Posted by Peter Schempp 
On Mon May 12I’ve got a lot to say about Data Centers and Energy Innovation.
Afterall, I’ve been in the field for over 15 years consulting and implementing large scale energy projects at both government agencies and private industries.
But before I get into all of that, I want to bring you back to the year 2004.
It was over 20 years ago when British Petroleum (BP) launched a PR campaign with Ogilvy & Mather and popularized a term that’s very common today, carbon footprint.
BP and their ad agency didn’t invent the term, but their collective efforts created a powerful and emotional, yet controversial, link between individual responsibility and climate change.
Today in 2025, I sense that there’s a new campaign that hasn’t quite received the attention it probably should. This campaign isn’t about vehicle emissions or greenhouse gas…it’s about social media, cloud storage, streaming media, and AI.
A few questions I find myself thinking about a lot in my current work at Chateau Energy are brain teasers like:
“What’s our Digital Energy Footprint?”
The fact is, our digital lives come with hidden environmental costs, and those costs are rising exponentially.
In my work, I believe this should always be the core focus. How we got here today is less important than how we solve for tomorrow. That said, the numbers are staggering and the challenges are daunting:
The key takeaway here is that AI prompts use close to 10 times the amount of energy as a single Google search. Today, Google is still by far the de facto way people navigate the world digitally, but that gap will close quickly. In due time, it will surpass traditional search and continue expanding.
How long is it before we are talking about powering hundreds of thousands of homes instead of tens of thousands?
None of this is meant to single out Google or OpenAI. Netflix binges burn energy. Instagram social scrolls share the same burden.
My point is simply that we don’t “see hidden energy” when we go about our daily digital tasks at home or at work. We only see the energy that we use to run our computers or charge our digital devices.
Behind all of humanity’s collective digital consumption is where Data Centers prove their mettle.
The first Data Center dates all the way back to 1945, established at the University of Pennsylvania as part of a military initiative by ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). ENIAC’s primary purpose was to aid the US Army during World War II.
As computers grew smaller and smaller over the decades that followed, the giant mainframes produced by IBM that required large rooms, gave way to much smaller computers (microcomputers). Over time, these microcomputers would become known as servers, and the rooms that housed those servers became the new Data Centers.
Perhaps the biggest change for Data Centers occurred in the early 2000’s with the advent of Cloud computing. As digital usage grew at an astronomical clip, Cloud services changed the game by allowing organizations to access usage online, on-demand, and on a flexible pay-per-usage model.
Today’s modern Data Centers look nothing like their predecessors.
It’s also probably fair to say that the sheer volume and growth of digital usage as we experience it today would have never been predicted as World War II was nearing its end.
In the rest of the article, I’ll dive deeper into specific challenges, current solutions, and ways in which organizations can evaluate how modernized Data Centers can meet the rising demands of a global population.
This is where it all starts.
For Data Center developers, the utility companies and substations provide the critical infrastructure needed to generate and convert energy into usable electricity.
Interconnection agreements enable developers to secure enough power to sustain their operations and demand for a particular site of land, but it isn’t easy to get.
Unfortunately, the sheer volume of requests today has overwhelmed utility providers, creating two big problems:
The need for innovative streamlining of interconnection agreements and for providing developers with insights to the grid would allow them to be less speculative and reduce the number of requests.
Traditionally, facilities have relied on Diesel Generators, composed of huge alternators with big engines as the backstop to the utility. Reliability is paramount for Data Centers and as you can imagine, even brief outages aren’t acceptable.
Diesel generators have engines the size of a minivan or a bus and unfortunately it takes a lot of time and resources to build them. In this case, the demand is by far exceeding the supply.
In order to illustrate demand, I often tell people that it’s not “one person needing a thousand of them, it’s a thousand people needing a thousand of them.” The scale of backup systems needed is pushing companies to rethink traditional models.
To mitigate this, some of the work we’re doing at Chateau Energy is developing campus-wide natural gas generation assets. Rather than relying on individual generators, centralized systems offer more efficiency, reliability, and environmental benefits. One of the biggest benefits is that these systems can provide energy while the grid catches up. And once connected, it can support the utility as a deployable energy source and give back to the community.
One emerging solution is the small modular nuclear reactor concept adapted from military vessels. These compact reactors provide reliable, low-carbon power without the volatility of solar or wind. It has the potential to really transform the energy landscape for Data Centers.
It’s pretty amazing to think that the same technology and development that started with the Navy to power their vessels in World War II shares its’ innovative origins with today’s modernized Data Centers.
At the beginning of the article, I mentioned British Petroleum and the campaign about carbon footprint. Critics at the time would say BP’s splashy campaign was designed to take the environmental burden off of themselves and shift it to us, the consumers.
I still contend that how we arrived here today is far less important than finding solutions for a better tomorrow.
As I outlined earlier, today we find ourselves in a similar resource predicament. Every click, search, upload, or even reading this blog requires energy. We may not see it happening or feel it in our bank accounts, but it’s there. Energy is required for the betterment of our lives and the greater society. We need to make conscious decisions for our actions.
Chateau Energy plays a crucial role in guiding Data Center developers through the maze of power procurement, efficiency optimization, and infrastructure integration.
Data Centers are the heart of our digital future, powering everything from cloud-computing to AI-driven innovation. Yet, without a similar revolution in energy infrastructure, future progress just might be unsustainable.
Chateau Energy is responding to the data center industry’s urgent demand for faster power access by bridging the gap in power through integrated onsite generation and renewables, delivering early energization timelines.
The question for now isn’t whether energy innovation is necessary; it’s how quickly we can implement it to meet the growing demand.
Peter Schempp is the Director of Engineering for Chateau Energy Solutions. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and has more than 15 years of experience in the energy infrastructure and mission-critical industries. His proficiency is in consulting and implementing large-scale electrical power systems, and distributed generation for both government agencies and private industries.
Through extensive relationships across synergistic markets, Peter provides innovative solutions and assembles top teams to complete projects. When not working on client projects, he is either out in nature with his family, or he’s helping train the next generation of leaders as an Assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 149.
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