The World's Secret Electricity Superusers Revealed (bloomberg.com) 35
An anonymous reader shares a report: The rush to secure electricity has intensified as tech companies look to spend trillions of dollars building data centers. There's an industry that consumes even more power than many tech giants, and it has largely escaped the same scrutiny: suppliers of industrial gases.
Everyday items like toothpaste and life-saving treatments like MRIs are among the countless parts of modern life that hinge on access to gases such as nitrogen, oxygen and helium. Producing and transporting these gases to industrial facilities and hospitals is a highly energy-intensive process. Three companies -- Linde, Air Liquide and Air Products and Chemicals -- control 70% of the $120 billion global market for industrial gases. Their initiatives to rein in electricity use or switch to renewables aren't enough to rapidly cut carbon emissions, according to a new report from the campaign group Action Speaks Louder.
"The scale of the sector's greenhouse gas emissions and electricity use is staggering," said George Harding-Rolls, the group's head of campaigns and one of the authors of the report. Linde's electricity use in 2024 exceeded that of Alphabet's Google and Samsung Electronics as well as oil giant TotalEnergies, while the power use of Air Liquide and Air Products was comparable to that of Shell and Microsoft. Yet unlike fossil fuel and tech companies, these industrial gas companies are far from household names because their customers are the world's largest chemicals, steel and oil companies rather than average consumers.
The industry relies on air-separation units, which use giant compressors to turn air into liquid and then distill it into its many components. These machines are responsible for much of the industry's electricity demand, and their use alone is responsible for 2% of carbon dioxide emissions in China and the US, the world's two largest polluters.
Everyday items like toothpaste and life-saving treatments like MRIs are among the countless parts of modern life that hinge on access to gases such as nitrogen, oxygen and helium. Producing and transporting these gases to industrial facilities and hospitals is a highly energy-intensive process. Three companies -- Linde, Air Liquide and Air Products and Chemicals -- control 70% of the $120 billion global market for industrial gases. Their initiatives to rein in electricity use or switch to renewables aren't enough to rapidly cut carbon emissions, according to a new report from the campaign group Action Speaks Louder.
"The scale of the sector's greenhouse gas emissions and electricity use is staggering," said George Harding-Rolls, the group's head of campaigns and one of the authors of the report. Linde's electricity use in 2024 exceeded that of Alphabet's Google and Samsung Electronics as well as oil giant TotalEnergies, while the power use of Air Liquide and Air Products was comparable to that of Shell and Microsoft. Yet unlike fossil fuel and tech companies, these industrial gas companies are far from household names because their customers are the world's largest chemicals, steel and oil companies rather than average consumers.
The industry relies on air-separation units, which use giant compressors to turn air into liquid and then distill it into its many components. These machines are responsible for much of the industry's electricity demand, and their use alone is responsible for 2% of carbon dioxide emissions in China and the US, the world's two largest polluters.
Article demonizes these companies (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Article demonizes these companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Article demonizes these companies (Score:2)
If there was a way to produce these products in a way that uses less energy and costs less money, I guarantee you companies like Linde, Air Liquide and others would absolutely be using it.
Re: Article demonizes these companies (Score:1)
Yup. Thank goodness for this investigative journalism! We have now unmasked these energy gluttons and can.... do nothing.
Oh well, new interesting factoid to regale at a social gathering in the future.
Re: (Score:2)
I found it informative so maybe talks about efficiency could begin? But increasing efficiency doesn't increase quarterly profits.
Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
But increasing efficiency doesn't increase quarterly profits.
Er... yes, it does. That's exactly what it means.
Increasing efficiency in this context means making the same amount of product for less cost, making more product for the same cost, or even more product for less cost.
All these mean increased profits.
The "alternative" is implied (Score:1)
If your product/process is necessary for society and it can't help but use large amounts of electricity, use cleaner/greener electricity.
What this might mean in practice:
When building a new plant, build a solar/wind/other-relatively-green electricity plant next to it.
If you have a large plant that can be retrofitted cost-effectively with greener power, do so.
If you can't, investigate ways you can buy green power from the grid without impacting the bottom line. This may mean pooling your resources with othe
Re: Article demonizes these companies (Score:1)
Re:Why don't we pass legislation (Score:4, Insightful)
Many do, and the same people complain about this as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Data centers must provide their own power
Many do, and the same people complain about this as well.
Really? Do you have an example?
Excuse My Ignorance... (Score:3)
but, so fucking what?
It's not a secret. There will always be a "largest consumer" and it will always be industrial.
SO FUCKING WHAT?
Re: (Score:2)
but, so fucking what?
It's not a secret. There will always be a "largest consumer" and it will always be industrial.
SO FUCKING WHAT?
I agree. While it is interesting that this industry consumes a lot of electricity, that isn't meaningful because it has to be tempered by the results.
A similar thing people get all up in arms about is the yearly profits certain companies make. We get alarmist headlines talking about how many trillions of dollars someone like Amazon made in profits and get agitated because we compare that figure to our individual bank balances and our emotions say "I would like one tenth of one percent of that, not fair!
So why are they surprised? (Score:3)
Polysilicon requires large amounts of hydrogen and nitrogen. The hospital and the welding shop both use oxygen. The plants run continuously and are not turned off at sunset.
Welcome to industrial scale.
By the way, the green line for wind plus solar isn't looking too good today.
https://transmission.bpa.gov/b... [bpa.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
By the way, the green line for wind plus solar isn't looking too good today.
And? Fire up some peakers and invest in storage. If we're going to point to every time something doesn't work we can always find a way to demonise every energy source.
The difference (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference here is that these liquefied gases are mostly used to service humanity ... LLMs ... well not so much. I wonder who would benefit from a piece pointing out that an LLM doesn't use the most electricity. Hmmm...
As a guy with a recent shoulder surgery... (Score:5, Interesting)
I derive a lot of utility from the helium used for MRI machines. As a guy who likes to eat potato chips, I derive much utility from nitrogen gas. As a scuba diver I derive much utility from Pure oxigen for my 32% and 50% stages. As a guy who had two ventral laparoscopic surgeries, I derive utility from pure CO2.
Crypto? AI? AWS and AZURE falling over their own shoelaces? .... not so much utility there.
JM2C
YMMV
Re: (Score:2)
Crypto? AI? AWS and AZURE falling over their own shoelaces? .... not so much utility there.
I suspect you actually do derive a lot of utility from AWS and Azure, you just don't realize how many of the services you use every day are running on them.
Re: (Score:2)
Crypto? AI? AWS and AZURE falling over their own shoelaces? .... not so much utility there.
I suspect you actually do derive a lot of utility from AWS and Azure, you just don't realize how many of the services you use every day are running on them.
As an OpenStack technical trainer, I do not oppose the cloud per-se. but AWS and MS are "moar" interested in investing untold sums of money, effort, and grid energy to train AI models, than to bulleproof their instances...
I also oppose moronic companies that put all their cloud eggs in one basket...
Re: (Score:2)
Crypto? AI? AWS and AZURE falling over their own shoelaces? .... not so much utility there.
Looks like you use the web ... lol you'll be crying with the rest of them next time a big AWS or Azure server goes down.
Using liquid air for grid-scale energy storage (Score:2)
https://news.mit.edu/2025/usin... [mit.edu]
Re:Using liquid air for grid-scale energy storage (Score:4, Informative)
Easy1st step: have these guys liquify air only at energy peaks. 2nd step: liquify more than they use and send energy back on the grid during high demand.
It is more economical for them to produce liquid air non-stop. Many industries could theoretically consume electricity only when it is abundant (during the day), but then they under-utilize their facilities. Redundant data centers could be spread around the world so that each data center operates only when the sun shines nearby and it has abundant electricity. But then they would operate only about 20% of the time, and therefore require 5x higher capital costs (computers, cooling, buildings, land, etc).
The 2nd step is intriguing, but it is not obvious that it is economically viable. If they generate more liquid air than they need and use it to generate electricity, then they need extra compressors. What advantage would they have over a separate plant which uses those extra compressors to store electricity without selling liquid air?
Again imagine if those trillions (Score:4, Insightful)
Here in America we just gave 6 trillion dollars to the top 1% as tax cuts. That's money out of your community. Money you earned that should be going back into your community as highly effective investment to better your life and the lives of everyone around you.
Instead we've got a huge push to use tariffs to create a national sales tax to shift all the costs of the AI infrastructure build out on to you.
Mark my words they will never have enough money. They want to be trillionaires all of them. There isn't enough money in the world for those fuckers to be trillionaires. So they're going to come for your property. They are already coming for your 401K with multiple forms of deregulation that open up the floodgates to loot your savings.
As if this is somehow new and urgent... (Score:2)
Which it is not. This industry has been in business for decades. This isn't a new, unusual burden on the electrical systems, it's tech that is new and unique. Not that the industry might be able to optimize their processes, but that's their business, and we rarely consider asking data centers to do that at any scale, which, BTW, they do do already, for profit.
You would think, huh.
Just wait... (Score:2)
... until these people find out about the cement production industry and the steel industry.
But ... but ... (Score:2)
Night time operations (Score:2)
These gas companies work mostly at night. They use electricity when most customers are not, and help balance demand over the 24 hour cycle.
My Comfort (Score:3)
I want all the comforts of a modern life but I also want to stop all industry because I heard that energy is bad and I want to feel good about that and also I don't know how anything actually works that I believe is essential in my life.
(anybody remember the Greenpeace campaign to ban chlorine?)
WTF (Score:2)
Almost all of those things listed are goods or services provided for sale to the public. The DataMining gives nothing back, except to a very select few. Heck there are barely any employees.
Carbon Dioxide is NOT a "pollutant" (Score:3)
In July, the EPA proposed rescinding its rule that CO2 is a pollutant: https://www.epa.gov/regulation... [epa.gov]
It is incorrect to label these countries as "polluters". Carbon Dioxide is not a poison, it is an essential compound that plays an enormously important role in maintaining life on this planet.