Big artificial intelligence-related companies are soon coming to realize that net-zero emissions plans to kill and replace fossil energy with wind and solar is a dumb notion that will leave them and American power consumers competing in the dark.
As former Microsoft vice president Brian Janous observes, whereas “No data center wants to be tied to the need for new fossil resources, that’s the problem… You can’t throw this much capacity at the system and not have some degree of fossil resources to support it.” Amazon has reportedly enabled 19 solar farms in Virginia and is the world’s largest corporate renewable energy buyer.
In addition to developing more natural gas plants to balance power grids from expansions of intermittent renewables, rising demands are also delaying some retirement of coal plants.