Major companies, including Meta, Google, and Amazon, signed a pledge committing to tripling the world’s nuclear power by 2050, Innovation News Network reported.
Tech giants and powerful corporations such as Dow, Core Power, Occidental, and Siemens Energy also signed the pledge. Why are these big businesses backing nuclear energy? It’s a reliable power source for continuous, low-carbon energy. This energy can support data centers’ 24/7 needs.
According to Sustainability Magazine, data centers consume 1% of the world’s energy output. Many data centers are owned and operated by these companies. As artificial intelligence grows, this energy consumption will increase substantially. The International Energy Agency predicts data centers will consume 4% of all energy by 2026.
Nuclear energy is not technically renewable like wind, solar, and hydropower, but it’s more sustainable than fossil fuels. Nuclear energy is nonrenewable because it requires uranium, a finite resource. However, nuclear energy is cleaner energy overall. It doesn’t emit greenhouse gases, which warm the planet and accelerate the planet’s overheating.
Many large companies are likely backing nuclear power to ensure their data centers don’t miss a beat. Nevertheless, it’s a positive shift for the planet compared to some of the alternatives. If businesses such as Google and Amazon decrease fossil fuel use and manage nuclear safely, it will reduce pollution and cool the planet.
Sama Bilbao y Leon, director general of the World Nuclear Association, explained, “This is the only way we’ll deliver the abundant firm clean energy required to power growth and innovation in technology, a host of other industries and the entire economy.”
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On the other hand, Ed Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, published an article last year titled “Five Things the ‘Nuclear Bros’ Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors,” in which he outlined reasons that renewable energy and larger nuclear reactors are smarter and safer investments than the small “modular” ones favored by tech companies.
Laurent Odeh, chief commercial officer at Urenco, highlighted how the path toward a cooler planet requires a dependable alternative to oil and gas, saying, “It will be a lot harder to address environmental concerns while facilitating economic development in the world without the reliable, 24/7 baseload power nuclear energy provides.”
Odeh stated that this pledge support is a “sign for governments to enable new nuclear projects so we can accelerate construction and meet the energy needs of both industry and the public.”
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