U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) told a crowd gathered in Albuquerque’s Mesa del Sol community Tuesday that they have a front-row seat to the “most scientifically exciting time in the history of planet Earth.”
Heinrich was speaking on a panel alongside former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Pacific Fusion co-founder and CEO Eric Lander moments after Lander’s company held a groundbreaking ceremony for a new $1 billion research and manufacturing campus south of Albuquerque’s international airport.
The facility, which is planned to eventually grow into a 225,000-square-foot campus, will serve Pacific Fusion’s mission of creating more power than it consumes by 2030. It is expected to create more than 200 permanent jobs, according to a news release.
Communities across New Mexico have grappled with the state’s aging power grid. While local officials and utility authorities work to modernize the grid, they have to do so while complying with the state’s landmark Energy Transition Act, which requires utilities to use 50% renewable energy by 2030; 80% by 2040 and 100% by 2045.
“As big as our challenges are, the pace of solutions is going to allow us to meet and exceed those challenges,” Heinrich said during the panel discussion. “You are living in the most scientifically exciting time in the history of planet Earth.”
Pacific Fusion’s campus builds on research done at Sandia National Laboratories with the “Z Machine,” which uses electrical currents and magnetic fields to produce high temperatures and X-rays.
Lander told the crowd gathered at the groundbreaking site that he believed the nation’s “prosperity has been built on the foundation of affordable energy.”
In a statement celebrating Tuesday’s groundbreaking, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said that the Pacific Fusion’s “decision to build here demonstrates that New Mexico leads the nation in creating the industries of the future.”
Schmidt, the former Google CEO, told attendees he believes the U.S. is in a race with China when it comes to fusion energy research. Industry leaders have recently told state lawmakers that the nation is racing China in quantum computing breakthroughs, as well.
Part of Schmidt’s solution, he said with an apology to the crowd, is building data centers in rural communities. The “neural network” infrastructure of large-scale artificial intelligence programs could ultimately use 11% of the nation’s energy by 2030, he added.
“We have to build our own power systems, they need to be in rural areas, we need to build these data centers,” he said. “I’m sorry if you don’t like them.”
Hyperscale data centers have come under intense scrutiny in New Mexico. U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) on Monday sent a letter to several state agencies demanding more information about water use related to Project Jupiter, the Oracle and OpenAI data center under construction in Doña Ana County.
Speaking to reporters after Tuesday’s panel discussion, Heinrich said he believes that such matters are “largely a local permitting issue” but said developers “can do a better job” when it comes to Project Jupiter’s proposed greenhouse gas emissions. Source NM previously reported that, if approved, the data center’s on-site power source would emit as many greenhouse gases as New Mexico’s largest cities combined.
“On the water front, we should expect the best technology” from developers, Heinrich said. “What they have consumed so far is, by my math, the equivalent of about 60-and-change acres of alfalfa, so I think we need to think about it in terms of the opportunity costs for the jobs and the investment.”
