is a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home , a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals.
Even if AI turns out not to be as much of an energy hog as people are making it out to be, it could still spell out trouble for power grids across the US.
Tech companies are already burning through increasing amounts of electricity to train and run new AI models. And they’re asking for a lot more electricity as they try to outcompete each other. That rising demand is already starting to reshape the energy system, with utilities scrambling to build out new gas plants and pipelines.
But all these plans to reshape the US energy system could be based on an AI bubble. With overexcited investors pumping money into tech companies afraid of missing the bandwagon but still at risk of developing AI tools that ultimately flop, utilities are also faced with a wave of speculation over data centers’ energy needs.
“The uncertainty is unnerving”
The uncertainty is unnerving considering the costs that Americans could wind up paying when it comes to higher utility bills and more pollution, a recent report warns. A transition to cleaner and more affordable energy sources has been making progress slowly in the US. That’s in peril unless tech companies and utilities demand more transparency and opt for more renewables like solar and wind energy.
“While the AI boom provides exciting opportunities, there are many risks to not approaching energy needs with a deliberate and informed response that takes long term impacts into account,” Kelly Poole, lead author of the report published this month by shareholder advocacy group As You Sow and environmental organization Sierra Club, said in a briefing with reporters.
The nation’s fleet of gas-fired power plants would grow by nearly a third if all of the new gas projects proposed between January 2023 and January 2025, as the generative AI industry heated up, come to fruition. The amount of new gas capacity that utilities and independent developers proposed jumped by 70 percent during that time frame, driven in large part by rising data center electricity demand.
Prior to the generative AI boom, electricity demand had pretty much flatlined for more than a decade with energy efficiency gains. But new data centers, souped-up for AI, are a lot more energy-hungry than they have been in the past. A rack of computers in a traditional data center might use 6-8 kilowatts of power — roughly equivalent to the power used by three homes in the US, Dan Thompson, a principal research analyst at S&P Global, explained in the briefing. AI, however, requires more powerful computer chips to run more complicated tasks. The power required to run one of those high-density racks equals about 80 to 100 homes’ worth of power, or upward of 100 kilowatts, according to Thompson.
“Essentially what you’re looking at is a small town’s worth of power being deployed,” he said.
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