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Google to award $10 million grant for electrician training

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Funding comes as Big Tech's data center expansion slowed

by

lacking power availability

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Company also releasing white paper with energy policy

recommendations

By Laila Kearney

NEW YORK, April 30 (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.