The industry finds a willing partner in Trump’s administration. Since its office, Trump has used AI as a lever to open the possibilities of fossil fuels, including well -publicized effort to resuscitate coal in the name of greater computing power. The peak, which was organized by a republican senator (and former director of the General Hedge Fund) by Dave McCormick, clearly reflected the administration’s priorities in this area: none of the wind or clear enterprises was present in any of the public panels.
Technology companies that expressed interest in using any budget-friendly power available to artificial intelligence and have peaceful pushed Contrary to some of the anti -acarial positions of administration, they are not necessarily on the same side as the Trump administration. There were $ 3 billion among the ads spent at the top investment In water energy from Google.
This demand is not necessarily caused by a lot of care for the climate – many technological giants have withdrawn their climate obligations in recent years, because focusing on artificial intelligence has exacerbated – but rather pure economy. Lazard financial analyst said last month The installation of solar panels and batteries on a public scale is still cheaper than building gas power plants, even without tax incentives. The gas infrastructure also stands in the face of a global deficiency, which means that time scales to configure energy generation is very different.
“List of waiting for a new turbine is five years,” says Williams-Derry. “If you want a new sunny plant, you call China, you say:” I want more clear. “
Given the ideological division at the top, sometimes it became a bit awkward. On one panel, energy secretary Chris Wright, who managed the fracture company before arriving at the federal government, for a long time talked about how Obama and Biden administrations were in a “crazy energy train”, mocking the support of these administrations for the wind and solar. Speaking immediately after Wright, the general director of Blackrock, Larry Fink, admitted that Solar probably supports gas shipping in the field of power supply. Amazingly, a member of the Woods panel, general director of Exxonmobil, later paid some of the only lips services to the idea of withdrawing the emissions heard throughout the event. (Woods advertised activities in the field of capturing and storing the oil giant coal.)
Despite this, the noise train mostly moved smoothly, and everyone agrees to one thing: we will need high power, and soon. The General Director of Blackstone, Jonathan Gray, said that AI can help in conducting “40 or 50 percent more energy consumption over the next decade”, while Porrat from Google mentioned the projections of some economists that AI can add $ 4 billion to the American economy until 2030.
It is easy to find a variety of headlines or reports – often based on forecasts produced by private companies – conducting huge numbers of growth for artificial intelligence. “I look at all these forecasts with great skepticism,” says Jonathan Koomey, a researcher and computer consultant who contributed to research around AI and power. “I don’t think anyone had an idea, even a few years, how much electricity data centers will utilize.”