Powering Data: NREL Partner Forum Puts Everything on the Table - CleanTechnica

The 2025 NREL Partner Forum convened over 300 stakeholders in Golden, Colorado, to address the rapidly growing energy demands of U.S. data centers, which have tripled over the past decade and doubled in the last two years. Hosted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the event emphasized collaboration among utilities, companies, governments, and communities to strategize how to power data centers sustainably and efficiently. Key themes included the need for data centers to become active participants in grid management, the importance of siting data centers near power sources rather than moving power to them, and the necessity of community involvement in planning. Keynote speaker Dean Nelson highlighted the complexity of balancing social, economic, ecological, and community priorities amid the surging instantaneous power demands of modern data centers, driven by advances in chip design that increase power consumption density. Panelists, including Mason Emnett of Constellation Energy, stressed that competition over energy resources creates regulatory friction, advocating instead for collaborative approaches that consider