Chevron announced plans Wednesday to build a massive natural gas plant in West Texas to power data center facilities.
The move is part of Chevron’s plan to build multiple gas plants that bypass the electricity grid and feed directly into data centers. Jeff Gustavson, vice president of lower carbon energies for Chevron, said the first plant is expected to generate at least 2.5 gigawatts of power and could be expanded to 5 GW — enough energy to power 1.25 million homes.
“This is a fast-growing space,” Gustavson said of data center power demand. “Demand is far exceeding supply for power in the U.S. There are repercussions of that across the country.”
Chevron’s announcement comes as electricity demand across the country is forecast to spike in coming years largely due to the artificial intelligence boom. S&P Global analysts estimate that energy-intensive data centers across the U.S. will require 22 percent more power from the grid by the end of 2025 than the previous year, and will need three times as much by 2030.
