… and poisoning us with natural gas. The only saving grace is that there is a 3 or 4 year backlog in buying a gas turbine.
intercst
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Natural gas is cheap and abundant. They say we have a supply that will last for decades. And its clean compared to coal.
The future is still green energy. Wind, solar, geothermal, and I think wave and nuclear. We have many green energy resources that have not been developed. No doubt it will take years to tap them. But it is likely they will be developed before we run out of natural gas.
Meanwhile methods to deal with intermittency remain to be perfected. Batteries look promising but will they be lithium batteries? Also compressed air underground has great potential where we salt domes or caves in the limestone.
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Cashing in on the turbine shortage, Boom Aircraft is selling the uncertified jet engine for their supersonic airliner to data centers as a gas turbine.
intercst
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And what is lead time for delivery on a Boom Supersonic? Less than 3 yrs. They too are probably sold out for years. They must be expanding production capacity. How long will that take?
It looks like about 2 years and they’ve only announced one order for multiple turbines..
intercst
So, why are tech giants going with nat gas? As the NYT article finally mentions after 30+ paragraphs:
Companies are gravitating to gas because it can theoretically generate electricity all day, unlike the wind or sun.
And why off-grid? Because of shorter wait times.
DB2
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They tell us grid connections often delay projects. Especially for large requirement far from generator. Also wind and solar are often away from traditional power sources requiring new grid lines.
Generation close to data center avoids this hassle. Especially when gas pipeline is easier to build than grid connection.
Own power plant is less reliable than grid. So backup power as from diesel generators becomes more essential.
Note that pipelines are usually buried and out of sight. Not many objections. Some think grid lines are ugly and some still cite electric field induced health issues. Grid has more opposition.
The sound coming from Musk and other “self generating plants” is ruining property values for anyone nearby. They didn’t understand this when they approved. (They might have anyway, because money talks. Shouts, actually.)
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/11/data-centers-ai-electricity-virginia-00815219
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/us/elon-musk-xai-mississippi.html
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