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OKLAHOMA CITY — Amazon and Nvidia told a room of oil and gas executives this week that all options are on the table to power artificial intelligence including fossil fuels such as natural gas.
The tech and energy industries gathered in Oklahoma City at the Hamm Institute for American Energy to discuss how the U.S. can meet the growing energy needs for AI data centers.
The Big Tech companies have invested mostly in renewable power in an effort to slash their carbon dioxide emissions, but they are now navigating a changed political environment. President Donald Trump has ditched U.S. commitments to fight climate change as he seeks to increase fossil fuel production, particularly natural gas.
There is now growing public acknowledgment from the tech industry that gas will be needed, at least in the near term, to help fuel AI.
“To have the energy we need for the grid, it’s going to take an all of the above approach for a period of time,” Kevin Miller, Amazon’s vice president of global data centers, said during a panel discussion Thursday. “We’re not surprised by the fact that we’re going to need to add some thermal generation to meet the needs in the short term.”
Amazon remains focused on slashing its carbon emissions, Miller said. It is the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy and is investing in advanced nuclear and carbon capture technology to reduce the environmental impact of its energy consumption, the executive said.
But those advanced technologies will not come online until the 2030s and Amazon needs steady and secure power now, Miller said.
“We’re very explicit that meeting customers’ demands for capacity is first and foremost in our priority list, and so having access to power is first and foremost what we focus on,” Miller said. “And we have a goal to be net-zero carbon as a company by 2040 and are very focused on that.”
Nvidia is also focused on environmental impact but wants “all options on the table” as AI faces an energy crunch, said Josh Parker, the chipmaker’s senior director of corporate sustainability.
“At the end of the day, we need power. We just need power,” Parker said at the panel. “We have some customers who really prioritize the clean energy, and some customers who don’t care as much,” the executive said.
Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark called for data center developers to be realistic about the energy sources that are currently available. Anthropic estimates that 50 gigawatts of new power is needed by 2027, equivalent to about 50 nuclear reactors. AI demand can help drive the development of “new and novel sources” of power over the longer term, he said.
The idea of using coal, however, was met with unease. Trump recently signed an order that aims to boost coal production, citing demand from AI. The Amazon and Nvidia executives did not answer directly when asked during the panel whether they thought coal had a role play in powering AI.
“You have a broader set of options than just coal,” Clark said. “We would certainly consider it, but I don’t think I’d say it’s at the top of our list.”