The Physical Stack of AI · Energy and grid
You can define a PPA, name the four numbers that matter when one is announced (capacity, term, technology, additionality), and read a hyperscaler-nuclear press release without getting fooled by the headline figure.
Every deal in this unit — Microsoft-Constellation, Google-Kairos, Amazon-X-energy, Meta's RFP — is structured around long-term electricity procurement. The PPA is the contract that turns electricity from a regulated commodity into a financeable asset. Understanding what's in it is the difference between reading the news literally and reading it carefully.
The three lessons in this chapter:
1. What a PPA is — the basic mechanics of a 15- to 25-year fixed-price electricity contract, who signs them, why hyperscalers love them. 2. Reading a PPA announcement — the four numbers that matter (capacity, term, technology, additionality) and the press-release language patterns that obscure or reveal them. 3. The additionality problem — does the PPA actually create new clean generation that wouldn't have existed otherwise, or just paper over existing generation? This is the central honesty test of every clean-energy claim in 2026.
Chapter contains 3 lessons.