Google Invests in Electrician Training to Meet AI's Growing Power Demands

Google funding electrician training as AI power crunch intensifies

NEW YORK, April 30 (Reuters) - Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab will fund the training of tens of thousands of new U.S. electricians, the company told Reuters on Wednesday, as Big Tech wades deeper into the country's power industry on its hunt for the massive amounts of electricity needed for its AI expansion. A lack of access to power supplies has become the biggest problem for giant technology companies racing to develop artificial intelligence in energy-intensive data centers, which are driving up U.S. electricity demand after nearly 20 years of stagnation. The situation has led President Donald Trump to declare a national energy emergency aimed at speeding up permitting for generation and transmission projects. Google's funding, which includes a $10 million grant for electrical worker nonprofits, is the latest in a series of recent moves by giant technology companies to alleviate power project backlogs and electricity shortfalls across the United States. In another example, Microsoft announced last year that it would partner with Constellation to restart a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania - site of one of the country's worst nuclear incidents - to feed its data centers. Data centers could triple their power use in the U.S. over the next three years to make up 12% of the country's electricity consumption, according to a Department of Energy-backed study. To meet the demand, the country will need more power plants, transmission lines and the workforce to support them. The market for electricians is projected to grow 6% annually in the next seven years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. The Google grant will be used for electrician apprenticeship programs and the training of existing workforce through organizations, including the Electrical Training Alliance, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the National Electrical Contractors Association. It could increase the pipeline of electrical workers by 70% by the end of the decade, the company said. "This initiative with Google and our partners at NECA and the Electrical Training Alliance will bring more than 100,000 sorely needed electricians into the trade to meet the demands of an AI-driven surge in data centers and power generation," said Kenneth Cooper, international president of the IBEW labor union. Google, earlier this month, announced that it was partnering with the biggest regional U.S. electrical grid -- operated by PJM Interconnection -- to deploy artificial intelligence technologies aimed at getting new electricity supplies and power lines connected faster. It has struck the first corporate agreements to purchase energy from multiple small nuclear reactors and advanced geothermal energy for its data centers. The company will also release a white paper, opens new tab on Wednesday on ways to speed up the expansion of the grid. The white paper, which Reuters is first to report, includes policy recommendations to support new energy technologies like small modular reactors and advanced geothermal. Among those proposals is cost-overrun protections for advanced nuclear reactors through the Department of Energy Loan Program Office, accelerating permitting at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and bolstering a domestic nuclear fuel supply. The paper also recommends Congress take action to expedite certain permitting for carbon capture, the build-out of transmission lines and to support technologies to increase efficiency on the existing grid. Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Aurora Ellis Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Boards, Policy & RegulationRegulatory OversightGovernanceGrid & InfrastructureNuclear

Google is funding electrician training to help meet the power demands of AI

Google has announced that it's helping to financially support the electrical training ALLIANCe (etA), an organization formed by the National Electrical Contractors Association and the International Brotherhood of Electricians. The goal is to train "100,000 electrical workers and 30,000 new apprentices in the United States" to meet the growing power demands of AI. Using AI will unlock unspecified, but positive economic opportunities, Google's new white paper, "Powering a New Era of American Innovation," claims. In order to take advantage of them, though, the US power grid needs to become more capable and efficient. That's largely because the data centers used to run and train AI models require vast amounts of energy. The white paper claims that new data centers could demand an additional "15-90 GW" of energy by 2030, something that more efficient chips and model training can't account for. For a sense of the scale, the US Department of Energy says 1 Gigawatt is the equivalent to 103 offshore wind turbines. Google's paper calls for investments in alternative energy sources like nuclear power, but also notes that expanding the electrical workforce is necessary. "McKinsey estimates that 130,000 additional electricians will be needed by 2030 to build out data centers and manufacturing facilities," the company writes. Currently, though, retiring electricians outnumber newly trained ones. "Nearly 10,000 American electricians either retire or change careers each year, while only about 7,000 new entrants join the field." Investing in electrical training is Google's attempt to help change that. It would be nice if it was paired with a clearer explanation around what that AI will be doing with all that extra power -- Google notes that there's a "causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth" -- but skilled job training isn't a bad thing.

Investing in workforce, energy infrastructure and the policies needed to power the AI opportunity

Google is announcing a new paper and support for an effort to train 100,000 electrical workers and 30,000 new apprentices in the United States. AI presents the United States with a generational opportunity for extraordinary innovation and growth. The deployment of AI will grow the American economy, create jobs, accelerate scientific advances and more. Fully realizing these opportunities requires an effort to rapidly increase the capacity of the nation's existing, sometimes antiquated energy system. This in turn requires accelerating innovation and investment in advanced energy technologies; optimizing use of the existing grid and unlocking construction of new transmission infrastructure; and developing the labor force needed to build new energy infrastructure. Today, in a new paper titled Powering a New Era of American Innovation, we're sharing 15 policy opportunities. Many of these proposals have been incubating in policy circles for some time, reach across a broad base of stakeholders and are drawn from the broader discussion of policy options. By unlocking advanced electricity resources and grid infrastructure, the United States would enable all sources of electricity to contribute to a more reliable and affordable energy future. They now require constructive public and private collaboration to advance. Beyond Google's commitment to equip 1 million Americans with AI skills through the AI Opportunity Fund, there is demand for trade skills that can construct electrical infrastructure. In particular, a shortage of electrical workers may constrain America's ability to build the infrastructure needed to support AI, advanced manufacturing and a shift to clean energy. Building upon years of delivering digital workforce development programs to people across the country, today Google is announcing support for an effort to train 100,000 electrical workers and 30,000 new apprentices in the United States. With funding from Google.org to the electrical training ALLIANCE (etA) -- an organization created by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the National Electrical Contractors Association -- etA will integrate AI tools into its curriculum and boost the number of apprentices nationally. It will also provide apprentices with access to Google's AI Essentials course to master AI skills. With the support provided by Google, etA's program aims to increase the electrical workforce pipeline by 70% within the next five years. Of course, no single organization can fix the expected shortfall alone, but through shared public and private efforts to introduce and support training programs like this one, the U.S. can develop a model for training the next generation workforce.

Why Google Just Pledged $10 Million to Train Electricians

In a nod to the unglamorous back end of cutting-edge tech, Google just announced that it will fund the training of "tens of thousands" of new electricians in the U.S. The tech giant knows it will need qualified workers to help set up and maintain the data centers for its future AI systems. It's a delightful twist on the "will AI steal my job?" debate. It might also influence your thinking about future hiring in your company. While the biggest obstacle to next-gen AI development was once a shortage of sufficiently powerful computer chips, it's now a "lack of access to power supplies has become the biggest problem for giant technology companies racing to develop artificial intelligence in energy-intensive data centers," Reuters recently reported. These data centers are "driving up U.S. electricity demand after nearly 20 years of stagnation." In the near future, increasingly sophisticated AI models will need ever more powerful chips to run on, and these will place even greater demands on the national's electrical grid, which is already showing signs of strain.

Google funding electrician training as AI power crunch intensifies

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Google will fund the training of tens of thousands of new U.S. electricians, the company told Reuters on Wednesday, as Big Tech wades deeper into the country's power industry on its hunt for the massive amounts of electricity needed for its AI expansion. A lack of access to power supplies has become the biggest problem for giant technology companies racing to develop artificial intelligence in energy-intensive data centers, which are driving up U.S. electricity demand after nearly 20 years of stagnation. The situation has led President Donald Trump to declare a national energy emergency aimed at speeding up permitting for generation and transmission projects. Google's funding, which includes a $10 million grant for electrical worker nonprofits, is the latest in a series of recent moves by giant technology companies to alleviate power project backlogs and electricity shortfalls across the United States. In another example, Microsoft announced last year that it would partner with Constellation to restart a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania - site of one of the country's worst nuclear incidents - to feed its data centers. Data centers could triple their power use in the U.S. over the next three years to make up 12% of the country's electricity consumption, according to a Department of Energy-backed study. To meet the demand, the country will need more power plants, transmission lines and the workforce to support them. The market for electricians is projected to grow 6% annually in the next seven years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. The Google grant will be used for electrician apprenticeship programs and the training of existing workforce through organizations, including the Electrical Training Alliance, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the National Electrical Contractors Association. It could increase the pipeline of electrical workers by 70% by the end of the decade, the company said. "This initiative with Google and our partners at NECA and the Electrical Training Alliance will bring more than 100,000 sorely needed electricians into the trade to meet the demands of an AI-driven surge in data centers and power generation," said Kenneth Cooper, international president of the IBEW labor union. Google, earlier this month, announced that it was partnering with the biggest regional U.S. electrical grid -- operated by PJM Interconnection -- to deploy artificial intelligence technologies aimed at getting new electricity supplies and power lines connected faster. It has struck the first corporate agreements to purchase energy from multiple small nuclear reactors and advanced geothermal energy for its data centers. The company will also release a white paper on Wednesday on ways to speed up the expansion of the grid. The white paper, which Reuters is first to report, includes policy recommendations to support new energy technologies like small modular reactors and advanced geothermal. Among those proposals is cost-overrun protections for advanced nuclear reactors through the Department of Energy Loan Program Office, accelerating permitting at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and bolstering a domestic nuclear fuel supply. The paper also recommends Congress take action to expedite certain permitting for carbon capture, the build-out of transmission lines and to support technologies to increase efficiency on the existing grid. (Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Aurora Ellis)