Essay by Eric Worrall
Fumbling the narrative: “if there’s a huge source of energy demand that wants to grow, it will land on these stranded fossil fuel assets.”
‘Just an unbelievable amount of pollution’: how big a threat is AI to the climate?
Ajit Niranjan
Sat 3 Jan 2026 19.00 AEDTDefenders say AI can do good to fight the climate crisis. But spiralling energy and water costs leave experts worried.
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“It was jaw-dropping,” said Wilson, a former oil and gas worker from Texas who has documented methane releases for more than a decade and estimates xAI’s Colossus datacentre was spewing more of the planet-heating gas than a large power plant. “Just an unbelievable amount of pollution.”
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Some experts fear datacentres may derail the shift to a clean economy, adding an unnecessary hurdle to the quixotic task of keeping the planet from heating 1.5C (2.7F). Others are sanguine about the energy costs, arguing they pale in comparison not just to polluting industries, but also to the technology’s power to reshape society.
…Some of the demand is being met through long-term agreements to buy renewable power …
But for the near future, fossil fuels are set to dominate supply. …
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“This idea that the lower cost of renewables alone will drive decarbonisation – it’s not enough,” said Daly. “Because if there’s a huge source of energy demand that wants to grow, it will land on these stranded fossil fuel assets.”
…“Maybe I’m a little naive, but I still believe that AI can do good in terms of fighting the climate crisis – designing the next generation of batteries, tracking deforestation, predicting hurricanes,” …
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/03/just-an-unbelievable-amount-of-pollution-how-big-a-threat-is-ai-to-the-climate
Hannah Daly, who gave us this glorious money quote about stranded fossil fuel assets, in her own words is “a professor in sustainable energy” at University College Cork in Ireland.
Hannah, calling fossil fuel assets which are being used to answer an extraordinary surge in demand “stranded”, it just doesn’t work does it?
So I did the obvious thing and asked an AI to help fix the sentence. Naturally I asked Grok, Elon Musk’s Twitter AI, which seems to be primary villain in the Guardian article.
My question:
This statement seems a little inconsistent: “This idea that the lower cost of renewables alone will drive decarbonisation – it’s not enough. Because if there’s a huge source of energy demand that wants to grow, it will land on these stranded fossil fuel assets.” How can it be reworded to be more consistent?
Grok provided some helpful suggestions.
The apparent inconsistency in the original statement comes from the slightly confusing phrasing around “stranded fossil fuel assets”.
Normally, people use “stranded assets” to mean fossil fuel infrastructure / reserves that become worthless because renewables (or climate policy) have displaced them and demand has fallen.
But the quote is using the term in almost the opposite sense: it suggests that if demand keeps growing strongly (especially from things like AI data centers, electrification, industry, etc.), then even as renewables get very cheap, new demand will still be met — at least partly — by keeping existing fossil fuel plants online longer or building new ones, which prevents (or at least delays) those assets from becoming “stranded” (uneconomic / retired early).
In other words: cheap renewables alone won’t force fossil assets into stranding if overall energy hunger grows fast enough to keep fossil plants useful/profitably running.
Here are several clearer, more internally consistent ways to reword the same idea:
- Most direct / faithful rephrasing “The idea that the falling cost of renewables alone will be enough to drive full decarbonisation is overly optimistic. If there’s massive new energy demand that wants to keep growing, it will simply continue to be met — at least in part — by existing or new fossil fuel capacity, delaying the stranding of those fossil assets.”
- Slightly punchier version “Cheap renewables are great, but they won’t automatically decarbonise the system on their own. When there’s enormous, rapidly growing energy demand (think AI, electrification, developing economies), that extra demand will tend to land on whatever capacity is already there — which often means keeping fossil fuel plants running longer instead of stranding them.”
- Emphasising the demand-side point “Falling renewable costs are powerful, but insufficient by themselves to force deep decarbonisation. If overall energy demand surges dramatically, the market will keep utilising existing fossil infrastructure rather than letting it become stranded — even as new supply increasingly comes from renewables.”
- Most concise “Cheap renewables won’t decarbonise the grid by themselves. Huge growth in energy demand will simply prolong the life of fossil fuel assets instead of stranding them.”
The core insight the original speaker is trying to convey is usually this: price alone doesn’t win in energy — available volume + reliability + how fast demand is growing also matter enormously. Renewables are winning on new-build marginal cost, but legacy fossil plants can stay in the mix much longer when total demand keeps rising fast. That’s why many energy system experts stress that managing/controlling demand growth (efficiency, flexibility, etc.) is just as critical as cheap clean supply.
Conversation link: https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMi1jb3B5_c3aa4322-880a-4e91-8aef-1533471f7c29
If energy demand surges the way everyone seems to expect, even if renewables were a viable replacement for fossil fuel, how can it possibly still make sense to describe fossil fuel assets as “stranded”? For the foreseeable future, all the “stranded” fossil fuel assets will be running at full capacity to supply the AI boom.
Here’s a thought Hannah – next time you want to criticise AI, why don’t you first ask AI to check what you are saying, to help you fix the obvious mistakes?
AI is still polluted with millions of articles on the climate crisis/emergency/sendmoney stuff.
Even Grok, unfortunately
Hannah Daly doesn’t understand that intermittent sources of power like wind and solar can NEVER replace reliable power sources. Until she acknowledges this, everything she says is utterly worthless and can be ignored.
She doesn’t understand that CO2 doesn’t control the temperature and is not dangerous. Until she and other people like her accept this they will continue to spout rubbish like this.
UAH Dec 25 … +0.3ºC
El Nino effects continues to subside.
Still no evidence of any CO2 caused warming in the UAH data.
“Maybe I’m a little naive…”
Maybe A LOT more than a little!
Understand what you mean, but….
In another sense, she and those who agree with her, she cannot be ignored. Just as we cannot ignore a madman who thinks God has told him to exterminate all members of a certain class of people. Yes, the idea is ludicrous. But ignore him at your peril, especially if you are a member of that class, and especially if he is just voicing the view of a lot of local people in positions of power.
And right now the UK is firmly in the grip of such madmen, who seriously think that to convert the UK grid to running on intermittent wind and solar is not only possible but is much cheaper than generating it from conventional systems. And who are engaged in a national attempt not only to do that, which will take the country into the realm of blackouts, rationing and price rises. But to at the same time try and double the demand for electricity by converting transport to EVs and heating to heat pumps. And they also think they can somehow persuade AI companies to locate their installations in the UK against this background. They can’t of course. But think what it would do to demand, if they could make that dream happen too.
Oldseadog says “She doesn’t understand that CO2 doesn’t control the temperature and is not dangerous.”. Maybe not, probably none of them understand that. But their lack of understanding of that is the least of our problems. The real problem in the UK is that whether there is a climate crisis or not, long before it hits there is going to be an energy crisis and shortly after that an economic and social crisis, followed by a political crisis as some mad populist wins by a landslide on a platform of ‘turn the lights back on and hunt down those responsible for this mess”.
People are going to be enraged when this hits, and they will vote for anyone who holds up a target. Remember, the UK is a country with no written constitution. A majority vote in Parliament can do anything at all.
So she, and others like her, are too dangerous to be ignored.
Michel
Bill is spot on with his succinct statement except as you recognize his last four words, “and can be ignored.” It is people like Hannah who are advising and influencing governments and academia on the wasteful climate change boondoggle not to stop it but to expand it. They need to be publicly challenged.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright encapulated the problem: “Germany invested half a trillion (in renewables) and now produce 20% less electricity at 3x the price.” Were the Germans told their government would spend some $6000 dollars for every man, woman and child in the country so that they would have to shut off their electricity for 4.8 hours a day and pay three times as much? If they had they would have had widespread riots on their hands.
She should put a cork in it.
cute!
Sure, and she’s a cute Irish lass, though.
Bill I see so many articles by academics which demonstrate there abject ignorance in the subject they supposedly specialise in.
When are people going to understand that renewables are not equivalent source of power to conventional nor can they replace them.
Long ago academia replaced science with expert opinion.
Not just intermittent. Generally available at the wrong time. Storage is pretty much a fantasy.
There is no value there.
My first thought was that Hannah can’t be related to the late John L. Daly.
My next thought was that Hannah, and many similar folks, haven’t a clue about Carbon Dioxide, nor about the scale of energy production and distribution. The comment about AI helping design “the next generation of batteries” also makes me think of the plot device known as “Deus ex machina” {an unsolvable problem is suddenly or abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence}. I think** this plot device was used by David Brin in his post-apocalyptic dystopian science fiction novel The Postman. [** I could have the wrong novel – it has been 40 years.]
My first thought was also of any relation to the late John L. Daly, the first citizen scientist to show that CO2 does not cause any warming of air. Shown below is the homepage of his website available at: http://www.john-daly.com.
I did a search and found that she earned a degree in mathematics and is not an engineer. So what does she really know about energy? Especially the energy that used by the heavy industries and heavy transportation systems.
We really do not to worry about running out fossil fuels for energy production for at least several centuries. Her email address is: h.daly@ucc.ie. We should invite her to come visit WUWT, where she will lean about the latest info on the status of global warming and climate change and about the greatest scientific fraud since the Piltdown Man.
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“I did a search and found that she earned a degree in mathematics and is not an engineer.” She ‘calculated’ that 2+2=5.
““the next generation of batteries””
The more energy you have stored, the more catastrophic when things go wrong.
What if she had no clue about carbon dioxide, nor about the scale of energy production and distribution, when she started school. Then she learned all that while spending her young 20’s on getting the degree. Now if she acknowledges the points then her degree becomes worthless until her resume fills out.
Still treating CO2 as a pollutant. Sigh. I need to remind myself what Einstein’s definition of insanity is here.
People like Ms. Daly and Ms. Wilson (and probably everyone at The Guardian) need to stop being hypocrites and lead the way eliminating the demand for fossil fuels in their own lives. Demanding the world around them decarbonize when they are not doing it themselves demonstrates that they want to take all of us down a rat hole and back to the Middle Ages whether we want to go or not.
Their hypocrisy serves to show all of us why we don’t need to bother listening to them. If they are willing to decarbonize their lives, they need to go and live like hermits in cave somewhere. And good luck to them trying to live off the land. But I guess that means that The Guardian would have to shut down. I won’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
Even more batty, is the continuing notion that the world has to “decarbonise”
One of the most stupid anti-science notions ever to come from the mind of humankind !!
“Stranded assets”? Does she consider backup power for unreliable renewables unnecessary?
No, maybe she just doesn’t consider “unreliable” as an asset… more a burden or parasite. !! 😉
Did you know there are over 14,000 “stranded” wind turbines in the US. !
Then of course you have all the old turbine blades, which are very much a liability. !!
We should build a large plasma furnace, and turn into blades into sand. Blades are made from fiber glass and resin with balsa wood core. When heated to high temperature, the resin and balsa wood would burn up and fiber glass would melt into
a mass which would then be ground up to sand.
In what universe are wind and solar “cheap”?
In the Orwellian One.
In his book 4891.
In Nick Stokes land, they aren’t just cheap they are free
And I wish people would stop calling wind and solar “clean”
Over their short erratic life time, they are undoubtedly the most environmentally destructive form of electricity supply there is.
story tip
1000km traffic jam in northern/ central France because of snow
https://www.reuters.com/world/amsterdam-airport-scraps-450-flights-due-snow-ice-anp-reports-2026-01-05/
Wow, the French are normally pretty efficient about keeping their roads clear.
They probably now consider it racist to do any sort of municipal work.
Those videos indicate (to me) that there is not that much snow (compared to say, Manitoba & Saskatchewan), or Moscow?
They probably now use EV plows.
Seems like the deficit of snow in the UK … is piling up in France and EU !!
The Norse Gods are reminding the EU that a little global warming is of little consequence because there will always long cold and snowy winters which is welcomed by Alpine skiers and especially by workers of the IPCC in Bern. When winter comes, they go to St. Moritz weekend skying and parties. /s
“Is your car stuck in the snow, Monsieur Viner?”
” No, it’s stuck in the past .”
“Does your derg bite?”
GROWL, SNAP, TEAR, RIP.
“I thought you said your derg does not bite”
“That is not my derg”
The most obvious mistake is Hannah herself.
I am a professor of energy. I have a Masters in Energy Conversion, and am a PE. She is a propagandist.
Manufacture consumes 100-150 kWh of electricity per square centimeter of wafer produced. This is an upfront sunk cost even before we start generating fake cat videos. And manufacture is the tip of the iceberg as installation and water and electricity infrastructure is probably more.
Readers ought to note The Failed Climate Prediction Timeline. Find it toward the right side of the dark red bar at the top. When there, find the pointer(s) that move forth and back. Each entry has a prediction and ends with a statement of current aspects. This is instructive and a hoot! Thanks, WUWT!
Professor of “Sustainable” Energy ??
Ignorant of the fact that wind and solar are totally unsustainable and environmentally destructive.
Need replacing every 10-20 years at ever increasing financial and environmental cost.
The very opposite of “sustainable”.
I think you misread it. It’s Professor of Sustainable Propaganda
adding an unnecessary hurdle
Business and industries don’t see it that way. The faith recommends the re-adoption of the abacus…
Luxury!
I keep hearing the “water cost” argument and it keeps bothering me.
What are they doing to this water that makes it “bad” when they’re done with it?
I don’t know where this particular water comes from, or what quality is needed, but: water pumped from ever-deeper aquifers is expensive because the pumping costs get expensive; water that must be treated to a high standard to be suitable for its intended use also can be expensive to treat. That said, most water is used and returned to the environment in a decent condition–not necessarily where it came from to begin with, though.
In Sydney, a large proportion of the water used for environmental flows down the Hawksbury River comes from the sewage treatment plants in the Penrith-Richmond-Windsor area
It is treated to A+ standard and is “cleaner” than flows released from Warragamba Dam.
In the Rouse Hill area, they have a dual pipe system, where treated sewage and run-off is used for parks, gardens, and industries.
Perhaps she has gotten in the habit of using “stranded assets” as a dismissive label. Like the famous “N” word a lib will use for anyone disagreeing with them. Or like a fellow I know that calls anyone disagreeing with him a “narcissist”. You label them and move on.
Still funny to call out the worst abuses…
Well, if he’s referring to people on social media, they likely are narcissists.
Just another true believer in the theory that CO2 is the only significant control knob driving our climate.
The reality is… we need energy far more than we need CO2 reductions.
“Maybe I am a little naive”. Nope, Hannah—a LOT naive.
Any role with sustainable in the title rings alarm bells with me. Usually a comfortable sinecure that achieves nothing.
A black eye here for academia and AI. Professor Daly is the poster child for indoctrinated professors. Nothing more needs to be added. Although AI appears to be helpful for Eric I have problems. It is true that the cost of building renewables have probably decreased. That is not the same as saying it is cheaper. Renewables can’t compete with fossil fuel and nuclear, ratepayers will pay less for fossil fuels and nuclear the exception being when government disguises the cost of renewables with subsidies and other forms of renewable welfare.
When you factor in that a wind farm will need to be replaced at least 4 times during the life of a modern coal fired plant then the cost difference generally cited disappears.
Hannah Daly is a mathematician but has no record of being either a scientist or engineer. She appears to be a modeler of systems about which she knows little and has no real-world experience. (As is evident when she claims wind energy production is cheap) She just went right through school from pre-K through doctorate never having a real job. But, hey, she’s a “professor,” so we must listen to her.
Renewable energy is not low cost. Show me a country with a high percent of renewables, and I will show you a country with globally high energy costs. The world population review lists the top ten country cost of electricity and eight of them are in the EU or Britain, and predictably each has a very large deployment of wind and solar panel assets and they average at or more than US$.40 per kw. Low deployment countries typically average less than half that and that data is also in the same website mentioned above. So please quit agreeing that “renewables are lower cost but..”. They are very high cost, have low reliability, and are not dispatchable. Exactly the opposite of what an AI data center needs.
CO2 is not pollution
Agreed
There must be so much incorrect information in the web that says renewables are cheap and worse getting cheaper.
Quite the reverse, when it comes to grid supply.
Sadly the climate alarmist virus has infected most in government and academia in Ireland. It is really rare to hear a voice critical of the alarmism and with a good grasp of the sciences that try and understand the complexity of climate and weather or the distinction between the two.