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.
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.
…… (THE ARTICLE WAS SHORTENED IIN LENGTH HERE TO SKIP TO EOLIAN’S PIECE, READ MORE AT THE WASHINGTON POST)
The Omaha Public Power District ruled in April that the developer, Eolian, could not connect to the grid batteries it plans to install on an industrial lot near Omaha’s coal-fired plant. The power company said private companies are prohibited from hooking up such projects because Nebraska is a “public power” state where infrastructure must be community owned.
Eolian officials, after working on their plan for six years, say they were blindsided by the decision. They argue Nebraska law has specific exemptions allowing the purchase of clean energy from private firms.
“Given the large and growing data center footprint in Omaha, it is confounding that the local utility would intentionally impede the addition of multi-hour battery energy storage resources,” said Eolian CEO Aaron Zubaty. The utility said in a statement that the exceptions are limited and do not allow for “a privately owned, stand-alone battery storage facility.” Eolian and the utility will now make their case to the Nebraska Power Review Board, which has authority to approve the project.