l
WTI: $85.46.
New wells reporting:
- Thursday, July 23, 2026: 37 for the month, 37 for the quarter, 390 for the year,
- 41545, conf, Oasis, Phoenix 5602 13-17 4B,
- Wednesday, July 22, 2026: 36 for the month, 36 for the quarter, 389 for the year,
- 41544, conf, Oasis, Phoenix 5602 13-17 3B,
- 41383, conf, Oasis, Cyclone 5502 11-17 4B,
- 40702, conf, Devon Energy, Skaar 15-22 XW 1H,
RBN Energy: hyperscalers add carbon capture, renewables and nuclear to offset expanded gas use. Link here. Archived.
Natural gas-fired generation is the undisputed king in the realm of data center development, at least for the near term. Still, hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are taking a variety of steps to mitigate the climate impact of their rapidly expanding gas use. These include capturing and sequestering most of the carbon dioxide (CO2) from their gas plants, developing new renewable energy capacity to offset their gas-fired generation, and ramping up their use of nuclear power. In today’s RBN blog, we conclude our series on this topic with a look at several key examples of these efforts.
This is the third and final blog in a series on how many of the nation’s largest hyperscalers acknowledge that the need to rapidly ramp up the availability of around-the-clock electricity to power their new data centers gives them little choice but to rely heavily on gas-fired generation. As we said in Part 1, the catch is that these gas-dependent plans conflict head-on with the companies’ long-stated “net zero” goals for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, so many of these same AI giants are taking aggressive steps to mitigate the environmental impact of their fast-rising gas use. We also summarized the major hyperscalers’ stated goals for reducing GHGs, the new challenges they face in meeting those goals, and identified the primary approaches that hyperscalers are leaning into.
In Part 2 we focused on a popular tactic, namely the purchase and retirement of low-methane intensity (low-MI) gas certificates — aka MiQ certificates — tied to natural gas that has been independently certified as having very low MI. Today, we will shift to a discussion of three other mitigatory approaches hyperscalers have been taking.
Carbon capture and sequestration
We’ll start with plans by some to employ carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). We noted in Part 1 that Nscale, the developer of the 8-GW Monarch Compute Campus in West Virginia (purple dot in Figure 1 below), is working on a plan to capture CO2 generated by gas-fired power units at the site and utilize 800 million metric tons of already-secured CO2 pore space. (Permit applications for the first Class VI CO2 injection and storage well were filed in 2024; approvals are expected in Q2 2027.)
