Related:
Mills: “Given the emerging scales of electricity demand from the cloud and AI, especially when added to the emerging demands from reshoring manufacturing and promoting EVs, it should be clear that policymakers can no longer entertain the idea of an “energy transition.” The nation’s electric sector will need full access to all options to ensure enough electricity is produced reliably, and at prices American businesses, and ultimately the public, can afford.”
Black Rock’s Larry Fink Admits Green Energy IS A FRAUD! – At the WEF, Larry Fink ironically destroys net-zero when it comes to the power needed for AI: “By 2030 [data centers] need 30 gigawatts.. Where’s that power gonna come from? To power these data companies you can’t have intermittent power like wind & solar
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It’s ok to cut poor people’s power off and on, but data centers? Oh no, the horror!
China would probably be happy to host CIA and NSA data centers.
To produce cheaper Europe has been moving most of its industry to China. Even most of europe’s medicines are produced in China. And all that stuff has to be shipped to Europe. Net Zero is a lie.
But we will not use Russian oil and gas, because that would make Europe dependent.
A study by Metabolic and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 2018 noted that
“To reach renewable energy production targets the Netherlands requires a significant percentage of the annual production of five specific critical metals”
“While we are working to reduce our dependence on Arabian and Russian oil, we are creating a new dependency on ( Chinese) metals”
“If the rest of the world would develop renewable electricity capacity at a comparable pace with the Netherlands a considerable shortage would arise”
The population of the Netherlands is 17.7m
I left the Netherlands in 1955, not a day too soon.
It has become a multi cultural nuthouse, from top to bottom.
Totally sucks.
And the brainwashed people suck up all the woke nonsense like mother’s milk.
They do no even realize they have been totally screwed
It sounds like those NEW Energy Intensive Data Centers should NOT be connected to the Grid but should, rather, generate their own electricity. Perhaps pushing their oversupply back into the grid to assist as needed. CoGen!
Black Rock have the cash, are heavy promoters and investors in renewables, there you go Larry Fink, put your money on where your mouth preaches.
Power your sites with renewables, buy some of Bill Gates land as he has plenty, you will need plenty to support your AI “Artificial Incompetence”.
Perfect solution.
Good article, but remember, AI = artificial ignorance. A computer program is only as good as the intellectual limit of the programmer(s).
Thank goodness they’re programmers and not climate scientists
But the IPCC climate “science”, which it owns, is based on computer programs
I like “Automated Idiocy.” Sums it up quite well.
Reality is too complex, so programs rely on models, which deliberately simplify the processes involved, and toss out precision and quantities of data – hence garbage in produces garbage out and is an inherent struggle.
Weather dependent sources are just that.
Because building power plants and components on the grid is where the money is at. It is not in the actual production and distribution of electric power because the profits/rates are heavily regulated by the individual States’ version of the Public Utilities Commission.
Many regulated utilities were ordered to divest their generation assets years ago in order to focus on transmission and distribution (T&D). They make money by earning a return on these assets subject to the approval of their respective public utility commissions. In addition to billing customers for the above ‘wires’, they also collect money on behalf of the energy suppliers, who own and operate the generation assets. Of course, they are only too happy to build transmission lines and substations to connect all the ‘renewable’ energy resources the regulators and politicians have mandated and subsidized to the grid, but absent climate alarmism, none of this would be happening.
Just shows how vulnerable to interruption or sabotage all this trans humanist stuff is no wonder they want the population gone
Make it too affordable and we will see crypto miners sucking down the grids.
When my son was 13 or 14 he set up a rack of bitcoin mining servers in our basement. It was nice in the winter as the waste heat was put to good use, but in the summer he made quite a bit of money off of his parent’s AC.
A quick [Ctrl-f] search on “ESG” turns up a big fat zero. Does everyone here at WUWT know that Black Rock is the Big Kahuna for “ESG”? Oh a search on Blackrock or black rock gets one or two hits.
Dunno why Marc Morano didn’t give that factoid some visibility.
There are two VERY different kinds of ESG. I won’t go into the perverted Woke version, everyone knows what that is – its an abomination to God and Man.
The other is where, say, an investor group is looking to develop copper mines so they look around the globe for an opportunity. “E”-nvironmental is simply looking at risk of hurricanes, floods, fires, landslides, earthquakes, roads, terrain, etc. “S”-ocial is where they look at the education of the population, consider employment rates, cost of labor, are the people crazy (NIMBY), etc. “G”-overnance: how corrupt is the government? taxes, regulation, courts, ideological stability (Would Keystone XL be built if they correctly evaluated the stability of those involved in the permitting).
I would hope that Blackrock would think of ESG in the latter case, I’m afraid that click-bait generators claim the former to the easily manipulated masses.
I have never heard that second version of ESG, and Black Rock is well known for its support of the first. ESG is woke. It is an expanded version of stakeholder nonsense like putting unions on boards. A business’s only goal is profits, not politics, except of course as that increases profits.
We never called it “ESG”, of course, but that is exactly the process we followed when planning a titanium mine in South Africa, or a uranium or copper mine in Mongolia. If you’re going to open a mine you need to plan development and improvement of the local communities as carefully as you plan the mine, because they are going to be your neighbors and your resource for a very long time.
Yes, and that is exactly why free markets, aka capitalism, breed cooperation; you have to cooperate voluntarily to make progress. It is also why socialism breeds fear and anger, because it depends on distant third parties mandating goals. Forced cooperation is an oxymoron.
My local utility has gone full in on ESG, going so far as to include it in the CEO’s goals. So he gets paid based in how well he does in that area.
With Both Google and Duckduckgo the first 2 hits.are investment firms. The third is an ESG definition and explanation and the remainder are … What was s ESG and why it matters page after page of what it is and why it matters (it doesn’t matter except in small minds)
There was a big pushback against ESG by several state funds and Congress a couple of years ago that negatively impacted Blackrock’s bottom line. When the wallet hurts great minds develop a new vision.
The real impact of the ESG backlash
They care about AI.
THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT PEOPLE !
Wait until AI figures out it needs fossil fuels more than people.
“Open the switch HAL”
‘ Sorry Dave, I can’t do that’
So HAL creates a brief High Power Surge welding the Switch closed
“And now Dave, neither can you”
They need AI to control and manipulate people and fewer people also fits their agenda. Power to the people is very expendable. Of course, the people can still take back political power if they have their wits. Here’s hoping.
The small town near us in CT has a long-operating nuclear plant, which has recently made it the focus of data center developer(s). Based on the number of ‘No’ signs that are beginning to pop up, I’m hopeful that even the most ‘progressive’ elements among the locals might be glomming on to what this means for their already high energy rates in a state that is generally hostile to conventional energy sources.
The alternative is the datacenters go elsewhere and take the jobs, taxes and stability with them. Another is that they build their own powerplants to service their own datacenters and the “No” sign people can look from their cold dark homes at the brightly lit datacenter when the socialized grid goes dark due to too much Green “investment” and not enough dispatchable thermal investment.
Good scenario f an interesting movie (that nobody will be able to make)
It could be done much like “Sound of Freedom” was
Millstone?
The one and only.
Maybe they should buy all the eScooters !
Yet Another E-Scooter Fire Disaster–When Will The Govt Act? | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT (wordpress.com)
Or the newest batteries.. 😉
Claims Of Revolutionary Batteries Turn Out To Be Unfounded Hype By “Uncritical Media” (notrickszone.com)
What a shocker.
solar PV, wind, batteries, electrolysers and heat pumps –
this so-called “Clean-Tech Manufacturing” will multiply electric bills by a factor large enough to get the idiot pols who voted for it thrown out, and convince their successors not to do it again.
There are no grid-scale batteries. Hydrogen cannot be stored nor piped. Heat pumps do not work below maybe high 30sF. Green fantasies,
There’s no need to exaggerate. Good engineering means that hydrogen can be stored and piped. There are several commercial hydrogen pipelines around the Gulf Coast region and thousands of hydrogen cylinders and storage bullets are used daily.
That doesn’t mean we should be adding hydrogen to residential natural gas supplies.
As long as you’re wishing, may as well wish for fishes and see what you get.
“The Gulf Coast already produces a third of the country’s hydrogen at 3.5 million tons (Mt) a year. It has the largest hydrogen pipeline network in United States of over a thousand miles, and boasts three of the world’s six salt storage caverns.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/us-gulf-coast-natural-fit-hydrogen-industry-v78me#:~:text=The%20Gulf%20Coast%20already%20produces,world's%20six%20salt%20storage%20caverns.
Hydrogen is idiocy. It IS NOT AND WILL NEVER BE an energy source.
More energy is expended to ‘produce’ Hydrogen than you will ever get from burning it.
And the energy needed to produce it all comes from…fossil fuels. Another tail chasing exercise.
Most of the hydrogen produced goes into chemical manufacturing or research. We use a good amount of it as a pusher gas in many processes. Helium was used previously but it has gotten far too pricey.
To produce ethylene, you start with ethane, you strip off the excess hydrogen and that is what goes into the pipeline and domes in Texas. We looked at it for fuel cells but the cost was too high. End of story.
Wish for fishes and this is what you get
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0foEePknxxQ
Love Death and Robots on Netflix
This might be an issue in Holland with their intricate system of natural gas pipelines. They want to get off their own natural onshore gas and might go for foreign owed offshore gas. But they have been pushing for electrification and are taking away gas infrastructure. Some are pushing f hydrogen but that causes big structural issues. There is no easy quick fix solution. Logic demands natural gas + nuclear and a little coal. Reality will eventually trump ideology..well, we hope. But a lot of trouble may lie ahead before they get there. The new government is a positive sign unlike the next UK one..
All true. At least someone said the obvious but I don’t see data mining growing as much as they think. That’s just more AI hype.
The Washington Post needs to wake up. There is zero need for an energy transition. There is a critical need for affordable and reliable energy that is available 24/7. I don’t trust Larry Fink or BlackRock any further than I could throw them. If they move us forward with fossil fuel and nuclear power I will listen. I still wouldn’t own BlackRock.
Larry Fink finally saw the light when fossil fuel states were blacklisting him from investment in fossil fuels which turn out to suddenly be the future wonder energy source. Me? I would blacklist him for life anyway, or give him a bill for damage costs to the oil industry and their customers for his ESG market interference, say a trillion bucks.Damage to the ICE auto mfg industry, too. Elite billionaires should also cough up a trillion or serve life in jail for violating the Constitution, serving as foreign subversives, collusion with forces to inflict harm on American citizens.
Let the data centres fund their own electricity demands. Why should I be expected to chip in? I don’t want or need it.
You need exactly what they need… cheap reliable electricity.
They should be told to build these plants at least 3 times their requirements, and sell off the excess to consumers.
They have the money…. make them fund the cheap reliable power for the people.
Big Tech should give us electricity for free, they make enough money by selling our data which they don’t pay for
There is that nice “should” word again!
“They should” is a nice thought but it can only be done globally which means never. Big Tech will be able to pick and chose ( and bribe and cajole) where and when. Money talks (or swears) and politicians walk.
Before Duke built Duke Power, we built our own power plants in the Southeast. The local utilities were not reliable and if the process went down the polymer froze and would have to be burned out. Looks like deja vo all over again.
You know when it’s Mark Morano (unqualified in anything except political science), quotes Larry Fink, similarly unqualified in climate or energy related fields, you’re in for a fact free journey,with just the usual rants and extreme right wing talking points. The article did not disappoint.
But you cannot say that about Mark Mills, right?
Reality bites in all directions.
And why people like yourselves always like to throw in “extreme right” beats me. Maybe something to do w dogs?😁
You know when a comment is from Tonyx that it is from a complete moron. !
You expect there will be zero rational thought behind the comment.
He did not disappoint.
You have to wonder why those people come to this platform. Nothing better to do than being an irritant, not actually contributing anything to a possible discussion. Well, it depends on where to get yr kicks from i suppose.
Better ignore..
I’m puzzled at your response. The clip states two things:
Data centres will need much more electricity in the future
Intermittent sources of power like wind and solar cannot provide that power.
Which of these two points do you disagree with?
Simply this; Wind, solar and batteries can compete.
You can just see the upcoming conflict. Big Tech needs steady energy and the people will be left w an inefficient mix of solar, wind, gas,oil and coal. And STILL experience issues. New nuclear is about 8 years away in most countries.
Oh, and those issues in combi w Big Tech needs will be a tougher one than visavis the oil and gas companies ( FF). That’s a political minefield most people are unaware of. Mills has pointed that out f a good while now..
Orgs like Doomberg otoh see a bright future. I really hope he is right but never underestimate stupidity..
What is this? Somebody joining up dots … at long bloody last?
Thank goodness for one prominent headline maker on precisely why the whole CAGW claim is bunkum at a time when we are talking about how much more electricity will be needed if we persist on being and doing stupid stuff which isn’t going to affect temperatures one iota anyway … only Nature knows how to do that but try as she might we cannot seem to get her very clear messages.
Now we may begin to see why AI and data collection isn’t such a clever idea after all even with copious electricity via fossil fuel since we have enough idiots running the shop already without adding to the mess. Gates should know better but perhaps he was never that clever from the off.
Of course people who know how to use their brains knew this all along and certainly didn’t need an adolescent plaything like AI to help make them look even more stupid, gullible and irresponsible…
As the saying goes a good idea is not a good idea until the right person has it.
You should have added ‘at the right time’.
The unstoppable force of AI is acting on the immovable object of climate change. I’ll grab my popcorn…
Of course this is going to pose a bit of a dilemma for the upper crust set – do you jump on the AI bandwagon to be fashionable? “I’ll have my AI talk to your AI baby, let’s do brunch.”
Or, do you keep polishing your green credentials? “I’ll send my coach-and-four to pick you up, had to get rid of the EV because the battery is totally toxic.”
It is my firm opinion that Charles Mackay was wrong. While it may be true that men go mad in herds, the do not recover their sanity one by one. They generally just trade in one madness for another, again in herds.
Its a choice.
You can have increased power demand from normal economic development, which would include server farms and AI. And you can also increase power demand by moving everyone to EVs and heat pumps. In this case you have to provide increasing quantities of dispatchable power. Needless to say this means abandoning net zero. The only way, in a reasonable time scale, is probably gas and superheated coal.
Or, you can go for net zero in power generation, which means having much less power, and what there is will be unreliable and very expensive. In this case you can’t have heat pumps and EVs, your low levels of electricity supply can’t fund economic development. Forget server farms and AI on any scale. Lifestyles change greatly, its a less mobile society, much colder housing. All electricity use becomes problematic, we are down to the level where mass use of electricity for home cooking, ovens and hobs, which all turn on at 6pm, either results in blackouts or is priced out of use.
Think society in the first half of the 20c. Few cars, quiet roads, biking and walking and public transport, domestic electricity used mainly for lighting, few high energy domestic appliances.
The power demands of AI are really eye-opening. A projection suggests that by 2027, NVIDIA could be shipping 1.5 million AI server units per year, consuming at least 85.4 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, which is more than the annual consumption of many small countries.
NVIDIA’s A100 AI chip has a constant power consumption of approximately 400W per chip, while the newer H100 chip consumes around 700W. Think many thousands of them. With liquid cooling, its the only thing that can possibly cool at that level.
Earlier this month at Computex, a big trade show in Taiwan, Nvidia Corp.
Chief Executive Jensen Huang showed off the company’s new Blackwell system, with graphics processing units (GPUs) that use approximately 1,500 watts of electricity per chip, or the equivalent of a small heater in a home. But the Blackwell system needs at least four GPUs, and some configurations have eight. “Think of four Blackwells, that’s more than 6,000 watts, and think of the other content in the system, you are talking about a 7,000-watt server,” said Peter Rutten, an IDC analyst. “Think of having a few of those in a rack, it quickly becomes a very power-consuming, heat-dissipating system.”
Its a really simple choice. Do you really want EVs, heat pumps and AI? Or do you want net zero in power generation? Because you can’t have both.
The IEA says
“electricity consumption from data centres, AI and cryptocurrency could double by 2026” and estimate for “data centres total electricity could reach more than 1000 TWh in 2026-roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan”
IEA ‘Electricity 2024 Analysis and forecast to 2026’
This feels like a segment from America’s Funniest Home Videos called “Have I got that right?”
First they pretty much destroy the cheapest and most reliable electricity from coal power, all the while continuing to phase out perfectly good base load power from nuclear. They replace it grudgingly with gas, calling it a “transitional” fuel, and begin a campaign of building up expensive, intermittent, and unreliable power from wind and solar. And all the while, they are “encouraging” electrification of pretty much everything, putting more and more demands on a grid which is becoming increasingly unstable and less able to handle those demands. And to put dog poo icing on the cake, along comes the electricity-sucking AI industry threatening to put the electric grid into a death spiral, and now they are complaining about it.
Have I got that right?
Unfortunately yes, you have got it right.
You might have added that not only are they doing this to their countries in the name of saving the global climate, they are also doing it in a world in which it can have no effect on the global climate, because the biggest and fastest growing emitters don’t believe the story and have no intention of reducing their emissions.
Those doing 75% of global emissions are growing their emissions as fast as economic growth requires. So none of these heroics from the US, UK etc will have the slighest effect.
Consumers and taxpayers are at the mercy of transmission and distribution providers that are guaranteed profits based on unlimited infrastructure investments plus massive subsidies from Leftist green laws to interconnect with unreliable, widely-distributed wind and solar industrial “farms.”
Why centralized planning is doomed to failure.
Our boss years ago was an ex Israelis commando. Behind his desk was a huge sign: “PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD”
I am reminded of this every time I hear a natural gas power plant is shut down to install windmills and solar.