Discussion
Get all the details from the author, Ketan Joshi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOlt-PYcnLk
Thevideo is not so much a TL;DR as to whet your appetite to read the report:
https://mastodon.social/@ketanjoshi.co@ketanjoshi.co/116083027439799872
The plan: a 9.2-gigawatt, $33 billion power plant to serve a 10-GW AI data center
"There is a “Sherman tank-sized hole” in the idea that consumers will be protected, said Mike Hogan, a senior advisor for the nonprofit Regulatory Assistance Project who has prior experience developing gas power plants. He anticipates that high gas demand—from this project and other new plants being built—will lead to substantial increases in heating and electricity costs for the public."
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02052026/massive-ohio-gas-power-plant-energy-risks/
"While AI may aid the development of new solutions, AI alone will not solve climate change and, most critically, even if it could, we cannot afford to wait for hypothetical AI solutions to take climate action.
We already know the causes of, and solutions to, the climate crisis—and the costs and harms of delaying action. Instead of relying on a hypothetical future AI “solution,” we need to focus on overcoming the real hurdles stalling climate progress."
https://blog.ucs.org/samuel-dotson/artificial-intelligence-wont-solve-climate-change/
"The Stratos Project will likely need 9 gigawatts of energy at full build — more than double the electricity currently used by the entire state of Utah.
[The waste heat] will get dumped into the local environment of Hansel Valley, in the same geographic bowl as the power plant. That actually makes the data complex a 16 gigawatt thermal load project, the “equivalent of about 23 atom bombs worth of energy dumped into this local environment every single day,” Davies said."
https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2026/05/07/utahs-data-center-could-create/
"Residents in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed low water pressure last year.
The utility discovered two unaccounted-for water connections at one of the nation’s largest data center campuses."
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/08/georgia-data-centers-water-00909988
In the PJM region,
"Power prices averaged $136.53 per megawatt-hour in the first three months of 2026, according to a massive new report from Monitoring Analytics. That’s up from $77.78 per MWh in the first three months of 2025.
The report isn’t shy about where we should put the blame: “Data center load growth is the primary reason for recent and expected capacity market conditions, including ... the tight supply and demand balance, and high prices.”"
https://gizmodo.com/power-prices-in-eastern-u-s-spike-76-thanks-to-ai-data-centers-2000759230
More than 100 UK datacentres plan to burn gas to generate electricity
Requests for gas connections by operators amount to more than 15 terawatt hours per year, endangering climate targets
Developers are now increasingly turning to fossil fuels, “in some cases requesting over 100MW of gas power on a permanent basis”.
"[In many places] serious concerns have been raised around data centres guzzling excess water for their cooling systems and consuming vast amounts of energy at the cost of local communities.
"In an energy starved, water-scarce India, these challenges are even more accentuated.
"According to the World Bank, India has 18% of the world's population, but only 4% of its water resources, making it among the most water-stressed countries in the world."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgr417pwek7o
h/t @DoomsdaysCW
Pushback from the inside:
"Activist investors are pushing technology companies to explain how they’re reconciling surging electricity demand for AI with their climate commitments.
The ultimate goal of bringing the proposals is to spur more development of clean energy to power AI, said Kelly Poole, climate and energy coordinator at As You Sow, which promotes corporate responsibility through shareholder advocacy."
Pushback from the EU:
"EU lawmakers want the European Commission to scrap a secrecy clause critics say lets Big Tech hide the energy cost of Europe’s AI boom."
“The US now devotes 6 percent of its total electricity to data centers.”
That could be a significant milestone, as the report warns that "significant community and political pushback starts to occur in nations once their data center footprints have reached the 5 percent consumption level of national grids."
The problems are only likely to get worse though, as tech companies show no signs of slowing down. Annual global data center spending is approaching $1 trillion."
"The “data-centre boom” is driving a surge in gas investment in the US, pushing its fossil-power spending ahead of China.
High demand for electricity to power these data centres has led to companies rushing to build new gas-fired power plants across the country.
This trend, combined with “soaring” gas-turbine prices, drove a threefold increase in US gas‑power investment in 2025 – and the IEA expects this to continue throughout 2026."
https://www.carbonbrief.org/ai-boom-means-us-is-now-investing-more-in-fossil-fuel-power-than-china/
"Investment in grid upgrades, power equipment and electricity generation to support the buildout of data-centre infrastructure around the world hit $105bn in 2025.
This is more than the total invested in the energy sector across the whole of Africa.
The IEA notes that strong demand for gas-power plants for data centres in the US – and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East – is “limiting the availability of turbines for near-term deployment elsewhere in the world”."
https://www.carbonbrief.org/ai-boom-means-us-is-now-investing-more-in-fossil-fuel-power-than-china/
"By 2030, AI's water use will match the needs of 1.3 billion people while its power use triples that of 650 million.
The report finds that AI's environmental cost is being systematically mismeasured. Most existing assessments focus on the carbon emissions. Yet every kilowatt-hour of electricity used to train or run an AI system also carries a water footprint, from cooling and power generation, and a land footprint, from energy infrastructure and supply chains."
https://unu.edu/inweh/news/environmental-cost-of-AIs-Enrgy-use-carbon-water-and-land-footprints
"At least 7 in 10 Americans would now oppose a data center being built near their home, according to a new Heatmap Pro poll, a record low that reveals a staggering shift in public opinion against the facilities powering the artificial intelligence boom.
When Heatmap first asked Americans how they would feel about a nearby data center project last September, Americans were evenly split: 43% said they would support it, 42% were opposed, and 15% said they weren’t sure."
https://heatmap.news/politics/americans-oppose-data-centers-poll
"New York moved closer toward becoming the first US state to enact a moratorium on large datacenters this week. On Thursday, the state legislature approved a one-year ban on the facilities powering the AI boom.
The measure now heads to Kathy Hochul, the governor, who will decide whether to sign it into law."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/06/new-york-datacenter-temporary-ban
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