Solar to dominate energy by 2035, but AI data centers will keep fossil fuels in business | TechCrunch

The TechCrunch article draws on BloombergNEF’s New Energy Outlook to project that solar will overtake coal, oil, and gas as the largest power source by 2035, driven purely by falling costs. It pairs this with the claim that AI data centers will still sustain meaningful demand for natural gas and coal through 2050. The piece is strongest when it sticks to the report’s concrete capacity additions and the economic logic behind solar’s rise.

Economic Drivers Stand Out

The article correctly emphasizes that solar’s advance rests on price, not policy alone. It cites Pakistan’s rapid 25 GW build-out after gas prices spiked post-Ukraine invasion as evidence that markets can accelerate deployment even without aggressive climate rules. This keeps the focus on cost curves rather than wishful thinking about subsidies.

Framing Creates an Overstated Tension

The headline and lead—“Solar to dominate energy by 2035, but AI data centers will keep fossil fuels in business”—introduce an artificial contrast. BloombergNEF’s numbers show data centers adding 1 TW of utility-scale solar alongside 370 GW of gas and 110 GW of coal. Yet the article does not place these increments against total global capacity growth, leaving readers without a sense of scale. Fossil fuels are projected to supply 51 percent of incremental generation for data centers by 2050 because of their round-the-clock reliability, but the piece never clarifies what share data centers represent of overall electricity demand. Without that baseline, the continuity of coal and gas appears more consequential than the underlying economics suggest.

“Tech companies and data center developers will have an outsized influence over which energy sources remain viable by mid-century.”

That sentence is accurate as far as it goes, yet it risks implying decisive leverage over the entire energy transition rather than a niche load segment.

Missing Context on Supply Chains and Grid Realities

The article attributes solar’s cost declines to China’s industrial policy and mass manufacturing but stops short of discussing trade frictions, supply-chain concentration, or the integration challenges that could slow deployment. These omissions make the 2035 dominance timeline read more inevitable than it may prove under real-world constraints.

Overall, the reporting usefully surfaces BNEF’s data-center-specific forecasts and the enduring role of dispatchable generation. It would be stronger with clearer proportions of total demand and a brief nod to the technical and geopolitical hurdles that accompany rapid solar growth.

Further Reading

• BloombergNEF New Energy Outlook: https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/new-energy-outlook/
• Latitude Media on data-center demand and fossil-plant lifetimes: https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/will-data-center-demand-extend-the-life-of-fossil-fuel-plants/
• Meredith Annex (BNEF) LinkedIn post on renewables growth and Asia-Pacific shifts: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/meredith-annex-350a548_power-generation-from-renewables-set-to-jump-activity-7317897896756994048-0AuR