Trump and the Energy Industry Are Eager to Power AI With Fossil Fuels
The Trump administration is using AI as a way to shill fossil fuels. But even for tech companies that don't care about climate change, renewables are a far better option.
AI is a useful technology for anyone who wants to push forward a basket of issues that include increased surveillance (it needs more and more data to be useful) and energy (AI services are hungry for it, as we’ll see).
Fossil fuels sit squarely in the middle of the mix. As WIRED reports:
“Since taking office, Trump has used AI as a lever to open up opportunities for fossil fuels, including a well-publicized effort to resuscitate coal in the name of more computing power.”
The piece talks about a summit that included Pennsylvanian natural gas producers and pipeline companies. But even on a purely economic level, this doesn’t make sense: companies like Google are turning to renewable energy sources like hydropower not because it’s good for the environment (although that would be a great reason), but because it’s cheaper and more sustainable for them.
“Financial analyst Lazard said last month that installing utility-scale solar panels and batteries is still cheaper than building out natural gas plants, even without tax incentives. Gas infrastructure is also facing a global shortage that makes the timescales for setting up power generation vastly different.”
If these technologies continue to grow in prominence — which for now seems like a safe bet — the demand for electricity is going to grow significantly. For folks with ties to last-century energy sources like fossil fuels, that’s an opportunity to spread propaganda for their cause. But renewables are the obvious way forward, economically, environmentally, and practically. There are still logistical problems to solve with these technologies, but this is something added investment and attention can directly help with.
Of course, the actual growth of AI won’t necessarily match what’s currently being hyped. So there’s a potential pitfall here too: if companies invest in infrastructure based on the hype cycle, they might find themselves in trouble later on when the bubble bursts. On the other hand, if that investment went into renewable infrastructure, we might find that it’s useful nonetheless.
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