Silicon Valley is building a shadow power grid—dozens of data centers with their own private gas plants, walled off from the utility system entirely. (WaPo)
Cleanview has identified 47 behind-the-meter projects across the country from major hyperscalers including Meta, OpenAI, Oracle, and Chevron.
One West Virginia project is permitted to generate several times the state's total residential electricity consumption. A single Texas project, GW Ranch, will consume more power than Chicago—without a single new transmission line.
Former DOE loan chief Jigar Shah called the strategy "a fairy tale concocted on the back of a napkin"—but still, billions of dollars have already been invested and several of these projects are already under construction.