Keeping the lights on
On nuclear power, data centers, and a promise to buy nuclear energy for longer than a lot of people have been alive
Iowa’s mothballed nuclear power plant is coming back online under an agreement between NextEra Energy (current majority owner of the plant) and Google. It’s an ambitious deal, under which Google is getting a 25-year deal to buy the electricity. It gives some scale of Google’s current outlook to see that they’re willing to agree now to start getting power no sooner than three years from now. It’s no small matter to make a deal that won’t even begin to produce outputs until the next President is in office.
■ It’s something else still to consider that the arrangement lasts for 25 years into the future. On one hand, it’s refreshing to imagine that Google is strategically planning a quarter-century or more in advance.
■ On the other hand, it’s amusing to imagine that Google executives are willing to make plans that far into the future. Google’s first and most modest public product (its search engine) is barely 25 itself.
■ It’s quite a lot to say that a company is willing to do something with such a long time horizon -- especially when it’s obviously being done to fill a spike in energy demand tied to a computing trend that has only had a short-term time in the spotlight. It might be wondered: How often is a similar time horizon used in families? Is the 30-year mortgage the only time anyone agrees to stick with an investment for a quarter of a century or more?
