Where Data Tells the Story
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New Mexico built an on-site gas plant to power OpenAI's Stargate Project.
Their grid is 38% wind, 11% solar. The clean energy is there. Getting connected to it takes 3-5 years. So they built a gas plant instead. People call that an environmental failure. It's a regulatory one.
Texas is a less complex case. The grid is already composed of 48% gas, and utilising on-site gas essentially eliminates the need for the utility.
With that context, here’s the part nobody’s publishing.
While many refer to these sites as "responsible", the ones connected to the grid are, in reality, connected to some of the dirtiest electricity in America.
Lordstown, Ohio: 44% coal, 40% gas (84% fossil fueled). The worst mix of any Stargate site. Also, the one held up as the clean choice.
Wisconsin: 40% gas, 32% coal.
Michigan: 45% gas, 21% coal.
Connecting to the grid indicates that fuel consumption is occurring elsewhere within the system.
56% of 9.6 gigawatts operate on confirmed on-site gas. When accounting for the actual draw at grid sites, overall fossil fuel exposure is estimated at approximately 75-80 per cent. I have not encountered this figure in any coverage I have reviewed.
Stargate didn't choose fossil fuels over clean energy. At 9.6 gigawatts, New York City's entire peak demand, there was no clean option that could move fast enough.
America's infrastructure is hitting a ceiling it didn't know existed; a $500 billion project is the first thing big enough to find it.
Every data centre that comes after Stargate hits the same ceiling, but nobody's talking about that yet.
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