Exxon's AI Power Play Aims to Beat Nuclear
The oil major is betting Big Tech’s need for speed will open up a bigger market for gas-fired plants.
Race for power.
Photographer: Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg
To most of us, a power plant is a source of electricity. To Exxon Mobil Corp., it’s a machine that converts natural gas into money. And this is a propitious time for doing that.
Exxon announced this week that it is getting into the electricity game — sort of. Data centers, particularly those developing artificial intelligence tools, are projected to need significant amounts of electricity. Preferably, this would be carbon free but, if that isn’t available right now, they will use whatever is. Enter Exxon, which proposes supplying them with electricity from a gas-fired plant but also capturing most of the greenhouse gas emissions pumped out.