The artificial intelligence boom has turbocharged demand for electricity, and everyone who is anyone in the U.S. energy industry wants a piece of the action.
The latest entrant is Chevron, the country’s second-largest oil and gas company, which sees opportunity in building natural gas-fueled power plants that will feed energy directly to data centers.
Chevron is working with Engine No. 1, a San Francisco-based investment firm best known for waging a successful proxy battle against Exxon Mobil in 2021. The companies say they have ordered critical equipment, scouted potential sites and can have their first plant online within three years.
“It’s a chance for us to help meet the moment and address this growing need for reliable and affordable power,” Mike Wirth, Chevron’s chief executive, said in an interview.
Chevron’s announcement is the latest example of just how much the promise of A.I. — a voracious electricity consumer — is reshaping the economy. Oil producers are recalibrating their strategies and leaning into power generation, a business that many of them had previously sworn off because it was much less profitable than drilling and processing oil and gas. Just last month, Exxon said that it, too, wanted to get into the business of selling electricity to data centers.
But in a reminder that the prospects for A.I. data centers and growing electricity demand are highly uncertain, technology and energy stocks tumbled on Monday. Investors were unnerved by the stunning advances in A.I. made by an unfamiliar Chinese start-up, DeepSeek, that said it had made its gains using a modest number of computer chips that consumed relatively little energy. Shares of chip-maker Nvidia tumbled 17 percent and the stock of Constellation Energy, a large power producer, closed down more than 20 percent.
“There’s always the potential for markets to surprise you,” Mr. Wirth said. But he added that being early to market and keeping its costs low would protect Chevron against the possibility that power demand growth falls short of current expectations.
His company is hardly alone.
Many power producers are bulking up, and many are investing in natural gas generating capacity specifically. Constellation, which has a large fleet of nuclear power plants, agreed this month to buy rival Calpine, which owns many natural gas plants, for $16.4 billion. And last week, NextEra Energy said it was planning to build more gas-fueled power plants.
Expectations for how much and how quickly U.S. electricity demand will rise vary widely. What’s clear is that data centers are likely to consume a lot more of the country’s power than they do today. A recent study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that the facilities are poised to use up to 12 percent of U.S. electricity in 2028, up from 4.4 percent in 2023.
Chevron and Engine No. 1 said they have reserved seven gas turbines from GE Vernova, one of the companies created by the breakup of General…
Read More: Chevron Wants to Tap Into A.I. Boom by Selling Electricity to Data Centers
