AI, datacenters, ignorant politicians: the coming electricity crisis

A trillion-dollar contradiction

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words: Electricity is becoming the most valuable commodity on earth. The AI revolution will drive demand to levels that intermittent power from breezes and sunshine cannot meet. The data center boom has already forced the world's most sophisticated technology companies to sign long-term nuclear power supply agreements, restart dormant reactors, and fund advanced reactor development.

The picture that paints a thousand words is a chart of Electricity production by source, World that should settle the electricity debate once and for all. The chart shows an increasing reliance on coal and natural gas generated electricity over the last 30 years, i.e., fossil fuels, and highlights the challenges in transitioning to non-fossil fuel electricity sources.

For thirty years, the world has poured trillions of dollars into more than 350,000 wind turbines, millions of solar panels, other so-called "renewable" electricity systems and the support structures to run them (that is trillions with a "T").

The result after three decades and trillions of dollars? The share from nuclear for emission-free, continuous, and uninterruptable electricity has narrowed.

This is not a scientific mystery. It is a political one. And it raises an uncomfortable question that politicians in every wealthy nation have been dodging for years: if you truly believe that carbon dioxide emissions are cooking the planet, why have you spent three decades systematically blocking the one proven source of electricity that is both emission-free and always on?

"Renewable" electricity is only intermittent electricity generated from unreliable breezes and sunshine. It has in turn been supported by substantial expansion in coal and natural gas to support the variability of the technology, which requires 100% back up all the time.

Wind turbines and solar panels cannot manufacture any of the more than 6,000 products and transportation fuels for the eight billion people on this planet, and they certainly cannot power a civilization that is about to demand dramatically more electricity, not less.

So, while trillions of dollars have been poured into a clean electricity transition, the real elephant in the room is where has all the money gone? Certainly not alleviating the cost of living in the developed, nor the developing world. And certainly not into substantial material success in achieving electricity security.

The coming electricity crisis

The demand surge is no longer theoretical. Data centers and artificial intelligence systems consumed an estimated 2% of global electricity in 2022, The combined electricity consumption of just four companies, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta, more than doubled between 2017 and 2021, reaching roughly 72 terawatt-hours.

The electricity demand increase is clear: