Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

DAVID BLACKMON: Innovative Solutions Like This One Will Drive Natural Gas Demand For Decades

A gasoline trunk with pumps. By Rennett Stowe from USA - Gasoline Truck, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26302692

The dramatic expansion of the number and scale of planned datacenter projects across the United States has generated a great deal of news over the last year. The central question in many of those stories centers around the power needs of these projects, and how the power will be generated.

Early developers hyped their preference to use electricity generated by wind and/or solar to power their projects but found the 99.999% datacenter uptime requirements can’t be met by these intermittent power sources, even when backed up by stationary batteries.

With new nuclear projects facing permitting times of 10-15 years and coal being crowded out by emissions regulations, more recent speculation has centered heavily on natural gas as being the fuel of choice for developers whose projects won’t be interconnected into a regional power grid. Natural gas generation is cheaper and faster to build than nuclear, and, while anti-fossil fuel activists complain that gas still comes with emissions, it presents a far cleaner alternative to coal.

In Wyoming, a group of three companies said this week they’ve agreed to a joint project that also satisfies the emissions critics. In a release dated May 6, data center developer Prometheus Hyperscale, Wyoming’s largest gas producer PureWest Energy, and carbon capture and storage (CCS) developer Frontier Carbon Solutions, LLC, rolled out what they call “a first-of-its-kind partnership focused on driving innovation and sustainability while contributing to Wyoming’s long-term economic growth.”

In simple terms, the plan goes like this:

• Prometheus will permit and build the datacenter;
• PureWest will produce and supply the natural gas to a nearby power plant operated by an independent power provider from its Wyoming production portfolio, which it boasts maintains “industry leading emissions performance with a rigorous Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MMRV) program and ISO 14067 verification;”
• Frontier will capture biogenic carbon dioxide from across the Mountain West and sequester it in underground formations in Southwestern Wyoming; and
• Frontier will sell traceable carbon removal credits to Prometheus.

Through entering into these various agreements, a datacenter sporting a net-zero emissions profile is created. This not only embellishes the clean energy scorecards for the three companies involved in the partnership, but also for customers who purchase the computing power from the datacenter, as well as the operators of processing plants and transportation systems which move both the natural gas and the carbon dioxide.

“PureWest’s goal to be the region’s energy supplier of choice is rooted in innovation and cutting-edge technology, and today’s exciting announcement reflects our ongoing mission and progress,” said Ty Harrison, President and CFO of PureWest said in a release. “We’re proud to partner with Prometheus and Frontier because this project affirms the critical role that verified low-carbon natural gas will play in sustainably meeting the growing energy needs of AI and its related infrastructure. PureWest is committed to ensuring Wyoming continues to be a leader in delivering scalable energy and decarbonization solutions for the data-driven future of the United States.”

While the joint venture is fairly complex with a number of moving parts, it actually represents a pretty ingenious solution. Once up and running, the partners end up creating a major datacenter with the same carbon footprint as one powered by wind or solar would have, but which will enjoy the added benefit of being able to meet its 99.999% uptime requirements.

But it’s more than that. As the Trump administration’s energy and climate regulatory agenda moves ahead to consolidation, these companies will also avoid running into the reality of so many U.S. wind and solar projects becoming financially unsustainable when the endless stream of rising subsidies their business models require are inevitably reduced or cut off entirely.

As the religious global fervor driven by climate alarmism continues its inevitable fade, producers of American natural gas like PureWest will find themselves presented with a wide array of innovative opportunities like this one. Those opportunities will be driven by customers and potential partners who need the combination of abundance, affordability, reliability, speed of development and low emissions profile that only natural gas is capable of providing.

Anyone who still believes that oil and gas is a dying industry is in for a very rude awakening.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.