Soaring demand from power-hungry AI is derailing Biden’s green energy transition
Opinion by David Blackmon • 19h •
Concerns are growing among energy analysts, executives, and media outlets covering the energy space about the feasibility of the Biden administration’s efforts to subsidize an energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables into reality. Big power demands to supply electric vehicle (EV) recharging, crypto mining operations, and renewable industrial growth needs were already straining the capacities of America’s regional power grids. But now, the explosive growth of AI and its insatiable thirst for electricity threatens to overwhelm them.
These factors put at risk the central planning conceit that the government can overrule market forces through a combination of heavy debt-funded subsidies for renewables and electric cars combined with a withering flood of regulations designed to limit the energy choices of manufacturers and consumers. Despite the federal, state, and local governments having poured hundreds of billions of subsidy dollars into renewables and EVs over the past quarter century, the growth pace of those alternatives has never managed even to match incremental increases in demand.
The advent of new technologies like AI and the power demands of their own industries now threaten to not just overwhelm renewables growth, but also derail Biden administration efforts to force more coal and natural gas power plants into retirement via costly new regulations. Grid managers and state regulators are already working to extend permits to extend the lives of these reliable baseload plants to accommodate the growth of AI-related data centers in their jurisdictions.
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