One of the biggest questions around the practical side of AI is power: how are tomorrow’s data centers going to run, and what will they run on?
It’s not a trivial concern. Already, people around the world are weighing the fruits of LLM production with the consumption of power, in a time where we have to think about climate change and our carbon footprints.
So here are some of the things I was hearing about at Davos, where planners huddle to think about the long term solutions to what we now face.
Solar Initiatives
First of all, solar power is big.
That doesn’t even do justice to the true role of solar power in our futures.
China, specifically, is not waiting around on solar power. The Middle Kingdom is making enormous strides toward large-scale solar power production – and other nations should follow suit.
One thing that I heard, when I was in the central hall at Davos, was the astounding assertion that to produce all of America’s energy, you would only need a solar farm that was 100 miles by 100 miles, or, I guess, 10,000 square miles.
It’s essentially the size of the state of Massachusetts, but of course, you wouldn’t have to locate all of it here. Spread out across the country, this seems abundantly doable. I won’t say who I heard this from, exactly, but I’ll put it this way: he has some credibility on energy policy, given his head role at companies like Tesla and SpaceX. It’s Davos, and more than one world leader also took the stage to give us a picture of what the world may look like 10, 15 or 25 years from now. Beyond that, really, you might say it’s anybody’s guess.
Anyway, I was surprised that so small of an area could provide the 1.37 trillion kilowatts needed to power the entire U.S. of A., so I checked the number. Over at this solar energy site, analysts estimate only half of that is needed, suggesting that 3.42 million acres (or around 5300 square miles) would do the trick.
Imagine a world where all of our cars run on clean solar – ditto for our HVAC systems – and even our AI friends run on solar powered data centers. At risk of sounding like John Lennon, it’s kind of easy if you try.
Space Juice
Here’s another idea that I continued to hear about as Davos progressed.
It has to do with the viability of sending satellites up into deep space, harvesting solar energy, and then beaming it back down to earth.
This is something that Musk himself has talked about many times before, and from what I hear, efforts are underway to make this practically possible.
So how would it work? One big question is: how does the energy get back to earth?
It turns out engineers would use something called a “rectenna” that would serve as a collector on the ground. Don’t laugh. It’s short for “rectifying antenna” (not whatever you were thinking).
“A space solar power prototype has demonstrated its ability to wirelessly beam power through space and direct a detectable amount of energy toward Earth for the first time,” writes Robert Lea at Space.com. “The experiment proves the viability of tapping into a near-limitless supply of power in the form of energy from the sun from space. Because solar energy in space isn’t subject to factors like day and night, obscuration by clouds, or weather on Earth, it is always available. In fact, it is estimated that space-based harvesters could potentially yield eight times more power than solar panels at any location on the surface of the globe.”
Specifically, Lea refers to a Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (MAPLE), which he calls “an array of flexible and lightweight microwave power transmitters,” that was transported by a spacecraft called SSPD-1.
“MAPLE demonstrated the transmission of energy wirelessly through space by sending energy from a transmitter to two separate receiver arrays around a foot away, where it was transformed into electricity,” Lea wrote. “This was used to light up a pair of LEDs.”
Clean Nuclear
I’ve written numerous times recently about bids to create small nuclear plants to run AI data centers, so that we can avoid proliferating new fossil fuel infrastructure. Some of the big players include TerraPower (backed by Bill Gates), Vistra, and Constellation.
That’s a roundup of some of what’s coming out of this year’s January summit, close to the voices that work to make decisions for the world. Stay tuned and I’ll cover the dozens of key presentations that I was fortunate to be part of at IIA this year, and more of what happened in Switzerland as 2026 commences.
