Developers plan to convert the closed Homer City coal plant into the Homer City Energy Campus, an AI data center complex powered by the largest natural gas-fired power plant, targeting 2027 operation. U.S. electricity demand could rise up to 60% by 2050 to power AI workloads, creating urgency to add generation. Existing high-voltage grid interconnections at retired coal sites allow new projects to bypass long connection queues and accelerate deployment for gas, wind, solar, geothermal, or advanced nuclear. Switching from coal to gas reduces emissions roughly 60%, while wind and solar are emission-free. Coal still drives over half of grid carbon emissions.
Now, in a whirlwind turnaround, many of them are being revived to fuel the AI era. Earlier this year, developers announced they would take the coal plant's corpse-and its invaluable grid interconnections-and resurrect it into the Homer City Energy Campus, a sprawling AI data center complex powered by the largest natural gas-fired power plant in the country, opening on a fast-tracked timeline in 2027.
With U.S. electricity demand projected to surge by as much as 60% through 2050 to fuel the AI boom-initiating a race against time to build sufficient power generation-the strong old bones of closed or retiring coal plants offer a shortcut to get new power projects online much more quickly. They can skip the two-year queue for high-voltage grid connections-regardless of whether these projects are for gas, wind, solar, geothermal, or even new-age nuclear.
"Our grid isn't short on opportunity - it's short on time," said Carson Kearl, Enverus senior analyst for energy and AI. "These grid interconnections are up for grabs for new power projects when these coal plants roll off. "The No. 1 priority for Big Tech has changed to [speed] to energy, and this is the fastest way to go in a lot of cases," Kearl told Fortune.
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