NVIDIA’s Marc Spieler: AI, Data Centres, and Energy

**Marc Spieler** (0:00)
The information and opinions presented in this Arc Energy Ideas Podcast are provided for informational purposes only and are subject to the disclaimer link in the show notes.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:09)
This is the Arc Energy Ideas Podcast with Peter Tertzakian and Jackie Forrest, exploring trends that influence the energy business.

**Jackie Forrest** (0:19)
Welcome to the Arc Energy Ideas Podcast. I'm Jackie Forrest.

**Peter Tertzakian** (0:22)
And I'm Peter Tertzakian. Welcome back. Well, Jackie, I'm getting kind of fatigued of doing this timestamp stuff. I wish the world would just slow down a bit. But I guess we have to do it given the news of the day is always moving markets and doing things. And we've got the price of oil with the West Texas Intermediate down to $87.
It's Friday, May 29th. And we're awaiting more news on a potential ceasefire out of Iran. Maybe, maybe not. But what is the situation that's currently going on on the other side of the world?

**Jackie Forrest** (0:53)
Yeah, I thought we'll talk about Iran quickly and a few other news items here from Canada. Well, of course, there's mixed signals here. There's reports that maybe there will be a deal. And if so, it would be a 60-day opening of the Strait of Hormuz. And Iran would clear the mines. But, you know, it's mixed signals because at the same time, we're hearing that Iran hasn't signed off on this. Donald Trump hasn't signed off on this. So I hope it does get resolved, obviously. Inventory levels are getting quite low. And I do think this goes on for another month. Maybe we'll start to see actual, like, shutdown of industry and things like that. So I'm hopeful that we see a change.
So that's the Iran situation. I did want to also talk about the news that a German state-owned energy company is buying gas from the proposed Cylisms LNG project on the West Coast of Canada.

**Peter Tertzakian** (1:35)
So the proposed Cylisms is 12 million tons per annum. The LNG one was 14
The German off-take agreement, I think, is 1 million tons, which is not large. But it's, I think, a good signal, again, that there's a lot of international interest in coming to Canada. It seems like a long way for an LNG tanker to go from the West Coast of BC all the way around. I guess it would go through the Panama Canal and through the Atlantic to Northern Germany through the, I guess.

**Jackie Forrest** (2:04)
Yeah, I mean, smaller ships could go through the Panama Canal. I will say that, you know, these cargoes can be swapped, so it may be that it never arrives. But to me, if I went back pre-2022, I would have said the chances of a German company wanting to buy gas off the West Coast of Canada, zero. But I think this shows the advantage of Canada's geopolitical and geographic location at this time, where people are looking for diversity of supply.
And I did want to have a quote from our Energy Minister Tim Hodgson. We're in a world where our allies are begging us. They are begging us to produce our resources. So this is Canada's time. This is our time to lead.

**Peter Tertzakian** (2:39)
Yeah, it is Canada's time, and it's good to see the German interests. And the Germans did come to Canada a couple of years ago and said, we want your LNG, and we offered them hydrogen, even though we didn't have hydrogen, nor did we have LNG. So anyway, here we are. It's all seemingly coming to pass. It's all about energy.
Now, speaking of energy, I was at an AI conference last week. I think I mentioned that, or I guess it's two weeks ago. I'm losing track of time, and sort of made the statement that AI is an energy play. Certainly, from the perspective of energy analysts, we view it as an energy play, because 100% of the electrical power that goes into a data center is converted into heat, basically, and then you have to cool it on top of that. I mean, this is not really novel in terms of the thinking, certainly within the AI world or the energy world, but for a lot of people, it sort of puts it in the perspective that, okay, from an AI practitioner's perspective, it's all about information processing and accelerating towards, say, artificial general intelligence and all that.
But from an energy perspective, it's all about electrons and molecules getting into the data centers. And I think everyone in the conference, and certainly myself as an AI practitioner, sees that there is a massive step change that has occurred even in the last two, three months in terms of the capabilities of these systems, these platforms such as Clode and OpenAI, etc., Gemini, in vibe coding and agents, spinning out agents that run overnight. And so what has gone from being simple prompts to things that are running and consuming energy. So as an energy play, let's talk about it.