Key Takeaways

  • Data centers significantly increase demand for natural gas due to their high energy consumption.
  • Experts indicate that the U.S. has at least a century’s worth of natural gas supply accessible through fracking.
  • Nuclear power is highlighted as a more efficient energy source compared to solar, needing less land for production.
  • The Tennessee Valley Authority views natural gas and nuclear as the future backbone of their power supply.
  • Data centers create fewer sustained jobs compared to traditional manufacturing, leading to potential energy allocation challenges.

Data centers gulp massive amounts of power, and that insatiable thirst is driving new production and distribution of natural gas supply, experts said at a legislative hearing Monday.

A special House subcommittee heard from industry insiders involved in the sourcing and supply of the finite fossil fuel.

“The need for electricity is growing tremendously, and natural gas is a large component of that,” said Josh Browning, a vice president with Williams Companies, Inc., which has 33,000 miles of gas pipeline in two dozen states, with a transcontinental line bisecting Georgia.

Data centers are a huge driver, but the electrification of transportation and heating are also pushing demand for natural gas, Browning said.

Power plants burn the gas to create electricity, but that is far less efficient than consuming it directly, for instance with a gas stove or a water heater, said Scott Tolleson of the Municipal Gas Authority of Georgia. Electrical conversion wastes two-thirds of the energy in natural gas, he said.

Meanwhile, the United States has at least a century’s worth of natural gas supply in the ground, accessible by techniques such as fracking, Tolleson said.

That worried Rep. Don Parson’s, R-Marietta, chairman of the House committee on Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications.

“Well, 100 years that wouldn’t get it,” he said. “All this investment and relying on natural gas, I mean, if it’s only a hundred … .”

Tolleson reiterated that the estimate is a minimum, noting potential reserves in Georgia. (He showed a slide that indicated natural gas could be locked in rock under the northwest and southwest corners of the state.)

“I wouldn’t say only a hundred years,” he said. “I’d say at least a hundred years.”

Scott Hunnewell offered a potentially limitless energy supply. He is vice president of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s new nuclear power program. He showed a slide indicating that renewable energy consumes far more land for each megawatt of power produced. A nuclear plant is hundreds of times more efficient in that sense than solar power, his slide indicated.

To replace the energy that the United States consumes in the form of fossil fuels, one would have to cover all of Tennessee with solar panels, Hunnewell said. “No roads, no rivers, no trees, nothing. Just solar panels.”

A fundamental weakness for solar is the intermittent nature of its source: the sun. To maintain consistent supply from a state’s worth of solar panels, one would need way more land, Hunnewell added.

“You’d have to cover about eight times the size of the state of Tennessee with batteries and solar panels,” he said. “And even then, that would get you about five days. If the sun didn’t shine on that sixth day, you’d have no power.”

The TVA is not building more coal plants or hydroelectric facilities, Hunnewell said. Solar and wind power will have a role, he said, but nuclear and natural gas will be the “backbone” of the authority’s future power supply. (His slide indicated that nuclear power production is 58 times more land efficient than natural gas production.)

These industry insiders said data centers will be driving a lot of future demand.

A mission of the quasi-governmental TVA is to produce the power needed for economic prosperity. Data centers may produce an initial flurry of jobs during construction, Hunnewell said, but each facility might produce around 20 sustained jobs thereafter — far fewer than a traditional manufacturing or industrial site that consumes a lot of power.

The TVA has not had to turn away customers, but the “signals” for energy consumption by “AI data centers” suggest that could happen, he said. “We’ll say ‘no’ to a data center before we will some industrial or manufacturing facility. We would much rather have an industry in there that is hiring 600 people” on a continuous basis, he said.

Tolleson, of the Municipal Gas Authority, said a data center can consume as much power each day as 350,000 hot water heaters, and new centers are difficult to anticipate and accommodate.

“When a data center comes in and says, ‘I want as much gas as you’ve ever seen in one setting, we aren’t planning for that,'” he said.

This article is available through a partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Association’s nonprofit, tax-exempt Educational Foundation.

Ty Tagami | Capitol Beat

Ty Tagami is a staff writer for Capitol Beat News Service. He is a journalist with over 20 years experience.