By Forrest Crellin
PARIS (Reuters) -A few of Europe’s aging coal and gas fired nuclear power plant can look forward to a more high-tech future as huge tech players, such as Microsoft and Amazon, look for to repurpose them as data centres, with prefabricated accessibility to power and water.
Companies such as France’s Engie, Germany’s RWE, and Italy’s Enel are seeking to take advantage of a rise in AI-driven power need by converting old power sites into data centres and safeguarding lucrative long-lasting power supply handle their operators.
The data centre alternative provides the energies a way to balance out the hefty prices of closing down ageing nuclear power plant in addition to potentially financing future renewable advancements.
Tech companies see these sites as a fast way to safeguard power grid connections and water cooling centers, two big traffic jams in the AI industry.
“You have all the items that collaborate like … water facilities and heat healing,” claimed Bobby Hollis, vice president for power at Microsoft.
Lindsay McQuade, EMEA energy director at Amazon, stated she anticipated allowing for information centres to move faster at old sites, where a big portion of framework was already in position.
Utilities can either rent the land or build and operate the centres themselves, safeguarding long-term power agreements with tech companies, he stated.
The deals offer much more than just the sale of unused land as they include possibilities for steady, high-margin profits, said Simon Stanton, head of International Partnerships and Transactions at RWE.
“It’s even more about the long-term partnership, the business relationship that you get over time that allows you to de-risk and finance your framework financial investments,” Stanton claimed.
Most of EU’s and Britain’s 153 hard coal and lignite plants are readied to nearby 2038 to meet environment targets, joining the 190 plants that have actually shut since 2005, based on information from NGO Beyond Fossil Fuels, which projects to increase closure of coal-fired power stations.
BRAND-NEW REVENUE STREAMS
The economics of information centre deals can be compelling for the energies, which can negotiate a long-lasting power supply agreement to underwrite future renewable growths.
Technology firms are paying costs of approximately 20 euros per megawatt-hour for low-carbon power, claimed Gregory LeBourg, ecological program supervisor at French information centre operator OVH.
Information centre power demands can be anywhere from a pair hundred megawatts to a gigawatt or even more. So the yearly ‘green premium’ – the added price spent for low-carbon power – in addition to a base market price could possibly convert right into a long-lasting contract worth hundreds of millions or perhaps billions of euros, based on Reuters’ computations.
