating a timing gap between electricity supply and rapidly changing technology demand.Key Facts
- Amazon contracted for 690 megawatts from Constellation’s Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland, including 190 megawatts of added capacity expected between 2030 and 2032.
- Google signed an agreement for 890 megawatts of additional nuclear capacity in the United States.
- Neither the Amazon nor Google agreement involves building a new reactor; both rely on existing reactors or added output from them.
- Constellation plans to invest more than $4.3 billion to upgrade 11 reactors in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
- Microsoft has a 20-year agreement to buy electricity from the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island as it is brought back into service.
- The U.S. Department of Energy is offering up to $4.4 billion in loans to support restarting three closed nuclear plants, with a goal of restoring about 2.25 gigawatts of capacity.
- The International Energy Agency estimates that global data centre electricity use will more than double to about 945 terawatt-hours by 2030.
- A new large nuclear reactor can take a decade or more to begin generating electricity, while several small modular reactor projects are not expected to deliver power until the early 2030s.
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