Tim Stenovec

How's this energy going to be generated?

So the city of San Jose, a few years ago, set up something called a community choice aggregator.

That's a mouthful, but essentially the city purchases power on behalf of the users within our city limits.

We have used this policy tool to sign 20-year power purchase agreements that enable us to fund new generation capacity.

And because we have a commitment to cleaner power,

energy, what we're essentially doing is buying solar and wind paired with storage.

And that's the key, that the intermittency issue is real.

But when you build enough storage capacity, you can smooth that curve out and actually make it work.

And so San Jose already has one of the

cleanest renewable mixes in the country, but it's largely because we're using that collective purchasing power to invest in cleaner power, invest in innovation in the energy sector.

And it's taken us a long way, and we're going to continue to go down that path because grid-scale storage is the way to clean up the grid.

You mentioned nuclear.

I think that also has to be part of the mix here if we want to really get down our emissions.

But I'm proud of the work we've done in San Jose, and there's a lot of runway left.

So is it fair to say that none of the power that will be used to energize these data centers will be, quote unquote, dirty, non-renewable power, carbon-based stuff?

Well, I can't guarantee none of it will because the power is coming off the grid.

And so what we're doing is using this projected increase in demand to sign new power purchase agreements that are mostly, if not entirely, quote unquote, clean.

But then that gets added to the grid and moves up the overall mix of renewable on the grid.

So I can't promise you that there aren't electrons coming off the grid that are coming from...

nuclear or or a gas uh plant somewhere certainly natural gas nuclear are still very much part of the foundation california isn't isn't really isn't using coal uh we're using geothermal is growing but it's really been solar paired with storage that's where most of the growth is coming from