Top Trump advisor Elon Musk is reportedly less than impressed with a newly launched firm called The Stargate Project, which plans to pickle the US in new data centers over the next four years. Perhaps it’s just as well that the $500 billion Stargate construction plan proceeds more slowly than anticipated. A delay will provide grid managers with some much-needed breathing room to manage the ballooning demand for electricity in the US. Given enough time, emerging technology solutions for data centers will come into play as well.

The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory is among those forecasting stormy weather unless something is done about the energy-sucking habits of data centers. “By some estimates, data center energy demands are projected to consume as much as 9% of US annual electricity generation by the year 2030,” NREL notes.

Tina Casey