Here’s an unsurprising piece of news: Data centers are continuing to struggle getting enough electricity. And in an equally predictable follow-up: this issue is only getting worse due to the constant rise in demand being brought forward mostly because of AI.
Data center operators around the world are scrambling to search for more electricity and this means it’s once again time for new approaches and innovations. Unfortunately, energy innovations can’t happen that fast and on the same scale as digital. In IT it may be normal to have a new generation of chips every year and sometimes more than double their transistors within two years. In the energy sector, it takes years and years even for small developments.
Let’s take batteries as an example. A modern smartphone is now far more powerful and capable than supercomputers from a few decades ago. A single phone possesses more computing power than what NASA first used to land on the Moon. And these devices can actually be even more powerful but are limited due to several factors. One of them is their battery. It remains the “oldest” piece of technology in a smartphone and the “weakest link”. Companies around the world have been working on multiple new generations of batteries, but again we circle back to what we said earlier – it takes years until a new energy technology can be ready for the mass market.
Powering a smartphone is one thing, but what about a massive data center? Well, batteries, no matter how big they are, can’t handle this task. In fact even big power plants are starting to struggle. And adding new sustainable energy sources to the grid is happening at a pace which can’t match the rise of the power demands by both data centers, other businesses, and residents. So operators are opening up to many more opportunities in energy than what meets the eye. This leads us to the latest trend – hybrid power.
It’s a catchy word, mostly used because these days it’s trendy to call everything a “hybrid”. In reality it doesn’t mean some new type of energy source which will change the world. Sadly, it’s just a term for something much simpler. Hybrid power is simply mixing and matching various power sources to feed electricity into a data center. This approach allows each data center to evaluate all of the energy sources it has within a reasonable distance around and see which of them can be teamed together to provide 24/7 power supply.
“The data center boom requires closer collaboration between large data center owners and developers, utilities, government, and other stakeholders to ensure that we can power the needs of AI while maintaining reliable, affordable power to all customers,” says David Porter, Vice President of Electrification and Sustainable Energy Strategy at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to DataCenterKnowledge.
The insatiable hunger
According to EPRI, data centers in the US alone will demand up to 9% of the country’s total power by 2030. Currently, they need only about 2%, and while up to recently the idea of a large data center was a facility needing about 150MW, now the requests are for 500MW and even beyond 1GW, says Siemens Energy which designs energy systems. That’s an incredibly massive amount of power. To put it into perspective, 1GW of electricity is enough to power around 876 000 households for a year, according to the Carbon Collective Investment.
And Gigawatt data centers are being constructed a lot faster than 876 000 homes, that’s for sure. Sometimes, they can be multiple within the same region. The hunger for computing power is so big, that right now data center construction is so rapid, it takes precedence over cost in many cases, says Joshua Brooks, a sustainable energy systems designer at Siemens Energy.
Of course, there are many factors which go into consideration for the construction of a data center. When it comes to energy supply, there are several important things to take into account. For example, the cost, the availability of backup power, grid availability and condition, etc. It’s also important to consider space constraints, permits, the possibility for on-site energy production and even what do the locals think about the project. All of this has one main goal – to ensure reliable and uninterrupted power supply.
All of this has to happen within given parameters and limitations. Even if we are talking about a massive 1GW hyperscale data center, that project is still built within very confined and strict parameters, and objectives will vary a lot. Some facilities will have a very limited space to build on-site generators. Others will want to go for maximum efficiency or as small of a carbon footprint as possible. There will be many variables which will require different approaches and can raise costs quite a bit. “You are solving a mathematical optimization problem, and the solution varies based on differing priorities,” said Brooks.
It’s a complex journey ahead
Naturally, data center operators have to carefully choose what mix of hybrid energy to employ for their facilities. And many operators are now using modeling to try various approaches and combinations and see which one of them would be the best fit. It’s also a way to forecast future growth and needs accordingly. Especially since there’s no ideal solution and every facility has to be tailored for the specific site and requirements.
So, operators are learning fast that they need to be flexible. Brooks gives an example with a 500MW data center in the western US. The operator has invested in wind power but also wants to achieve 99.99% availability. So, the company used modeling to explore different options and see which mix of energy sources will actually be most suitable. The operator didn’t shy away from several options and found that the cheapest energy, which in this case was natural gas, was also with the highest carbon footprint. And the company has a requirement to be sustainable, so it explored another option – to use gas turbines, but run them with hydrogen instead along with a mix of green energy coming from wind, solar and even batteries. Thus achieved a carbon-free energy supply, but it would drive the price from $40.1 per MWh to $93.9 per MWh. So, again thanks to modeling, the operator found the perfect mix – 75% wind power and the rest simply purchased from the regular grid. This brings the price down to just $43.8 per MWh but also drives down the carbon dioxide by 65% compared to the cheapest option.
And just to see if the costs can be interpolated to a 1GW data center, they ran the modeling again. But they found out that if that data center is powered entirely by hydrogen, the price would be $78.5 per MWh. If you go just for natural gas, the costs is $42.9 per MWh, but the carbon dioxide intensity will be a lot more. So, in this case, the best solution was the most complex hybrid system using wind, solar, and batteries. This way, the data center can switch between different energy providers as needed and achieve a maximum balance in the price and carbon footprint while ensuring stable energy supply at all times.
The big players are going nuclear
So, hyperscale data centers will require an even more specific approach. And prices will be much higher as the demand is also far bigger. Several of the biggest names in the game are now openly supporting more nuclear power being brought into the grid. In mid-March 2025, Google, Amazon and Meta joined a global coalition of large-scale energy users at the CERAWeek 2025 conference in Houston, Texas. They all signed a pledge to support at least tripling the world’s nuclear capacity by 2050. That’s at least three times more nuclear energy than today in just 25 years.
“Thank you for joining our large energy users pledge and supporting the ambition to triple nuclear energy by 2050. This is not the end; it is just the beginning. We know that many other large energy users are considering joining the pledge in the future. That is our hope and our invitation – If you would like to be part of this group, please join us,” Sama Bilbao y León, Director General of the World Nuclear Association, said quoted by DataCenterDynamics.
The World Nuclear Association (WNA) says that currently, nuclear power provides about 9% of the total global electricity from about 440 reactors. There are 70 000MW new nuclear capacity currently being under construction at 65 sites around the world. A further 400 000MW are in planning or proposal stages at more than 400 plants.
“We are proud to sign a pledge in support of tripling nuclear capacity by 2050, as nuclear power will be pivotal in building a reliable, secure, and sustainable energy future. Google will continue to work alongside our partners to accelerate the commercialization of advanced nuclear technologies that can provide the around-the-clock clean energy necessary to meet growing electricity demand around the world,” Lucia Tian, Head of Clean Energy & Decarbonization Technologies at Google, says.
Amazon is also focused on nuclear power. Brandon Oyer, Head of Americas Energy and Water for Amazon Web Services, says: “Accelerating nuclear energy development will be critical to strengthening our nation’s security, meeting future energy demands, and addressing climate change. Amazon supports the World Nuclear Association’s pledge, and is proud to have invested more than $1 billion over the last year in nuclear energy projects and technologies, which is part of our broader Climate Pledge commitment to be net-zero carbon by 2040.”
And Meta joins in. Urvi Parekh, Head of Global Energy at Meta, says: “As global economies expand, the need for a reliable, clean, and resilient energy supply is paramount. Nuclear energy, with its ability to provide continuous power, can help meet this rising demand. We’re excited to join alongside this multi-organizational effort with the Tripling Nuclear Pledge to reiterate our commitment to nuclear energy.”
Is nuclear power green? Of course not. So in a way, it may seem a mistake for the data center industry to focus on it, as it will go against its own sustainability goals. But the industry is at a point where it doesn’t have much of a choice and it needs energy. And it can use its position to foster more careful and sustainable efforts both in the creation of nuclear power and in other green energy projects to offset the carbon footprint.