Why don’t data centres use more green energy?

An aerial view of construction of a data centre in Lithia Springs, Georgia, on Sept 3, 2025. There are reasons beyond politics that help explain why smog-spewing fossil fuels have become the go-to power source for futuristic data centers. The pairing is almost unavoidable – at least for now. — Dustin Chambers/The New York Times

It’s been a big week for artificial intelligence data centres. That means it’s also been a big week for coal and natural gas.

This past week Nvidia announced a US$100bil (RM421.19bil) investment to support OpenAI’s enormous build-out of data centres that use its chips. The next day, OpenAI said it had signed deals with SoftBank and Oracle to build five new data centres as part of the Stargate Project, a US$500bil (RM2.10 trillion) plan for AI infrastructure. (The three companies unveiled it at the White House back in January.)