American tech companies have long positioned themselves as pioneers in promoting a green economy, but a new challenge in winning the artificial intelligence (AI) race could jeopardize that goal.
Google and Microsoft Two big tech companies with ambitious environmental goals, Microsoft and Huawei, have reported rising carbon emissions in recent years due to new, power-hungry data centers needed to support the AI boom. The companies have committed to becoming carbon neutral or carbon negative by 2030, but their apparent desire to emerge as global leaders in AI capabilities seems to be driving their emissions-heavy AI ambitions, energy and technology experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“A lot of corporate virtue signaling around sustainability and carbon reduction is just that: virtue signaling. And computing power requires lots of energy, and that energy often doesn't come from 'renewable' sources like wind or solar; it requires fossil fuels,” Daniel Cochran, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Technology Policy Center, told DCNF. (Related: Trump says gas and nuclear power will provide 'enormous power' to win AI race against China)
An aerial view of an Amazon Web Services data center is seen near a single-family home in Stone Ridge, Virginia, on July 17, 2024. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
“Now that these companies are entering the AI race, they can't just rely on low-capacity energy sources. They need massive amounts of computing power to train AI models,” Cochran continued. “We've reached that point, where we're facing real competition, especially in China. We have to make a decision: Do we continue to virtue-preach on energy, or do we build enough energy infrastructure to be competitive on a global scale?”
Cochran also emphasized that it is in America's national security interest for its tech companies to beat China's capable competitors in the AI race and achieve a dominant position in the global AI market over the next 15 years or so. Part of that interest lies in AI's enormous commercial and culturally shaping potential, Cochran said, adding that the technology could also have military applications that could change how conflicts are fought and won. According to To the United States Military University.
Republican strategist and energy lobbyist Mike McKenna recently wrote about the Google report in his personal newsletter.
“Google's electricity needs (which are typically generated through natural gas) overwhelmed their good intentions,” McKenna wrote. “The company doesn't seem particularly worried about missing its own schedule. It doesn't need to be.”
In July ReportGoogle said its data center growth caused its corporate emissions to increase 48% compared to a 2019 baseline, and Microsoft said in its own report in May that it Report For similar reasons, emissions have increased by 29.1% since 2020.
Microsoft referred the DCNF to its sustainability report in May, information The company hosted a closed-door roundtable on decarbonizing the power grid at its Seattle headquarters for delegates attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) senior officials and ministerial meetings in 2023.
Looking ahead to 2022-2023, nearly every U.S. regional electricity market is increasing its forecast for the amount of annual growth in U.S. energy demand over the next five years, with some markets expecting growth rates to double. According to According to the Wall Street Journal, data centers could consume 9.1% of all electricity in the United States by 2030, more than double the 4% consumed in 2023. According to To the Electric Power Research Institute.
US electricity demand was nearly stagnant from 2001 to 2021, According to Forbes, Goldman Sachs Predict U.S. electricity demand is projected to grow by about 2.4% between 2022 and 2030, with data centers driving the overall increase by about 0.9%. (RELATED: 'Devastating': Power grid chief warns of Biden's sweeping power plant restrictions)
The US and China are in an AI arms race. Here's what it means https://t.co/2wPo8qnSIg
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 17, 2023
Amazon has made good progress on some of its more ambitious climate plans in contrast to some of its AI competitors, but the AI boom suggests it may have to adjust its approach to meet the demands of others.
Amazon has a presence in the AI space through Amazon Web Services (AWS). Announced The company said in July that it had effectively offset or “matched” all electricity consumption, including for its data centers, with 100% green energy, but said AI-related power demands will require “non-traditional energy sources.” [it] “We need to continue to evolve faster and with more agility than we originally anticipated.” [its] The company announced that it will adopt a “carbon neutral approach” to reach its goal of achieving actual operational carbon neutrality by 2040.
AWS is Opposed The company powered one of its Oregon data centers from a gas pipeline in June, but may turn to other sources of energy besides intermittent sources like wind and solar to meet demand. AWS bought a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania in March for $650 million, and in July reportedly signed a deal to buy nuclear power directly from an East Coast nuclear plant owned by Constellation Energy. According to To the Wall Street Journal.
“The demand for AI datacenters is expected to be enormous,” Isaac Orr, vice president of research at Always On Energy Research, told DCNF. “Trying to do this with wind, solar and battery storage is going to pose a challenge for these companies because none of these companies want to power their datacenters intermittently. So I think we're going to see a delay in the closure of coal-fired power plants and more new gas infrastructure and power plants being built to handle the expected load growth over the next decade.”
“We have to build something to meet this new demand,” Oh continued. “We can't make everything else energy efficient enough to use the existing infrastructure, and natural gas is the only thing we can build right now.”
But doing so may be easier said than done, given Biden administration regulations and inefficient permitting processes. Confirm Tougher regulations on power plants come into effect in April, but some experts warn they will threaten grid reliability by forcing the retirement of reliable fossil-fuel baseload capacity and discouraging the construction of new gas-fired plants at a time when policies promoting data centers and widespread electrification are boosting long-term demand.
“It's estimated that data centers will need as much as 400 gigawatts of additional installed capacity over the next decade – an amount of power comparable to the electricity use of all U.S. homes. The average task given to artificial intelligence consumes roughly 10 times more power than the average query to Google,” McKenna wrote in the newsletter. “Historically, data centers have consistently preferred power plants located on or in their immediate vicinity. In practical terms, this means that significant natural gas power plants and the pipelines that feed those plants will need to be built in a very short time frame, certainly within the next decade.”
“The reality is that the companies in question, like all of us, want to win the race against Communist China,” McKenna told DCNF. “No one is even thinking about other options.”
Google and AWS did not respond to requests for comment.
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