4 ms·

Don’t forget that 2024 was also a record year for new methane power plant projects. Some 200 new projects in the US alone and I’d wager most of them are funded

Don’t forget that 2024 was also a record year for new methane power plant projects. Some 200 new projects in the US alone and I’d wager most of them are funded directly by big tech for AI data centres. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/investing/2024/09/16/ai-boom-is-driving-a-surprise-resurgence-of-us-gas-fired-power/ https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/investing/2024/09/16/ai-boom-is-... This is definitely extending the runway of O&G at a crisis point in the climate disaster when we’re supposed to be reducing and shutting down these power plants. Update: clarified the 200 number is in the US. There are far more world wide.

api 2y ago
The only thing that will stop this is for battery storage to get cheap and available enough that it can cover for renewables. If we are still building gas turbines it means that hasn’t happened yet. AI is a red herring. If it wasn’t that it would be EV power demand. If it wasn’t that it would be reshoring of manufacturing. If it wasn’t that it would be population growth from immigration. If it wasn’t that it would be replacing old coal power plants reaching EOL. Replacing coal with gas is an improvement by the way. It’s around half the CO2 per kWh, sometimes less if you factor in that gas turbines are often more efficient than aging old coal plants.
- agentultra 2y ago
  Methane has a shorter half-life than CO2 but is a far worse green house gas; retaining far more heat. And delivering methane leaks like a sieve into the atmosphere from all parts of the process. Sure it’s probably “better than coal,” but not by much. It’s a bit like comparing what’s worse: getting burned by fire or being drowned in acid.
- Nition 2y ago
  Pumped hydro is an excellent form of storage if you have the terrain for it. A whole order of magnitude cheaper than battery storage at the moment.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
It would be really cool if big tech could find a new hyperscaler model that didn't also require offsetting the goals of green energy projects worldwide. Between LLM and crypto you'd swear they're trying to find the most energy-wasteful tech possible.
- zachrip 2y ago
  It seems odd to put crypto and LLMs in the same boat in this regard - I might be wrong but are there any crypto projects that actually provide value? I'm sure there are ones that do folding or something but among the big ones?
  - rileymat2 2y ago
    Value is a hard term, this link will seem snarky, but: https://www.axios.com/2024/12/25/russia-bitcoin-evade-sanctions-crypto https://www.axios.com/2024/12/25/russia-bitcoin-evade-sancti... So in a way, it is providing value to someone, whether we like it or not. Or Drug Cartels. https://www.context.news/digital-rights/how-crypto-helps-latin-americas-drug-cartels-do-business https://www.context.news/digital-rights/how-crypto-helps-lat... But this is the promise of uncontrollable decentralization providing value, for good or bad?
  - blibble 2y ago
    crypto has real uses, most of them illegal meanwhile "AI" is used to produce infinity+1 pictures of shrimp jesus and more spam than we've ever known before and if we're really lucky, it will put us all out of work
- ben_w 2y ago
  Cryptocurrency, at least PoW, the point is indeed to be the most wasteful — a literal Dyson swarm powered Bitcoin would provide exactly the same utility as the BTC network already had in 2010. LLMs (and the image, sound, and movie generating models) are more coincidentally power-hogs — people are at least trying to make them better at fixed compute, and lower compute at fixed quality.
comte7092 2y ago
Energy generation methods aren’t fungible. Methane is favored in many cases because they can be quickly ramped up and down to handle momentary peaks in demand or spotty supply generated from renewables. Without knowing more details about those projects it is difficult to make the claim that these plants have anything to do with increased demand due to LLMs, though if anything, they’d just add to base load demands and lead to slower decommissioning of old coal plants like we’ve seen with bitcoin mines.
- throwup238 2y ago
  Methane is also worth burning to lessen the GHG impact since we produce so much of it as a byproduct of both resource extraction and waste disposal anyway.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
uludag 2y ago
But according to the author, apparently bringing this up isn't helpful criticism. I'm curious what peoples thoughts are of what the future of LLMs would be like if we severely overshoot our carbon goals. How bad would thinks have to get for people to stop caring about this technology?
- simonw 2y ago
  It's helpful criticism as part of the conversation. What frustrates me is when people go "LLMs are burning the planet!" and leave it at that.
  - agentultra 2y ago
    It is a rather contrasting opinion that the trade-offs to have AI aren’t worth the value they bring. The growth in this technology isn’t outpacing car pollution and O&G extraction… yet, but the growth rate has been enough in recent years to put it on the radar of industries to watch out for. I hope the compute efficiencies are rapid and more than commensurate with the rate of growth so that we can make progress on our climate targets. However it seems unlikely to me. It’s been a year of progress for the tech… but also a lot of setbacks for the rest of the world. I’m fairly certain we don’t need AGI to tell us how to cope with the climate crisis; we already have the answer for that. Although if the industry does continue to grow and the efficiency gains aren’t enough… will society/investors be willing to scale back growth in order to meet climate targets (assuming that AI becomes a large enough segment of global emissions to warrant reductions)? Interesting times for the field.

api 2y ago

The only thing that will stop this is for battery storage to get cheap and available enough that it can cover for renewables. If we are still building gas turbines it means that hasn’t happened yet. AI is a red herring. If it wasn’t that it would be EV power demand. If it wasn’t that it would be reshoring of manufacturing. If it wasn’t that it would be population growth from immigration. If it wasn’t that it would be replacing old coal power plants reaching EOL. Replacing coal with gas is an improvement by the way. It’s around half the CO2 per kWh, sometimes less if you factor in that gas turbines are often more efficient than aging old coal plants.

agentultra 2y ago
Methane has a shorter half-life than CO2 but is a far worse green house gas; retaining far more heat. And delivering methane leaks like a sieve into the atmosphere from all parts of the process. Sure it’s probably “better than coal,” but not by much. It’s a bit like comparing what’s worse: getting burned by fire or being drowned in acid.
Nition 2y ago
Pumped hydro is an excellent form of storage if you have the terrain for it. A whole order of magnitude cheaper than battery storage at the moment.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

It would be really cool if big tech could find a new hyperscaler model that didn't also require offsetting the goals of green energy projects worldwide. Between LLM and crypto you'd swear they're trying to find the most energy-wasteful tech possible.

zachrip 2y ago
It seems odd to put crypto and LLMs in the same boat in this regard - I might be wrong but are there any crypto projects that actually provide value? I'm sure there are ones that do folding or something but among the big ones?
- rileymat2 2y ago
  Value is a hard term, this link will seem snarky, but: https://www.axios.com/2024/12/25/russia-bitcoin-evade-sanctions-crypto https://www.axios.com/2024/12/25/russia-bitcoin-evade-sancti... So in a way, it is providing value to someone, whether we like it or not. Or Drug Cartels. https://www.context.news/digital-rights/how-crypto-helps-latin-americas-drug-cartels-do-business https://www.context.news/digital-rights/how-crypto-helps-lat... But this is the promise of uncontrollable decentralization providing value, for good or bad?
- blibble 2y ago
  crypto has real uses, most of them illegal meanwhile "AI" is used to produce infinity+1 pictures of shrimp jesus and more spam than we've ever known before and if we're really lucky, it will put us all out of work
ben_w 2y ago
Cryptocurrency, at least PoW, the point is indeed to be the most wasteful — a literal Dyson swarm powered Bitcoin would provide exactly the same utility as the BTC network already had in 2010. LLMs (and the image, sound, and movie generating models) are more coincidentally power-hogs — people are at least trying to make them better at fixed compute, and lower compute at fixed quality.

comte7092 2y ago

Energy generation methods aren’t fungible. Methane is favored in many cases because they can be quickly ramped up and down to handle momentary peaks in demand or spotty supply generated from renewables. Without knowing more details about those projects it is difficult to make the claim that these plants have anything to do with increased demand due to LLMs, though if anything, they’d just add to base load demands and lead to slower decommissioning of old coal plants like we’ve seen with bitcoin mines.

throwup238 2y ago
Methane is also worth burning to lessen the GHG impact since we produce so much of it as a byproduct of both resource extraction and waste disposal anyway.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

uludag 2y ago

But according to the author, apparently bringing this up isn't helpful criticism. I'm curious what peoples thoughts are of what the future of LLMs would be like if we severely overshoot our carbon goals. How bad would thinks have to get for people to stop caring about this technology?

simonw 2y ago
It's helpful criticism as part of the conversation. What frustrates me is when people go "LLMs are burning the planet!" and leave it at that.
- agentultra 2y ago
  It is a rather contrasting opinion that the trade-offs to have AI aren’t worth the value they bring. The growth in this technology isn’t outpacing car pollution and O&G extraction… yet, but the growth rate has been enough in recent years to put it on the radar of industries to watch out for. I hope the compute efficiencies are rapid and more than commensurate with the rate of growth so that we can make progress on our climate targets. However it seems unlikely to me. It’s been a year of progress for the tech… but also a lot of setbacks for the rest of the world. I’m fairly certain we don’t need AGI to tell us how to cope with the climate crisis; we already have the answer for that. Although if the industry does continue to grow and the efficiency gains aren’t enough… will society/investors be willing to scale back growth in order to meet climate targets (assuming that AI becomes a large enough segment of global emissions to warrant reductions)? Interesting times for the field.