This article was produced by Capital & Main. It is published here with permission.

Surging electricity demand from data centers across the U.S. is outpacing the supply of new clean energy sources, helping to sustain the fossil fuel industry. It’s a dynamic at play in California, where renewable energy is limited and expensive while power from existing natural gas plants is available and cheap.

Home to Silicon Valley, California now has nearly 300 data centers, many of which require around-the-clock power to run pre-trained artificial intelligence inference models. More are planned, and their combined power needs could be substantial. So could their pollution output, which comes from high electricity use and on-site diesel generators.

By 2030, California’s data centers could consume the

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