AI Datacenters in US Turn to Coal Amid Rising Energy Demand

What Happened

According to a report from Tom’s Hardware, American AI datacenters are not primarily powered by coal, but surging natural gas prices have caused some facilities to briefly rely on coal to handle demand surges. The rapid growth in AI, machine learning, and large language model workloads has driven energy consumption much higher at these data centers. While operators continue to emphasize renewable energy for their long-term sustainability goals, high gas prices and record electricity demands have made coal plants an emergency fallback to stabilize the grid in certain regions.

Why It Matters

The transition of AI datacenters to greener power sources is complicated by real-world energy pricing and supply constraints. Coal has a significant carbon footprint, so its continued use, even temporarily, challenges sustainability ambitions as AI adoption accelerates. Read more in our AI News Hub