Comment by jillesvangurp

There are two ways to make AI cheaper: make energy cheaper or make AI hardware and algorithms more efficient and use less energy that way. Google is investing in doing both. And that's a good thing.

I actually see growth in energy demand because of AI or other reasons as a positive thing. It's putting pressure on the world to deliver more energy cheaply. And it seems the most popular and straightforward way is through renewables + batteries. The more clean and cheap capacity like that is added, the more marginalized traditional more expensive solutions get.

The framing on this topic can be a bit political. I prefer to look at this through the lens of economics. The simple economic reality is that coal and gas plant construction has been bottle necked for years on a lot of things to the point where only very little of it gets planned and realized. And what little comes online has pretty poor economics. The cost and growth curves for renewables+battery paint a pretty optimistic picture here with traditional generation plateauing for a while (we'll still build more coal/gas plants, not a lot, and they'll be underutilized) and then dropping rapidly second half of the century as cost and availability of alternatives improves and completely steam roll anything that can't keep up. Fossil fuel based generation could be all but gone by the 2060s.

There are lots of issues with regulations, planning, approval, etc for fossil fuel based generation. There are issues with supply chains for things like turbines. Long term access to cooling water (e.g. rivers) is becoming problematic because of climate change. And there are issues with investors voting with their feet and being reluctant to make long term commitments in what could end up being very poor long term investments. A lot of this also impacts nuclear, which while clean remains expensive and hard to deliver. The net result of all this is that investments in new energy capacity are heavily biased towards battery + renewables. It's the only thing that works on short notice. And it's also the cheapest way to add new capacity. Current growth is already 80-90% renewable. It's not even close at this point. We're talking tens/hundreds of GW added annually.

Of course AI is so hungry for energy that there is a temporary increase in usage for coal/gas. That's existing underutilized plants temporarily getting utilized a bit more mainly because they are there and utilizing them a bit more is relatively easy and quick to realize. It's not actually cheaper and future cost reductions will likely come in the form of replacing that capacity with cheaper power generation as soon as that can be delivered.