Today's Edition
The New York Times News Service
The artificial intelligence boom has turbocharged demand for electricity, and everyone who is anyone in the U.S. energy industry wants a piece of the action.
The latest entrant is Chevron, the country’s second-largest oil and gas company, which sees opportunity in building natural gas-fueled power plants that will feed energy directly to data centers.
Chevron is working with Engine No. 1, a San Francisco-based investment firm best known for waging a successful proxy battle against Exxon Mobil in 2021. The companies say they have ordered critical equipment, scouted potential sites and can have their first plant online within three years.
"It’s a chance for us to help meet the moment and address this growing need for reliable and affordable power,” Mike Wirth, Chevron’s CEO, said in an interview.
Chevron’s announcement is the latest example of just how much the promise of AI - a voracious electricity consumer - is reshaping the economy. Oil producers are recalibrating their strategies and leaning into power generation, a business that many of them had previously sworn off because it was much less profitable than drilling and processing oil and gas. Just last month, Exxon said that it, too, wanted to get into the business of selling electricity to data centers.
But in a reminder that the prospects for AI data centers and growing electricity demand are highly uncertain, technology and energy stocks tumbled Monday. Investors were unnerved by the stunning advances in AI made by an unfamiliar Chinese startup, DeepSeek, that said it had made its gains using a modest number of computer chips that consumed relatively little energy. Shares of chipmaker Nvidia tumbled 17% and the stock of Constellation Energy, a large power producer, closed down more than 20%.
"There’s always the potential for markets to surprise you,” Wirth said. But he added that being early to market and keeping its costs low would protect Chevron against the possibility that power demand growth falls short of current expectations. His company is hardly alone.
Many power producers are bulking up, and many are investing in natural gas generating capacity specifically. Constellation, which has a large fleet of nuclear power plants, agreed this month to buy rival Calpine, which owns many natural gas plants, for $16.4 billion. And last week, NextEra Energy said it was planning to build more gas-fueled power plants.
Expectations for how much and how quickly U.S. electricity demand will rise vary widely. What’s clear is that data centers are likely to consume a lot more of the country’s power than they do today. A recent study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that the facilities are poised to use up to 12% of U.S. electricity in 2028, up from 4.4% in 2023.
Chevron and Engine No. 1 said they have reserved seven gas turbines from GE Vernova, one of the companies created by the breakup of General Electric. The equipment is set to be delivered beginning in 2026. Chevron and Engine No. 1, which did not say how much they plan to spend, have been in talks with prospective customers and expect to build up to four gigawatts of gas-generating capacity.
Natural gas-fired power plants cost around $2 billion per gigawatt, Morgan Stanley recently estimated.
In this case, the plants would be located alongside the data centers they power. Like Exxon, the partners expect their facilities would not be connected to the electric grid to start, so the plants can get up and running more quickly. It can take years for grid managers to approve connection requests.
Eventually though, they aim to secure grid hookups, said Chris James, Engine No. 1’s chief investment officer. "A grid interconnect allows us to be able to supply power back to the grid when it needs it,” he said.
Technology giants like Microsoft and Google have set targets to get all of their energy from sources that do not contribute to climate change after taking into account carbon capture and other technologies. But some tech companies now say that they will be hard-pressed to get all the power they need in the next few years without relying on natural gas, which produces carbon dioxide when it is burned. The greenhouse gas is the leading cause of climate change.
"It’s this valley between now and then that leaves a lot of people scratching their heads and realizing that if you don’t lean on gas, the answer might be worse,” said Jesse Noffsinger, a partner at the consulting firm McKinsey & Co.
Chevron and Engine No. 1 said their plants could be built in several regions. They have ruled out the East Coast because of infrastructure constraints and feedback from potential customers.
The companies also looked for sites able to accommodate the capturing and sequestering of carbon dioxide emissions, James said.
The companies don’t plan to incorporate that technology or renewable energy at the outset, however.
"We’re very confident that over time, as the policy environment clarifies itself, as we make good progress on technology development, that some of these other alternatives will be part of it,” Wirth said
