“Meta is joining Amazon, Google and other tech giants in turning to nuclear generation to fuel energy-thirsty AI data centers with zero-carbon electrons.

Driving the news: The company just announced a ‘request for proposals’ that targets a large pipeline — one to four gigawatts — of new generation.

It’s seeking partners that can ‘help accelerate the availability of new nuclear generators and create sufficient scale to achieve material cost reductions by deploying multiple units,’ an RFP summary states.”

From Axios.

“The IEA’s latest data show the number of people without access to electricity declined by more than 10 million from over 760 million in 2022 to below 750 million in 2023. This follows a period of stagnation and setbacks in extending electricity access, where population growth exceeded new connections in many countries. The IEA was the first to report that the number of people globally without access to electricity increased for the first time in decades in 2022 using data from new grid and off-grid connections—a finding that was confirmed earlier this year by household surveys. Data for the first months of 2024 suggest that improvements are set to continue this year, as the number of people without access to electricity is expected to decline by a similar amount as in 2023.”

From International Energy Agency.

“The push to commercialize solid-state batteries (SSBs) is underway with industries from automotive to storage betting on the technology. But while the hype around full solid-state batteries has somewhat subsided, with the technology taking longer than expected to take off, semi-solid-state batteries, which use a hybrid design of solid and liquid electrolyte, have been making steady progress toward commercialization.

TrendForce’s latest findings reveal that major manufacturers across the globe – such as Toyota, Nissan, and Samsung SDI – have already begun pilot production of all-solid-state batteries. It is estimated that production volumes could have GWh levels by 2027 as these companies race to scale up production.”

From ESS News.

“People have been predicting that the energy demand for computers and the internet will skyrocket for a long time…

If you were to take the expected growth in internet technologies since 2010 and assume that energy demand would follow, then you do get pretty scary numbers.

But energy demand did not follow in the same way. That’s because it was curbed by the huge efficiency gains we just looked at. 

Between 2010 and 2018, global data centre compute increased by more than 550%. Yet energy use in data centres increased by just 6%.

This follows on from ‘Koomey’s Law’ — named after the researcher Jonathan Koomey — which describes the dramatic increase in computations you could carry out per unit of energy.”

From Sustainability by numbers.