Big Tech Drives Big Demand

February 10, 2025

Build, baby, build is here, and it’s starting with the tech world. 

In one of his first major actions—literally one day after his inauguration—President Trump announced an ambitious plan to put the United States at the forefront of the impending artificial intelligence boom. Called the Stargate AI Project, the initiative sounds more like something out of a science fiction movie than the next big thing in real world technological advances. But, it’s very real, very ambitious, and it’s a decisive indicator of how important affordable, reliable and clean energy security like American natural gas will be for our future. 

Trump’s initiative calls for a jaw-dropping $500 billion private sector investment over four years. For perspective, the entirety of Amazon’s revenue for 2024 was just about $575 billion. That’s just about the annual GDP of Israel, United Arab Emirates or Thailand. According to one of the project partners, OpenAI: “This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world. This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.” 

The proposal has already met with skepticism, most notably from one of the President’s own advisors, Elon Musk. Shortly after the announcement, Musk wrote on his platform X, “They don’t actually have the money.” The projects partners say that is untrue. 

Regardless of whether you meet the Stargate project with Musk-like cynicism or enthusiasm for an ambitious tech future. And, regardless of whether you think the surge of AI and the data centers needed to power it are a good thing or not, the fact is the growth of this technology is inevitable. Data centers are in fact already a key component of many of the services everyday Americans use on the internet. 

These facilities, mostly operated by major tech companies, house the computers and technical infrastructure needed to run services and store the data needed for those services. That means that data centers support artificial intelligence applications as well as many of the activities we engage in everyday—online shopping, streaming movies and television shows, storing photos and documents in the cloud, and so much more. 

The future is going to need an increasing amount of power. 

And, the increasing need for more electricity to power data centers is already a reality. Whether it is Stargate or other projects like it, the need for more energy to power the way we use the internet is going to increase vastly over the next several years. 

AI is more energy-intensive than the traditional way we use the internet. A single AI search requires approximately 2.9 watt-hours of electricity, while a typical Google search consumes only 0.3 watt-hours. That 100 times increase in energy required for searches leads us to the demand for more data centers themselves. According to Goldman Sachs Research, the need for data centers will grow by 165% by 2030. 

And, that increase in the number of data centers means a huge increase in these centers’ need for power. According to energy analyst McKinsey, data centers will double their U.S. electric demands by 2030 — requiring enough electricity to power more than 26 million average homes. That’s almost 18% of the total homes in the U.S.

Data center power demands are adding to the already growing demand created by the electrification we have already seen in manufacturing and the push toward electric vehicles. Bottom line, there is a looming need for more electricity and the energy sources that fuel it. 

Wind and solar energy will not be able to fill the gap.

But, we already face obstacles to meet these future energy needs. The green-at-any-cost push to replace traditional energy sources like natural gas with so-called green resources like wind and solar to produce our electricity has created a less reliable electrical grid prone to blackouts. Numerous U.S. communities have lost out on data centers and the tax revenue and jobs that come along with them because they could not supply ample reliable electricity. 

The fact is increasing our demand for electricity with new technologies AND transitioning our electrical grid to rely more and more on solar and wind energy just won’t cut it. Wind and solar provide less than 15% of our electricity needs now and that electricity is unreliable, not actually clean and subsidized at the expense of American taxpayers. 

If we are going to meet this technological future, we need to invest in electricity fueled by hydrocarbons and other traditional energy sources like nuclear power, but especially affordable, reliable and clean American natural gas. This is a simple reality. (And, to be clear, it is not a compromise on lowering emissions and caring for our environment. The U.S. has already significantly lowered its emissions from electricity BECAUSE of an increased use of natural gas.) 

Build, baby, build isn’t just a slogan. It’s how America gets things done.

There is still uncertainty in how this tech will evolve, illustrated by Chinese company DeepSeek’s recent announcement that it has a model that will support AI with much less energy than predicted by others. The fact remains that artificial intelligence and its power demands are coming. 

A first-step solution would be implementing the ARC Energy Security Act, which is model legislation introduced last year by The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It is designed to bolster energy independence and create an environment where we can invest in and build the infrastructure for energy that gets the job done like natural gas and nuclear.

In a reassuring announcement, oil and gas producer Chevron has already said they will build natural gas power plants next to data centers in order to support the growing demand for power. The power plants will initially not be connected to the electrical grid so that there is no risk in raising costs for household and small business consumers. This is exactly the affordable, reliable and clean solution needed to power this tech boom. 

The future is coming. In fact, the future is here when it comes to AI. We may not know where this technology will lead us or what future advances it will reveal. But, we do know how to make it successful. We’ve always known how to reach for the future by building on what we already know works. And, in this case, what will work is traditional and reliable energy like American natural gas.