I’m excited to share a preview of something we’ve been working on all summer at Cleanview: A new way to track planned data centers in the US.
For the last year and a half, we’ve been tracking 10,000+ clean energy projects. Our platform helps customers see all the solar, wind, and battery projects that will power the grid in the future.
But the supply side is only half the equation. To understand how our electricity grid—and our entire economy that relies on it—is changing, you also have to understand how demand for electricity is changing.
Data centers are, of course, core to that story.
I’ve been following the development of AI and data centers closely for much of the last few years. And even I’ve been shocked by what I’ve learned in building this product.
Some of the projects we’re tracking are set to consume more electricity than many of America’s largest cities. A year or two ago, I would have said they couldn’t get built. But according to satellite images we’re using to verify development status, many of them are already well underway.
When I started building the product, I expected most projects to be owned by Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon. And these hyperscalers certainly own a lot of them. But many of the largest developers we’re tracking are companies I had never heard of a few months ago.
I expected much of the development to be focused in the markets you always hear about, like Northern Virginia. But according to the data we’ve gathered so far, much of the growth of data center capacity will come from towns and counties most Americans will have never heard of—like Storey County, Nevada and New Albany, Ohio.
Throughout my career, my work has always been driven by two things: curiosity and purpose. This new product has been endlessly fascinating for my curious mind. But, if I’m honest, I’ve wrestled a lot with how it might serve Cleanview’s larger mission of accelerating the clean energy transition—my purpose in doing any of this.
Like many people, I’m still not entirely sure what to make of the AI boom and all the data centers powering it. There’s much about AI that makes me optimistic. I also have deep reservations and concerns about its harms and consequences.
At a personal level, my hope is that in building this product and sharing what I learn, I can be a skeptically optimistic voice in this larger conversation. For Cleanview as a company, I hope this product will help our customers power as many data centers as possible with clean energy and create more transparency in the industry.
Over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing more about the product and what I’ve learned so far in building it. In the meantime, if you want early access, head over to our website and let us know that you want to try out the new product.
