GE Vernova, 75,000 employees, 100 countries. Launched as a standalone company in 2024. So Scott is really an innovator and an entrepreneur as well. Mr. President, welcome to Axios. Thank you very much for this partnership. We appreciate your being here and for believing in Axios. You came by, you were just starting. You came by. Jim VandeHei, our CEO, and I have a little glass cage at Axios. You came by and we really appreciated that. We had a lot of fun. Your office space helped inspire our headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., so fluid for sure, as young and energetic. Love it. Scott, backstage you told me a stat that instantly stuck in my mind. You said that on any given day, 55% of the electrons flowing through the United States are passing through GE Vernova equipment. Just unpack that amazing stat.
Yeah, I mean listen, we've built this grid over a hundred years and it's about a third of the electrons globally that are powered with our equipment through our customers every day. And that's a big deal because that creates a real responsibility for us to nurture and protect that install base. But also in a period of time today where there's such a need for more energy, to get everything out of that existing install base, whether that be gas — you know, half of the global gas install base in the world is with our equipment — nuclear, we have 65 plants in the US running with our equipment, and we've got opportunities to upgrade that install base in different ways, as just a few examples.
Scott, take us behind the scenes of GE Vernova and how, since you became a standalone company, the culture you've tried to instill internally, externally, and how you're making a difference.
Well, it starts with just practical adult conversations on finding ways to build things at scale. This isn't a time for hobbies. We need to make investments that can really move the needle substantially and quickly. So as an example, we've invested $700 million this year in new manufacturing capacity in the US, 1,800 new jobs. But we're not trying to make gas turbines tomorrow or transformers tomorrow the way we made them yesterday. We're complementing those 1,800 jobs with more automation, with more robotics, because the opportunity to serve this country and the world is so great today. We've got to do things differently, and that's what we're focused on doing with a humble entrepreneurial spirit.
Now, you know New York well. After Cornell, you got a graduate degree at Columbia University. What's Climate Week like for you, and what are you and your team, including our friend Tom Rance, hoping to accomplish this week?
Well, I think this is a great opportunity to connect with people that are swimming in the same direction as you, but also having conversations with those that maybe have different views. So it's a good platform for us to exchange thoughts. I think energy is critical today, and when you think about electric power, which is what we do, it only creates about 20% of the world's energy today. The other 80% is still coming from liquid molecules, from coal, and industrial applications. Most people think that 20% needs to double. It's not going to double if we don't bring a lot of different archetypes of people together to find ways to do business together. And that's where I find a week like this to be an important week to have those engaging conversations.
Scott, every time you and I talk, you want to talk about breakthrough technologies. It's very much the way Axios thinks with the future of energy. When you look at hydrogen, nuclear, direct air capture, which of these breakthrough technologies are going to move fastest in the decade ahead?
Nuclear is moving very rapidly, and it's really important because one of the things we haven't talked about yet is that power density matters. You know, land is going to become a challenge. You can take a 300 megawatt small modular reactor that we're constructing right now, and that one football field-sized solution powers 300,000 homes in the US. We're building the first one right now in Ontario, Canada. We have our first application into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to start construction on the first plant in the US that we hope to be there by sometime in '27 in construction. So we're going to need zero-carbon electrons that can run at base load, and nuclear is a great solution for that. So we're incredibly excited about where we're going with our nuclear program, but it's not the only area. We've got a running direct air capture site today. We'll announce this week a 1500 ton annual direct air capture facility that takes the carbon right out of the air. That is technology that we're going to continue to invest in from here. And grid software, you know, we need to continue to make the machine of the grid smarter to manage the bidirectional flows of electrons, and I like our chances in that regard. So those are different technologies in the space that we think are critical for us and for the world.
You heard Jared Hagan and I were talking about the demand for energy that AI is going to drive. How do you meet that demand and still keep the grid reliable and affordable?
I actually think the growth makes it easier because, you know, the challenge of driving towards a more affordable or a more decarbonized system is that much tougher in a flat market or in a down market. In this case, we've got a real growth market. And as the CEO of the company, that gives me no excuses. That gives me more ammunition to invest for the long term that can ultimately drive the affordability curve down, because we have that much more confidence and conviction that the market is going to be there at a higher level for a longer period of time. And that's exactly why we are making the investments and the announcements we're making that will ultimately improve the affordability. It will also ultimately include and improve the decarbonization dynamics in the country. I mean, nuclear is going to matter, and nuclear is going to happen much faster than it would have happened otherwise if not for things like the hyperscaler demand. So for me, there's a lot to be excited about in this market.
In my coverage of tech, Jim VandeHei and I have written a lot about AI, and just digging into that makes me wonder how you would possibly forecast the demand, right? Like, we know it's going to be a lot, but if you listen to the top tech companies, we don't know how much is a lot. How do you do your long-term planning?
