Google is wrestling with its new role as an energy power player — one that’s thrust the tech giant into the world of arcane electric grid policy while it tries to defray the white-hot backlash against data centers.
For a company that is driving the future of artificial intelligence, the slow pace of tapping into U.S. grids to power its data operations is its most threatening test, Marsden Hanna, Google’s head of energy and sustainability policy, told POLITICO’s Energy podcast.
“The biggest challenge for us, for data center growth, is really grid congestion,” he said. “We have utilities telling us it can be five years, sometimes ten years, if you want to take grid-connected service.”
The tech industry’s multi-trillion dollar artificial intelligence buildout has put Google in the center of political fights over rising energy costs, climate change and the acceleration of new technologies that promise to lift economies while threatening virtual mayhem.
