8 ms·

Same - take lightbulbs for example. Thanks to LEDs, the amount of energy you need to generate X amount of light has reduced considerably, but we still have as m

Same - take lightbulbs for example. Thanks to LEDs, the amount of energy you need to generate X amount of light has reduced considerably, but we still have as much if not more lighting than ever. And it's not like our GDP is suffering due to a lack of sufficient lighting, at a certain point there's no gain to productivity gained from having another lightbulb. Same thing can be said about cars, CPUs etc.

Havoc 2y ago
Think it’s meant more as a broad generalization than something that is always true. Many physical things take pretty fixed amounts of energy. Eg heating a liter of water.
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  Or refining aluminum, which uses something like 1.5% of all US electricity generation.
  - kragen 2y ago
    it would be much more, but the us imports 130% of the aluminum it consumes from places with lower energy costs: https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2022/mcs2022-aluminum.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2022/mcs2022-aluminum.p...
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      Bahrain and UAE being big aluminum smelters is a bit surprising.
      - HPsquared 2y ago
        Iceland too. It takes a few workers and a lot of energy. Very sensitive to market conditions though. Peaky.
      - cameldrv 2y ago
        Exporting aluminum is basically exporting electricity, except aluminum is easy to ship, costs very little to store, and has an indefinite shelf life. For places with a lot of natural gas and no pipelines to export it, it’s often easier to export aluminum than liquified gas.
        kragen 2y ago
        if you're burning it in aluminum-air fuel cells, it can be literally exporting electricity. right now that isn't a commercial-scale activity, but possibly it will become profitable in the coming years for places with a lot of solar power and no hvdc lines to export it
  - beachy 2y ago
    The Tiwai Point aluminum smelter uses 13% of New Zealand's electricity [0] It's overseas owners are constantly playing hardball with the country over the price they pay. Feels like every year they threaten to shut the smelter down unless they get better electricity rates. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwai_Point_Aluminium_Smelter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwai_Point_Aluminium_Smelte...
- bee_rider 2y ago
  The economy stopped getting better because I started taking shorter, colder showers.
- nicoburns 2y ago
  > Think it’s meant more as a broad generalization than something that is always true. I think you're right, but also that the majority of the problems with the worlds economies (in the richer nations) are because of similar generalizations, and as such I think it important to rebuke them. Having more cheap energy available is good (all else being equal), but optimising for higher energy usage is absurd.
- morepork 2y ago
  Even with water heating moving to a heat pump lets you do it using less input energy because you are taking heat from the environment
pseudosavant 2y ago
It is a curious assertion for sure, but the next wave of AI will be throttled by a few factors: chip fab capacity, water supply to cool data centers, and electricity to power the chips/servers. Look at what is happening with xAI in Memphis where they are illegally running a dozen turbine generators to power their new AI data center since they can't get enough supply off the grid.
- svnt 2y ago
  It may be throttled by energy supply and water supply at a desirable site, but not by country-level energy costs and water costs, which is all this blog post is looking at.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Depending on where you are this is a national level problem; Ireland and the Netherlands are not approving new data centers
- skybrian 2y ago
  Costs are going down a lot due to algorithmic improvements. But maybe that just results in increased usage (Jevons paradox)? When there are conflicting trends, the future is pretty hard to predict. Are any AI companies making money now? Losses can’t go on forever.
kragen 2y ago
for some economic activities, energy is not a limiting input; you are implicitly referring to economic production enabled by electric lighting, such as office work, and indeed energy has not been a limiting input for that for at least a century. reducing the cost of energy will not result in more gdp in those sectors for other economic activities, such as solar panel production, aluminum production, and neural network training, energy is a limiting input. reducing the cost of energy will result in more gdp in those sectors
- Retric 2y ago
  Dropping energy costs lowers costs in every sector but rarely by that much. > aluminum production Dropping energy costs an by 75% only drops smelting prices by about 30% and finished goods by even less.
  - kragen 2y ago
    there's usually a long lag between a drop in the price of an input and the eventual impact on the price of the outputs, because part of the effect is mediated by the adoption of innovations that use more of the newly-cheaper inputs and less of the still-expensive inputs to take one example, the last time we got access to a major new source of energy was something like watt's steam-engine in 01776. one of the effects of this was the widespread replacement of steel cans (which hadn't been invented in 01776) and glass bottles with aluminum cans in the 01970s, 200 years later. another was the replacement of travel by ship with travel by air, also about 200 years later. the delay is because many intermediating innovations were required, for example, in the aluminum-can case: - the discovery of electrolysis; - the discovery of aluminum; - the discovery of canning; - the hall–héroult process; - improved aluminum alloys that permitted the use of 100μm-thick cans; - the invention of deep drawing; - epoxy liners that made aluminum cans chemically stable to acidic contents such as coca-cola; - long-distance trucking which increased the cost imposed by heavier glass bottles.
    - njarboe 2y ago
      We started to access nuclear power as a new source, but then stopped for quite a while. It looks like things are starting up again. We'll see.

Havoc 2y ago

Think it’s meant more as a broad generalization than something that is always true. Many physical things take pretty fixed amounts of energy. Eg heating a liter of water.

HideousKojima 2y ago
Or refining aluminum, which uses something like 1.5% of all US electricity generation.
- kragen 2y ago
  it would be much more, but the us imports 130% of the aluminum it consumes from places with lower energy costs: https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2022/mcs2022-aluminum.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2022/mcs2022-aluminum.p...
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Bahrain and UAE being big aluminum smelters is a bit surprising.
    - HPsquared 2y ago
      Iceland too. It takes a few workers and a lot of energy. Very sensitive to market conditions though. Peaky.
    - cameldrv 2y ago
      Exporting aluminum is basically exporting electricity, except aluminum is easy to ship, costs very little to store, and has an indefinite shelf life. For places with a lot of natural gas and no pipelines to export it, it’s often easier to export aluminum than liquified gas.
      - kragen 2y ago
        if you're burning it in aluminum-air fuel cells, it can be literally exporting electricity. right now that isn't a commercial-scale activity, but possibly it will become profitable in the coming years for places with a lot of solar power and no hvdc lines to export it
- beachy 2y ago
  The Tiwai Point aluminum smelter uses 13% of New Zealand's electricity [0] It's overseas owners are constantly playing hardball with the country over the price they pay. Feels like every year they threaten to shut the smelter down unless they get better electricity rates. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwai_Point_Aluminium_Smelter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwai_Point_Aluminium_Smelte...
bee_rider 2y ago
The economy stopped getting better because I started taking shorter, colder showers.
nicoburns 2y ago
> Think it’s meant more as a broad generalization than something that is always true. I think you're right, but also that the majority of the problems with the worlds economies (in the richer nations) are because of similar generalizations, and as such I think it important to rebuke them. Having more cheap energy available is good (all else being equal), but optimising for higher energy usage is absurd.
morepork 2y ago
Even with water heating moving to a heat pump lets you do it using less input energy because you are taking heat from the environment

pseudosavant 2y ago

It is a curious assertion for sure, but the next wave of AI will be throttled by a few factors: chip fab capacity, water supply to cool data centers, and electricity to power the chips/servers. Look at what is happening with xAI in Memphis where they are illegally running a dozen turbine generators to power their new AI data center since they can't get enough supply off the grid.

svnt 2y ago
It may be throttled by energy supply and water supply at a desirable site, but not by country-level energy costs and water costs, which is all this blog post is looking at.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Depending on where you are this is a national level problem; Ireland and the Netherlands are not approving new data centers
skybrian 2y ago
Costs are going down a lot due to algorithmic improvements. But maybe that just results in increased usage (Jevons paradox)? When there are conflicting trends, the future is pretty hard to predict. Are any AI companies making money now? Losses can’t go on forever.

kragen 2y ago

for some economic activities, energy is not a limiting input; you are implicitly referring to economic production enabled by electric lighting, such as office work, and indeed energy has not been a limiting input for that for at least a century. reducing the cost of energy will not result in more gdp in those sectors for other economic activities, such as solar panel production, aluminum production, and neural network training, energy is a limiting input. reducing the cost of energy will result in more gdp in those sectors

Retric 2y ago
Dropping energy costs lowers costs in every sector but rarely by that much. > aluminum production Dropping energy costs an by 75% only drops smelting prices by about 30% and finished goods by even less.
- kragen 2y ago
  there's usually a long lag between a drop in the price of an input and the eventual impact on the price of the outputs, because part of the effect is mediated by the adoption of innovations that use more of the newly-cheaper inputs and less of the still-expensive inputs to take one example, the last time we got access to a major new source of energy was something like watt's steam-engine in 01776. one of the effects of this was the widespread replacement of steel cans (which hadn't been invented in 01776) and glass bottles with aluminum cans in the 01970s, 200 years later. another was the replacement of travel by ship with travel by air, also about 200 years later. the delay is because many intermediating innovations were required, for example, in the aluminum-can case: - the discovery of electrolysis; - the discovery of aluminum; - the discovery of canning; - the hall–héroult process; - improved aluminum alloys that permitted the use of 100μm-thick cans; - the invention of deep drawing; - epoxy liners that made aluminum cans chemically stable to acidic contents such as coca-cola; - long-distance trucking which increased the cost imposed by heavier glass bottles.
  - njarboe 2y ago
    We started to access nuclear power as a new source, but then stopped for quite a while. It looks like things are starting up again. We'll see.