Source: Washington Post. 5.19.25. Salena Zito (Columnist for the Washington Examiner). Article published on Pressreader (link provided). Below are first two sections of full article. 

CARNEGIE, Pa. — Toby Rice’s second-floor office in this middle-class town named after famed industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who made the region the center of American industry nearly 150 years ago, is so unassuming that you would never imagine it’s also where the chief executive of the largest independent natural gas producer in the United States hangs his hat.

At street level next to a liquor store, the door to this former karate studio reads “Shallenial,” marking the only hint that you might be in the right place. Climb the narrow steps and the space opens up to an office unlike any you’ll probably ever see: There’s a seven-foot statue of a gorilla in the corner (gorillas are a theme, even getting the Warhol treatment in one art piece), several neon signs including ones that read “Bold Moves Only” and “Profits & Purpose,” and among the drafting tables — foosball. Oversize “Don’t Tread on Me” and American flags are also prominent.

Silk-screen paintings of Carnegie and other American industrialists face Rice as he pulls up a mid-century turquoise chair and takes a seat. At EQT Corp., the country’s largest independent natural gas producer, business is good — and it’s about to get better thanks to a surging local industry that needs all the Appalachian energy it can get: Artificial intelligence.

“I mean the size of this thing, it’s crazy,” Rice says. “We are hearing estimates for power demand for AI that’s anywhere [from] 50 to 75 gigawatts of power, which is the equivalent of the power needed to power 10 to 15 New York Cities.”

Exactly 47 miles due east, we find Shawn Steffee, the business manager for Boilermakers Local 154, who is standing across the road from what used to be Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plant, the Homer City Generating Station. Towering behind him is a lush, green mountain of ash from the former coal burner, which is now in the middle of a bustling transformation to natural gas to power an adjacent AI data center. EQT is expected to be one of several natural gas providers in the running to support the project.

“I’ve said this once, and I’ll say it again: I don’t know a damn thing about AI, but the boilermakers and the building trades know how to build power plants, whether it’s nuclear, gas or coal,” Steffee says.

Between Homer City and Carnegie lies the city of Pittsburgh, where Joanna Doven’s brand-new Bakery Square office sits along the city’s newly minted AI Avenue, a stone’s throw from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Both institutions are known for producing some of the brightest minds in the country when it comes to artificial intelligence: Carnegie Mellon was home to the first AI computer program in 1956 and is the top-ranked university in the field today; Pitt has drawn acclaim for its medical and biomedical breakthroughs utilizing AI.

Several years ago, Doven recognized that Western Pennsylvania, with Pittsburgh at its heart, was poised to be the center of the AI revolution. Local politicians were often dismissive of anything that had to do with natural gas, but to Doven, the connection was obvious between the anchors of research and innovation coming from Pitt and Carnegie Mellon and the abundance of resources nearby to power it. So, she started the AI Strike Team, a group of leaders she assembled from industry, academia, health care and the trade unions to work together to position the region to lead the AI revolution; and she located it right here in Pittsburgh’s “Tech Alley.”

“Our roots here are building hard things — from steel to robotics — and they perfectly match the demands of this moment,” Doven says.

The coming AI boom

Western Pennsylvania is at the core of America’s next Industrial Revolution, and is driven by the same mix of energy, grit and expertise that made it the center of the first one.

We’ve been here before. When Edwin Drake discovered oil 100 miles north of Pittsburgh in Titusville in 1859, it was a moment that changed the country’s trajectory from a primarily agrarian society and transformed it to an industrial one fueled by the oil boom that began the modern petroleum industry.

Before Drake’s discovery, the country was reliant on whale oil and coal, and it led to the world’s first oil-production companies. Think John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. That, in turn, led to demand for new machinery and tools, which then led to a boom in steel and iron industries, which then spawned other industries, transportation systems, technologies and factories. It marked a period of rapid change that spurred the growth of towns and cities throughout the country.

Last month in Homer City, the smokestacks of the generating facility were brought down, and all believed that hope was lost for the little village and the surrounding Indiana County. A week later, the newly formed Homer City Redevelopment announced the plant would be redeveloped into a $10 billion artificial intelligence and data center with a massive on-site natural-gas-fired power plant that would rank as one the largest capital projects in Pennsylvania history.

Today, the shovel-ready project is already humming. There are projected to be more than 10,000 construction jobs along with 1,000 direct and indirect jobs permanently on the site or serving it — jobs that include scientists, engineers, artificial-intelligence managers, physicists and chemists, all the classic foundations of the American workforce.

The site will have seven natural-gas-powered turbines that will provide 4.5 gigawatts of power to drive the energy needs of AI hyperscale data centers on the new campus. That power will come from the Marcellus Shale. The AI intellect will come from the universities. And though conventional wisdom would have you think these projects would come from Silicon Valley, they will instead come from the rolling hills of Appalachia.

We are in another Drake moment — only this time Rockefeller and Carnegie aren’t leading the revolution, it’s Rice, Steffee and Doven, the innovators, leaders and artisans who will go down in history as being at the heart of it.

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Opinion | The future of AI is in western Pennsylvania – Washington Post

 

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