AI hungry everything is driving good news on the energy front, but not good enough, or I should say, soon enough. Previous Big Tech “friends” to even the most woke of environmental movements, including the lithium, wind, and solar factions, which are nothing but ‘green-friendly,’ have kicked their former green lovers to the curb. The only green that matters, and we all knew this, is the almighty dollar. They need power at any cost.
On the plus side, this will significantly accelerate investment in small reactors and pressur regulators to get the f out of the way. Nuclear is the only source that will sustain the demand, and the Big Tech bros are happily financing their own power plants with an eye on future demand. But that demand is already here. It is sucking up existing resources and driving up residential electricity rates.
Trump is all in on AI, and the tech bros are happy to splash cash at him for his presidential library, but on the ground, it is beginning to crush everyone else. According to the Daily Mail, which you can trust about as far as you can throw them,
However, household electricity prices have increased by 13% so far under Trump and the president recently lashed out in the wake of the election losses, calling affordability a “fake narrative” and a “con job” created by Democrats. “They just say the word,” Trump said last week. “It doesn’t mean anything to anybody. They just say it – affordability.”
Electric bills being unaffordable is certainly a problem. You can’t even live in a 1950s home without electricity. The modern home may have more efficient appliances and LED lights, but we are a very connected digital world, and what do you cut when you can’t cut the electricity you need to live?
It presents a huge problem for Trump and his affordability issues, and that will play on the midterms, but we have to remember a few things about the left, starting with this utter crap.
A coalition of more than 230 environmental groups has demanded a national moratorium on new data centers in the US, the latest salvo in a growing backlash to a booming artificial intelligence industry that has been blamed for escalating electricity bills and worsening the climate crisis.
A majority of the environmental movement, and very likely all 230 groups leaning into this fake outrage, have lobbied for many years at great expense to make electricity expensive. They wanted it to cost more to force you to use less.
The Democrat party, which feeds these groups with your money through now-defunded landromas like USAID (see also the EPA and every other agency), wants that too. That’s the point. It’s about control and forcing you to live with less and effectively do and be less. The problem is real but these are crocodile tears.
And, oh yeah, it’s driving up water costs and hitting residential water bills, too. But it is inevitable, so what to do? Big tech should maybe pay the premium difference if it intends to buy the power before there is enough capacity to meet demand? For both water and electricity? Leave ratepayers to pay lower rates, and they eat the rest.
This would have some potential upsides. First, they’d be anxious to get new capacity online. Capacity on their campuses (my college campus had its own power and water plant and that was in the early eighties). The Elon Musks of the world would spend a lot to save a lot, advancing engineering to address the need and working with the government to wind back excess regulations that limit permitting and approvals. That helps everyone and would potentially bring small-scale nuclear online everywhere, which could eventually bring rates down.
The hitch, of course, is that the same environmental groups who are pretending they care about the cost of electricity would have to pretend they are okay with a massive expansion of nuclear from sea to shining sea.
We can’t get there from here without it. Big Tech did it for money. Maybe they need to buy the green groups. It’s not like the big ones have any actual credibility anyway. Promoting Net Zero pretty much screwed that pooch.
