Actually, using more energy is never good for the climate. While a lot of new facilities are "clean" (still needs quite a lot of infrastructure coming from across the globe), we tend to not decommission older, dirtier, plants, which results in a net increase of emissions. Emissions from "dirty" energies are on the rise, globally.
Don't forget also, that Trump's solution to the increasing energy demand of the USA (he mentioned AI specifically) would be to, and I quote, "drill, baby, drill". That is to say, not very good for the climate.
This phenomenon proved itself earlier with bitcoin mining operations - contrary to environmentalist complaints the additional base load with unique properties of being 24/7, stable, and easily turned off during peaks and emergencies provided significant extra demand/funding for more grid solar, wind, and batteries facilities than would be built otherwise. Now Texas is the leading state in new grid solar and grid batteries for two years running.
The world is dynamic, not static, so be wary of extrapolations based on a narrow snapshot. Malthusian projections based on static assumptions are often disproven.
While Texas produces more clean energy than ever, it also produces more "dirty" energy than ever[1], mosty from natural gas and lignite plants. Similar story for other places.
The electric mix isn't actually that important, what matters is the volume of dirty energy still produced. And increasing electrical consumption is not actually helping closing older plants.
1. We are living in a mass extinction (that's not going to happen: it's happening now and we can observe it). This is due to what humans do with abundant energy. Solving the energy problem will not solve this issue.
2. We depend mostly on fossil fuels, and those are not unlimited. Alternatives don't seem to be able to compensate for fossil fuels (which is not a bad point given 1. above).
We should start accepting this and moving towards a world that needs less energy. And stop with nonsense like this.
Actually, using more energy is never good for the climate. While a lot of new facilities are "clean" (still needs quite a lot of infrastructure coming from across the globe), we tend to not decommission older, dirtier, plants, which results in a net increase of emissions. Emissions from "dirty" energies are on the rise, globally.
Don't forget also, that Trump's solution to the increasing energy demand of the USA (he mentioned AI specifically) would be to, and I quote, "drill, baby, drill". That is to say, not very good for the climate.
This phenomenon proved itself earlier with bitcoin mining operations - contrary to environmentalist complaints the additional base load with unique properties of being 24/7, stable, and easily turned off during peaks and emergencies provided significant extra demand/funding for more grid solar, wind, and batteries facilities than would be built otherwise. Now Texas is the leading state in new grid solar and grid batteries for two years running.
The world is dynamic, not static, so be wary of extrapolations based on a narrow snapshot. Malthusian projections based on static assumptions are often disproven.
While Texas produces more clean energy than ever, it also produces more "dirty" energy than ever[1], mosty from natural gas and lignite plants. Similar story for other places.
The electric mix isn't actually that important, what matters is the volume of dirty energy still produced. And increasing electrical consumption is not actually helping closing older plants.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/texas-set-smash-...
And what of the heated and polluted ground water where these data centers operate?
The take is investor-grade BS.
We have two problems:
1. We are living in a mass extinction (that's not going to happen: it's happening now and we can observe it). This is due to what humans do with abundant energy. Solving the energy problem will not solve this issue. 2. We depend mostly on fossil fuels, and those are not unlimited. Alternatives don't seem to be able to compensate for fossil fuels (which is not a bad point given 1. above).
We should start accepting this and moving towards a world that needs less energy. And stop with nonsense like this.
>Step 2: We build a lot of solar+batteries, geothermal, nuclear
But will we actually?
Am I reading The Onion?
That is a very funny way to say bad. It's all net negative and it's mostly for nothing.