The emergence of cloud computing in the early 2000s and generative artificial technology in the 2020s has exponentially increased the U.S. technology industry’s demand for electricity.
In the coming decades, the massive data centers that power new technology will need far more energy than they currently consume.
Data centers in the United States are poised to consume more than 30 times more power in 2035 than they do currently, and government officials and tech giants are betting big on a once-vilified power source: nuclear energy.
New federal directives and billions of dollars in corporate investment are aimed at rapidly bringing next-generation nuclear reactors online while reshaping the U.S. energy mix and rewriting its regulations.
Data Center Demand
Since the launch of Amazon Web Services in 2006, cloud computing and storage solutions have revolutionized the way the world works, learns, and plays. But the rapid growth of the data centers that run the services is creating an incredible demand for electricity.
In an April report, a team of authors at Deloitte, led by Executive Director Kate Hardin, said U.S. data centers currently use about 33 gigawatts (GW) of power annually (enough to power about 27.5 million U.S. homes). That demand is projected to grow to 176 GW by 2035, according to the report.
Better get started, Go Nuclear !!! ?