AI rewrites the corporate energy playbook

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Jun 17, 2025

In this discussion, Caroline Golin, former global head of market development and innovation at Google, shares her insights on how AI is reshaping energy strategies for tech companies. She highlights the transition from a buyer's market to a seller's market in clean energy procurement and the urgent need for a new infrastructure model to meet the demands of AI. Golin also emphasizes the $5 trillion capex challenge for data centers by 2030 and the necessity for innovative financing solutions and regulatory adaptations in the evolving energy landscape.

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INSIGHT

AI Changes Energy Procurement

AI's rapid growth forces tech companies to rethink energy procurement models beyond traditional renewable PPAs.
Integrating storage, demand response, and firm capacity like nuclear is becoming essential for powering AI infrastructure.

ANECDOTE

Amazon's Energy Deployment Urgency

An Amazon energy manager revealed that speed in deploying substations and nuclear power sourcing is critical for meeting data center energy needs in Virginia.
This illustrates the immediate focus on quick power solutions over long-term sustainable integration for rapid data center expansion.

INSIGHT

Shift to Seller's Market for Energy

The seller's market emerged about two years ago when utility capacity shrank faster than tech companies could develop new solutions.
This scarcity pushed companies to innovate with integrated resource planning and capacity-focused energy models.

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The exponential growth of AI is colliding with the linear reality of building energy infrastructure — forcing a rethink of how tech companies power their ambitions.

Is the corporate clean energy playbook becoming obsolete?

In this live episode from Transition-AI in Boston, we dive deep into the infrastructure challenges of the AI era. We’re joined by Caroline Golin, who spent eight years building Google's energy strategy before leaving earlier this year.

We examine how tech companies moved from a buyer's market with abundant resources to a seller's market with serious capacity constraints.

"The vast majority of procurement in this country looks like single-source renewable PPAs, and that's what it's been for years," Golin explained. "That wasn't going to get us to where we needed to go."

Then we turn to a financing puzzle. We need to see more than $5 trillion in capex spending on data center infrastructure by 2030 to keep pace with computing demands from AI. But even with many different types of capital trying to solve the infrastructure challenge, they all want completely different things. How do we align them?

The just-in-time procurement model that served the hyperscalers for a decade must evolve into global-scale, integrated infrastructure development. Can regulators, utilities, and policymakers keep up?

Open Circuit is brought to you by Natural Power. Natural Power specializes in renewable energy consulting and engineering, supporting wind, solar, and battery storage projects from concept through financing. Discover how we're creating a world powered by renewable energy at naturalpower.com.

Open Circuit is brought to you by Sungrow, the trusted provider of PV inverters and battery storage. With over 605 GW installed worldwide and a BloombergNEF ranking of “most bankable” in power conversion and energy storage, Sungrow provides solar tech you can count on. Learn more at sungrowpower.com.

Credits: Co-hosted by Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah, and Katherine Hamilton. Produced and edited by Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand.