The Fossil-AI Nexus: Petrostate Capitalism, Computing Power, and the Production of Powered Land

Justin Kollar

No k9df4_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: The so-called AI boom is part of an infrastructure-led industrial strategy, converting speculative computing demand into bankable fossil generation, transmission expansion, and water- and land-intensive industrial sites. This article bridges digital infrastructure studies and the new state capitalism literature by theorizing compute as a socially produced resource whose availability depends on territorial governance. I argue that the buildout is being assembled through a fossil–AI nexus, a fossil–finance–platform coalition that produces powered land: an emergent asset form whose value derives from positionality in a constrained energy system that secures deliverable 'firm' power through revenue guarantees, deliverability rights, and cost-allocation arrangements. Drawing on a review of major gas-to-data centre co-location projects and a comparative analysis of PJM and ERCOT, I identify three recurring de-risking channels that convert uncertain load forecasts into durable, carbon-intensive infrastructure: revenue certainty, delivery certainty, and cost shifting. I show how 'reliability,' alongside security and competitiveness framings, compresses timelines, translates engineering criteria into bankability, and narrows public contestation. I also show how opacity, or 'blackboxing,' stabilizes powered land by restricting access to contractual and cost-allocation terms, while relocating politics to transparency disputes and siting conflicts over where data centres go and who pays for the buildout.

Date: 2026-02-18
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/6996b9f7b5ab6be8bd655f24/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:k9df4_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/k9df4_v1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().