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A utility promised to stop burning coal. Then Google and Meta came to town.
POWER GRAB
A utility promised to stop burning coal. Then Google and Meta came to town.
An energy crunch forces continued coal burning in a low-income area as data centers strain the regional power supply.
“A promise was made, and then they broke it,” said Cheryl Weston, who has lived for five decades in Omaha's largely minority neighborhood of North Omaha. The North Omaha Station stands in the background. (Misty Prochaska for The Washington Post)
By Evan Halper
October 12, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT
OMAHA — Residents in the low-income, largely minority neighborhood of North Omaha celebrated when they learned a 1950s-era power plant nearby would finally stop burning coal. The community has some of the region’s worst air pollution and high rates of asthma.
But when the 2023 deadline to rid that plant of coal arrived, the power company that owns it balked. Eliminating toxic emissions conflicted with a competing priority: serving massive, power-hungry Meta and Google data centers the utility helped recruit to the region before it secured enough new energy to meet the extra demand.
The fast-growing data centers — which provide computing power for artificial intelligence — are driving explosive growth in the area’s energy use. Electricity demand in Omaha has increased so much overall, according to the Omaha Public Power District, that permanently switching off the two coal-burning generators at its North Omaha plant could buckle the area’s electricity system.
{snip}
By Evan Halper
Evan Halper is a business reporter for The Washington Post, covering the energy transition. His work focuses on the tensions between energy demands and decarbonizing the economy. He came to The Post from the Los Angeles Times, where he spent two decades, most recently covering domestic policy and presidential politics from its Washington bureau.follow on X @evanhalper
A utility promised to stop burning coal. Then Google and Meta came to town.
An energy crunch forces continued coal burning in a low-income area as data centers strain the regional power supply.
“A promise was made, and then they broke it,” said Cheryl Weston, who has lived for five decades in Omaha's largely minority neighborhood of North Omaha. The North Omaha Station stands in the background. (Misty Prochaska for The Washington Post)
By Evan Halper
October 12, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT
OMAHA — Residents in the low-income, largely minority neighborhood of North Omaha celebrated when they learned a 1950s-era power plant nearby would finally stop burning coal. The community has some of the region’s worst air pollution and high rates of asthma.
But when the 2023 deadline to rid that plant of coal arrived, the power company that owns it balked. Eliminating toxic emissions conflicted with a competing priority: serving massive, power-hungry Meta and Google data centers the utility helped recruit to the region before it secured enough new energy to meet the extra demand.
The fast-growing data centers — which provide computing power for artificial intelligence — are driving explosive growth in the area’s energy use. Electricity demand in Omaha has increased so much overall, according to the Omaha Public Power District, that permanently switching off the two coal-burning generators at its North Omaha plant could buckle the area’s electricity system.
{snip}
About this story
Andrew Ba Tran contributed to this report. Photo editing by Haley Hamblin. Design by Allison Mann. Design editing by Betty Chavarria. Editing by Christopher Rowland and Sandhya Somashekhar. Project editing by KC Schaper. Copy editing by Sue Doyle.
By Evan Halper
Evan Halper is a business reporter for The Washington Post, covering the energy transition. His work focuses on the tensions between energy demands and decarbonizing the economy. He came to The Post from the Los Angeles Times, where he spent two decades, most recently covering domestic policy and presidential politics from its Washington bureau.follow on X @evanhalper
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