As long as energy production and consumption has severe downstream impacts, yes, we do need to wade into this territory.
All serious, viable plans for decarbonization include a massive increase in electricity consumption, due to electrification of transportation, industrial processes, etc, along with an increase in renewable energy production. This isn't new, but AI datacenters are a very large net new single user of electricity.
If the amount of money already poured into AI had gone into the rollout of clean energy infrastructure, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, but here we are.
It makes perfect sense from a policy perspective, given that there are a small number of players in this space with more resources than most governments, to piggyback on this wave of infrastructure buildout.
It also makes plenty of financial sense. Initial capex for adding clean energy generation is high, but given both the high electricity usage of AI datacenters, and the long-term impact on the grid that someone will eventually have to pay for, companies deploying AI infrastructure would be smart to use the huge amount of capital at their disposal to generate their own electricity.
It's also, from a deployment standpoint, pretty straightforward — we're talking about massive, rectangular, warehouse-like buildings with flat roofs. We should have already mandated that all such buildings be covered in solar panels with on-site storage, at a minimum.
Sadly we’re already in the long term impact of the previous energy revolution, so we’d better get starting now instead of when we’ll feel the impact of this next compute evolution.
All serious, viable plans for decarbonization include a massive increase in electricity consumption, due to electrification of transportation, industrial processes, etc, along with an increase in renewable energy production. This isn't new, but AI datacenters are a very large net new single user of electricity.
If the amount of money already poured into AI had gone into the rollout of clean energy infrastructure, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, but here we are.
It makes perfect sense from a policy perspective, given that there are a small number of players in this space with more resources than most governments, to piggyback on this wave of infrastructure buildout.
It also makes plenty of financial sense. Initial capex for adding clean energy generation is high, but given both the high electricity usage of AI datacenters, and the long-term impact on the grid that someone will eventually have to pay for, companies deploying AI infrastructure would be smart to use the huge amount of capital at their disposal to generate their own electricity.
It's also, from a deployment standpoint, pretty straightforward — we're talking about massive, rectangular, warehouse-like buildings with flat roofs. We should have already mandated that all such buildings be covered in solar panels with on-site storage, at a minimum.