Artificial Intelligence Industry-Driven Energy Demand and the Importance of Carbon Capture Integration: Ensuring Efficient and Reliable Low Carbon Power Plant Operations
Climate change concerns and significantly escalating demand for Low Carbon Power (LCP) to support growth of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry are pushing for deep decarbonization. The power generation industry is preparing for the anticipated surge in power demand while embracing energy transformation through adoption of renewable energy and LCP generation sources. A decarbonized energy ecosystem based on renewable energy and low-carbon fuel alternatives like hydrogen is only feasible if it can offer proven capacity and reliability to meet the energy market’s supply and demands.
Natural gas fired plants continue to be a reliable, economic and easily accessible power generation option which can provide resilient, dispatchable, low-carbon intensity power when integrated with a CCS. Consequently, Utility and Independent Power Producers (IPP) are planning to deploy multiple gigawatts of natural gas fueled power generation with Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) technology. On the other hand achieving high reliability "five-nines" or 99.999% uptime demanded by AI data centers, requires custom-engineered plants with high levels of redundancy and rigorous maintenance plans. Integrating CCS into gas-fired power generation is a First-Of-A-Kind (FOAK) application, adding complexity and requiring careful planning and engineering to ensure reliability. This presentation will discuss the technical and commercial challenges of integrating CCS into gas-fired facilities by focusing on potential pitfalls to avoid, recognize opportunities and advantages of integrating the CCS into new or existing facilities, and discuss the unique constraints associated with operations of the integrated facility focusing on efficient performance, reliability, and minimizing FOAK technology integration risks.