Exxon Announces Corporate Roadmap to 2030 and Beyond...

What Happened

Yesterday, energy giant Exxon Mobil (XOM) announced its Corporate Plan to 2030.

It included a future project to supply electrical power directly to data centers for the first time in the company’s history. Currently there are over 5,300 data centers in the United States which currently receive their electricity from the power grid. 

According to Rebecca Elliot of the New York Times, Exxon plans to build a large natural gas plant. It would supply power exclusively to an unspecified number of data centers, meaning the plant would not be connected to the power grid.

Though Exxon did not say when the plant might open, company spokesmen did say they have already purchased land and expect to have an operational facility within the next five years…

Why it Matters

Speaking to the New York Times, Exxon Mobil’s head of Low Carbon Solutions, Dan Ammann said, ‘We’re being driven by the market demand here. It’s low carbon, it’s available on an accelerated timetable and it avoids all the grid interconnection challenges.’

Due to the existing federal regulatory process, connecting a new power plant to the grid can take years. The proposed Exxon facility to power data centers alone wouldn’t have to go through the same regulatory process, meaning they could begin operations faster than grid-connected plants.

Data centers, which are crucial for a growing number of artificial intelligence applications, are expected to fuel a substantial rise in energy demand in the next decade in the United States.

According to Barclay’s Research, ‘data centers account for 3.5% of US electricity consumption today, and data center electricity use could be above 5.5% in 2027 and more than 9% by 2030.’

With the power grid already strained and consumer energy demands expected to grow over the same time period, creating stand-alone electrical power sources for data centers could prove to be a practical solution. 

The plan for a natural-gas plant to power data centers isn’t Exxon’s first foray into this area. Exxon Mobil has also unveiled plans to create a new suite of data center immersion cooling fluids.

Alistair Westwood, a global marketing manager at ExxonMobil Product Solutions, emphasized the pivotal role of these fluids in balancing heat transfer, flashpoint, and materials compatibility to enhance data center component performance.

How it Affects You

The immense computing power required to run artificial intelligence applications such as large language models will continue to place growing demands on data centers. In turn, this will require more electrical power to function.

Exxon’s plans to build a new natural gas plant to power data centers are credible. The company already operates several similar plants in Louisiana, Illinois, and Texas to support Exxon’s own operations.

That a heavyweight in the energy industry like Exxon thinks building data centers for their own power plants is a worthy investment signals a huge potential growth of both artificial intelligence and the infrastructure used to support it.