In the new world of EVs and AI, renewable green energy means more gas or coal capacity, not less

Technology demands are outrunning misguided climate/energy policies. ‘Officials admit – more hogs means a bigger trough’ (Telegraph) but laws of physics can’t be overridden by government demands, however much they insist on barking up the wrong tree with puny renewables and rejecting available fuel sources.
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It is no secret that the expanding suite of AI technologies are becoming powerful drivers of additional demand for electricity, says The Telegraph.

They are, simply put, enormous energy hogs.

This technological revolution seems destined to soon overwhelm and dominate almost every aspect of modern society, but there’s a catch: It is taking place simultaneously with coordinated efforts by national and international governments to prematurely do away with some of the cheapest and most abundant forms of 24/7 power generation.

The energy hogs, in other words, are lined up at the electricity trough, but that trough is being forced to run dry by ill-considered public policies.

The challenge is illustrated in a recent report by the IEA that estimates the AI models and cryptocurrency mining operations could result in a doubling of power demands from data centers globally. Another recent study estimates that “energy demands from AI servers in 2027 could be on par with those of Argentina, the Netherlands or Sweden combined.”

Those findings are in line with remarks made by Open AI CEO Sam Altman during a panel discussion at January’s WEF conference in Davos. There, Altman is quoted as saying AI’s “enormous” energy needs will require a “breakthrough” in low carbon generation technology soon.

“We still don’t appreciate the energy needs of this technology,” Altman told attendees. “There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough. We need [nuclear] fusion or we need radically cheaper solar plus storage or something at massive scale.”

But getting to a new, radical solution at massive scale will inevitably take many years to accomplish. Unfortunately, AI, cryptocurrency mining and – much more so – electric vehicle charging, along with normal population and economic growth, are set to require a doubling or more of generation capacity in the near term. If the power isn’t there, the technologies can’t progress according to plan.

Complicating matters for power providers is the drive by governments at all levels to force retirement, often prematurely, of some of the most reliable, plentiful, and affordable forms of generation.

For the past decade, this drive has focused mainly on forcing coal-fired power plants off the grid and replacing them mainly with less-emitting natural gas plants.

More recently, however, the drive to lower emissions has begun to focus increasingly on also retiring gas-fired plants.
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Proponents of this obsession over carbon dioxide will invariably claim the difference can all be made up with more wind and solar. But former US Energy Secretary Ernesto Moniz, an appointee of President Barack Obama, told attendees at an event in Texas that goal could be unattainable, saying, “We’re not going to build 100 gigawatts of new renewables in a few years.”

Moniz further pointed out that rapidly rising demands stemming from expansion of AI, crypto-mining and EV charging would need to be met by more coal and natural gas generation, not less of it.

Full article here.
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Image credit: leverageedu.com