THE SET-UP: We are about to re-enter a supernatural fantasyland where record-setting heat, landscape-altering floods, crop-killing droughts and unprecedented wildfires are all part of an unknowable mystery. Any so-called “science” that claims to explain phenomena better understood as the expressed will of Almighty God will be dismissed as a “hoax” and summarily dispatched from public policy. Within minutes of taking the oath, the man God saved from a bullet fragment will pull out a diamond-tipped phallus and drill, baby, drill. Energy will be unleased. EVs will be unplugged. And we will live happily ever after in a world where the laws of physics are overturned by Executive Order.
On the other hand, all the magical thinking in the world will not make climate pollution suddenly disappear. It will not turn down the heat or stop extreme weather or keep the insurance business from fleeing climate-distressed markets. But, with Silicon Valley’s A.I.-Bros and Crypto-Bros fully integrated into Trump’s administration, that magical thinking is exactly the sort of “disruption” they need to break free from any and all regulatory limits on their insatiable appetite for power—both literally and figuratively. - jp
TITLE: Power failure: What Ohio's data-center boom means for the state's farming communities.
https://thefern.org/2024/12/power-failure/
EXCERPTS: New Albany is also the epicenter of Ohio’s data center boom, and a city effectively controlled by Ohio’s richest man: Les Wexner, the retail billionaire behind Victoria’s Secret, who according to Forbes, recently netted an $800 million windfall by investing in an artificial intelligence data center. The two new lines, once completed, will also power a cluster of Amazon data centers in New Albany and a massive new factory being built by Intel, lured to Ohio by $2 billion in state incentives. Recently, Amazon and Intel signed a deal with each other—after securing a $3 billion grant from the US government—to make chips for the military. And on December 16, Amazon said it plans to invest another $10 billion in new data centers in Ohio by the end of 2030.
Data centers, in the plainest terms, are nothing more than buildings—gleaming windowless monstrosities but just buildings. The danger comes from what’s inside. Computers, servers, data storage drives, network equipment and communication connections, and everything else needed to prop up the fragile infrastructure of our rapacious tech boom. In Ohio, many of those data centers service Amazon, which defines the need for such a site bluntly: “It is the physical facility that stores any company’s digital data.” Because that data, for an online juggernaut like Amazon, essentially is the company, they protect it with redundancies and backup systems, with air conditioning and water cooling and fire suppression systems, and physical security measures wired to surveillance and alarm systems. Every bit of it demands more and more electricity, amping up demand for fossil fuels, and it requires astounding amounts of water—a large data center can require as much as five million gallons of water a day.
And with the rise of crypto mining and artificial intelligence, that usage continues to climb. Ohio has more than a hundred data centers now. Amazon, Meta, Google, they’re all here and all expanding, and Microsoft is coming next. Attracted by hundreds of millions in tax breaks, now they’re pressing for more. Much of that growth was sold as economic salve, with Ohio an easy mark, reeling as it was from the loss of nearly half a million manufacturing jobs during the Great Recession; the giveaways justified with the promise of reviving communities, despite the fact that most data centers are being built in the state’s richest city, and they offer few jobs, and when they do, they are mostly low-paying, contract security jobs. It wasn’t just the tax breaks. Massive sweetheart deals for cheap electricity, still undisclosed, were hashed out with a public utility commission captured by industry, with no mandate to safeguard against broader disaster, no concern for our shared future.
All told, the power needs of Ohio’s data centers are already staggering, but the near future is hard to even imagine. By 2030, in Central Ohio alone, demand will skyrocket to more than 5,000 megawatts—roughly equivalent to the power consumption of all of New York City. That power must be delivered to those facilities somehow. And so along with the data centers, miles and miles of new high-voltage transmission lines are needed in the state. AEP has chosen distressed farms and politically weak rural communities as sites to clear paths for more transmission lines, and for good reason: these communities have the least influence to resist such encroachment.
This expansion of the electric grid and demand for power comes at a moment when the consensus among scientists is dire at best. We’re a mere decade from a point of no return if we are to avoid the worst consequences of climate catastrophe. If we fail to recognize the stakes, our generation will have to answer the hard questions of history. How did we become so oblivious to our own peril? Our oceans are rising and acidifying, our forests burning, our rivers flooding, our ice caps melting, our soil degrading, our harvests scorched by drought. How did we allow ourselves to be gripped by this collective death drive?
TITLE: Alberta wants to build huge data centres for AI. That could bring a big emissions challenge
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/blake-shaeffer-alberta-electricity-greenhouse-emissions-1.7411530
EXCERPTS: Research has suggested that a single query run through the generative artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT consumes 10 times more power than a standard Google search. More advanced uses of AI, such as the generation of photos, use significantly more power.
"AI's energy-intensive nature raises concerns about power availability, grid reliability and its implication on emissions," reads [a recent report from the RBC Climate Action Institute].
RBC stated that if all data centre projects currently being reviewed by regulators proceed, they would account for 14 per cent of Canada's total power needs by 2030.
The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) says 12 data centre projects are now in the assessment phase, representing 6,455 megawatts of load.
If that's all built, it would roughly double Alberta's electricity greenhouse gas emissions, said Blake Shaffer, an economist with the University of Calgary who specializes in electricity markets.
"[That's] about the same level when the province was powered by coal," Shaffer wrote on Bluesky.
In an interview with CBC News on Tuesday, [Alberta Technology Minister Nate] Glubish said three main options are available to power data centres today — nuclear, hydro and natural gas.
"Natural gas is really the only option for the next three to five years. And that's why we've been pushing this approach in Alberta, which is, we have virtually limitless natural gas," Glubish said.
"We're really good at developing this. We can help you get projects built here and help you to scale.
About a week after the Alberta government said it would seek $100 billion worth of artificial intelligence data centre infrastructure, celebrity investor Kevin O'Leary outlined his proposal for what he calls the world's largest artificial intelligence data centre.
Called Wonder Valley, it would be built in the Municipal District of Greenview, near Grande Prairie, Alta., with a total investment over the lifetime of the project of more than $70 billion, according to a news release.
O'Leary Ventures has pitched a goal of providing 7.5 gigawatts of power generation capacity, fuelled by off-grid natural gas and geothermal energy.
An artificial intelligence data centre is proposed for the Municipal District of Greenview, south of Grande Prairie, Alta. It's a partnership between the MD and Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary. As Travis McEwan reports, the 58-building project would run off grid on natural gas and geothermal infrastructure.
While geothermal energy holds great potential in Alberta, particularly in the Peace region, it remains a still-developing technology with no large-scale commercial deployment in North America, said Jason Wang, a senior electricity analyst with the Pembina Institute, a clean-energy think tank.
That makes the reliance on natural gas — which is currently cheap but notoriously volatile — a questionable choice for powering data centres, according to Wang.
"If natural gas powers six additional gigawatts of data centres, annual emissions could rise by 16 million tonnes of CO2e — a three per cent increase in Canada's total emissions," the RBC Climate Action Institute said.
TITLE: US watchdog warns that AI will drain American power grid
https://readwrite.com/us-watchdog-warns-that-ai-will-drain-american-power-grid/
EXCERPTS: NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation), an energy watchdog, has warned that the rising demand for artificial intelligence could outpace power grids.
AI is currently experiencing major issues with power supply. So much so, that companies like Microsoft have begun to invest in reopening nuclear power plants. NERC now warns that there’s a possibility that this could lead to blackouts in both the US and Canada.
On top of this, cryptocurrency’s revived boom since the election of Donald Trump has continued to put stress on power grids across the country. Bitcoin currently sits at $105,000, and its breaking of the $100K mark has sparked a renewed interest in mining.
On the AI front, it is estimated by a Goldman Sachs report that the US will use an estimated 8% of its power to fuel AI by 2030. That’s a 160% increase.
NERC’s 2024 report also highlighted that more electric vehicles are adding to the stresses on power grids.
A major part of NERC’s concerns is the lack of progress on installing alternative energy sources. Options like solar panels are constantly hit with delays, which could knee-cap energy reserves as big tech companies shift more and more into energy-guzzling AI projects.
SEE ALSO:
Tech companies exploring nuclear energy to power AI
https://thred.com/tech/tech-companies-exploring-nuclear-energy-to-power-ai/
AI power demands are rising, and so are attacks on utilities. Here’s what they can do about it.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ai-power-demands-are-rising-and-so-are-attacks-on-utilities-heres-what-t/733944/