Artificial intelligence and Bitcoin mining are a huge drain on electricity, putting demand-side pressure on energy prices for Americans near data centers, even if the boom is making American 401k’s larger.
“The Big Tech companies suck up the electricity, and we end up paying higher prices,” Carrie Killingsworth, 53, who works in financial services, told The Washington Post.
“I’m not comfortable with average customers subsidizing billion-dollar companies.”
Those big tech companies are publicly traded like Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, Meta (Facebook), and Amazon, though, giving retail investors the opportunity to rise with all the boats.
But still energy price inflation has been hitting Americans in some locations, around data centers, but the internet is expanding everywhere, the Post reported.
“We are seeing every region of the country experience really significant data center load growth,” Johns Hopkins University’s Abe Silverman told the paper. “It’s putting enormous upward pressure on prices, both for transmission and for generation.”
Ohio energy regulators have ruled this month that data centers are going to be on the hook for grid upgrades, despite the objection of tech companies, according to the report.
The Data Center Coalition told the Post it was “very disappointed” in the regulatory ruling, adding the industry “is committed to paying its full cost of service for the energy it uses.”
There is an unsustainable surge in energy demands around data centers amid the AI and Bitcoin mining boom, according to independent monitor analyst Joseph Bowring.
“There has been a paradigm shift in the market,” he told the Post. “These data centers could overwhelm the grid. The system cannot go on this way.”
The internet is everything, and the demand for data center processing is more than just AI and Bitcoin mining, as all internet usage draws energy demand.
“Data centers are the essential digital infrastructure behind every online purchase, every telehealth appointment, every online news article, and every digital classroom,” Data Center Coalition Vice President of Energy Aaron Tinjum wrote in a statement to the Post.
“Data centers enable the essential services and cutting-edge technologies that drive our economy and enhance our quality of life, ensuring that our homes, businesses, schools, hospitals, manufacturing facilities and government units operate smoothly and efficiently.”
Every phone and internet user is discounting the demand for energy with every use and search, according to researcher Sasha Luccioni.
“There is a disconnect,” she told the Post. “We talk about ‘the cloud’ as if it were immaterial. People using these applications don’t imagine a data center — a four-story building as big as a football field.”
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