Dec. 11—Exxon Mobil is "well along" in a plan to build its first commercial power plant, fueled by natural gas, to directly supply electricity to data centers, the company announced Dec. 11.
It's a new venture for the Spring-based oil and gas giant, which has in previous years defied pressure to get into the electricity business as other oil majors experimented with — and then moved away from — renewable energy.
Exxon plans to outfit the power plant with technology to capture and store more than 90% of its emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by the burning of fossil fuels. The buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the primary driver of climate change.
In an email statement, Dan Ammann, Exxon's president of its low carbon businesses, said the company has secured sites for the power plant project near its network of carbon dioxide pipelines. Exxon has CO2 pipelines running along the Gulf Coast in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi as well as in Montana and Wyoming.
The company has targeted its past carbon capture ambitions close to its home base, such as in October when Exxon announced its lease of more than 271,000 acres off the Texas coast in the Gulf of Mexico to store carbon dioxide.
Exxon has started the engineering and design work to build a power plant of 1.5 gigawatts, Ammann said. That's enough electricity to power up to 375,000 Texas homes on the hottest days.
"This involves molecules and electrons, but what is truly innovative here is that we will be capturing over 90% of carbon emissions from the gas plant and permanently storing those molecules," Ammann said.
Power for data centers
The technology to capture carbon emissions is still relatively unproven and expensive, especially when applied to power generation. Petra Nova, a Houston-area carbon capture facility and the only one attached to a power plant in the United States, restarted operations last year after numerous outages and unfavorable economics shut it down in 2020.
But leading technology companies are desperate for more electricity to power their data centers as they compete to develop artificial intelligence, spurring them to support nascent energy technologies. Data centers currently consume 6% to 8% of electricity generated in the country annually, percentages that could nearly double by 2030, according to a recent Deloitte analysis.
Exxon is aiming to begin operating its planned gas-fired power plant within five years, according to The New York Times, which earlier reported on the project. That's quicker than the likely timelines needed to build new nuclear reactors and advanced geothermal projects, which technology companies have also made deals for to meet their electricity needs.
No connection to the grid
Exxon's planned gas plant would have no reliance on or connection to the power grid, which means "it can be installed at a pace that other alternatives, including U.S. nuclear power, cannot match," according to the company's announcement.
"There are very few opportunities in the short term to power those data centers and do it in a way that at the same time minimizes, if not completely eliminates, the emissions," Exxon CEO Darren Woods told the New York Times.
Exxon declined to share the projected cost of its gas-fired plant project, though Ammann told the New York Times the electricity produced from the plant would be a "premium product."
Technology companies have shown a willingness to pay higher prices for electricity if that electricity can be generated with low-carbon emissions and be provided around-the-clock.
That's because data centers largely operate 2 4/7, which means technology companies can't solely rely on solar and wind resources on cloudy or windless days, even though the sector is still the leading buyer for renewable energy. Thus, the AI buildout is expected to boost natural gas power generation, which could jeopardize technology companies' pledges to reduce emissions.
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