cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/32465427
Datacentres consume just 1% of the world’s electricity but may soon demand much more. Their share of US electricity is projected to more than double to 8.6% by 2035, according to BloombergNEF, while the IEA projects datacentres will account for at least 20% of the rich world’s growth in electricity demand to the end of the decade.
“This idea that the lower cost of renewables alone will drive decarbonisation – it’s not enough,” said Daly. “Because if there’s a huge source of energy demand that wants to grow, it will land on these stranded fossil fuel assets.”
Tech companies have resisted pressure to provide detailed data on their AI energy footprints,
The IEA estimates that AI could boost technically recoverable oil and gas reserves by 5% and cut the cost of a deepwater offshore project by 10%. Big oil is even more bullish. “Artificial intelligence is, ultimately, within the industry, going to be the next fracking boom,” Mike Sommers, head of the American Petroleum Institute, told Axios.
At the same time, the oil and gas industry says AI can cut its carbon intensity, for instance by analysing satellite data to spot methane leaks. But even here, critics say there is a gap between digital insights and corporate actions.
Good news is there is increased investment in nuclear energy for data centers, which will go a long way to combat this.
Nuclear energy is never good news.
Solar energy can boil water too. At much lower cost, 10x faster build times, and MUCH less waste … none that has to be guarded for centuries.
Never safe, never clean, never too cheap to meter. The exact opposite of the sales pitches. Rarely built without taxpayer dollars. Name the companies willing to insure one.
Crazy people still get downvoted in Lemmy for reminding everyone that Nuclear energy is the most expensive form of generating power while solar, wind, and water are the cheapest.
When you include storage in your cost calculations, this is far, far from the case. If you don’t include storage, you are pairing renewables with natural gas peaker plants, which defeat a good bit of the point of renewables being fossil-fuel-free.
God no, it will not. Aside from the discussion whether nuclear is really a good way to generate electricity (and I think it’s not): The demand is so insanely huge that it’s actually stacked: green plus coal plus gas plus oil plus nuclear is currently getting “assigned” to genai.
So fossil fuels better? Nuclear works great for France.
What has worked great for France is keeping their nuclear mishaps very well hidden… as it did for the Saint-Laurent meltdown in 1980, and at the Centraco plant in 2011, for two examples.
All nice and well but it is not my point here. My point is that I disagree that adding nuclear is good as it doesn’t remove fossils from the mix in the first place. LLM/genai is a problem no matter how much power you throw at it.