4 ms·

AI is partly to blame here. All that power has to come from somewhere. The idea that all this AI is powered by “green” energy and unicorn farts is just a bunch

by cmiles8 9mo ago

AI is partly to blame here. All that power has to come from somewhere. The idea that all this AI is powered by “green” energy and unicorn farts is just a bunch of PR puffery from tech companies trying to divert attention from the environmental damage they’re causing. The uncomfortable truth is that AI is the biggest setback on our path to energy sustainability we’ve seen in a generation.

energy123 9mo ago
It is, but degrowth is an election losing proposition. Any talk like this needs to be transparently non-hostile to demand for political purposes. The solution should be something like requiring them to build nuclear or renewable energy, or tax them and put the money into a subsidy fund for clean energy.
- joelthelion 9mo ago
  There is a real need for education of the masses. Not destroying the planet should win elections, not lose them.
  - energy123 9mo ago
    I favor public education, but let's not kid ourselves, there is not a polity on earth where degrowth would get more than 20% support. It's a weird social media echo chamber artefact that will exclusively sabotage efforts to decarbonize.
    - viraptor 9mo ago
      In a sane election system, 20% gives a party a significant position in the government that influences the coalition and drives some of the future decisions. Just not in the two-party circus.
      - rob74 9mo ago
        ...or everyone else decides to marginalize that 20% party and allies with the far right instead (I don't want to defend the US system, but proportional representation is not a panacea either).
      - andsoitis 9mo ago
        > In a sane election system, 20% gives a party a significant position in the government that influences the coalition and drives some of the future decisions. Just not in the two-party circus. There is no consensus among political scientists that either a two-party system or a multi-party/coalition system is inherently “better.” Each design produces different trade-offs in representation, stability, accountability, and policy outcomes.
    - nicoburns 9mo ago
      > there is not a polity on earth where degrowth would get more than 20% support Eh, I'm not so sure about that. Sustainability politics is mainstream in Europe in a way it isn't in the US. Aside from ethical concerns, a lot of people over here see climate change as a very real economic threat (likely to cause them material economic harm within their lifetimes). You're probably right that a general degrowth strategy wouldn't ever be popular, but I bet a policy that say restricted AI and cryptocurrency with the aim of reducing electricity prices would be.
      - andsoitis 9mo ago
        > You're probably right that a general degrowth strategy wouldn't ever be popular, but I bet a policy that say restricted AI and cryptocurrency with the aim of reducing electricity prices would be. That's arbitrary. If you went back in time before AI and crypto, which industries would you pick to constrain growth or development of? Is it whatever the latest industry is that is driving incremental emissions? If so, I don't know that it is a compelling mental model, because that is a degrowth mindset.
        nicoburns 9mo ago
        > which industries would you pick to constrain growth or development of? Is it whatever the latest industry is that is driving incremental emissions? My mental model is more about industries that are using a lot of resources without actually generating value comensurate with that use.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
    - hvb2 9mo ago
      There's a lot to gain from just efficiency it doesn't have to be degrowth. But forever growth also isn't sustainable. No matter how productive we are, the planet would still not survive.
  - lotsofpulp 9mo ago
    Intentionally reducing quality of life in the short term will never win elections, no matter how educated a populace is. The best strategy to reduce consumption that seems to be working is allowing below replacement total fertility rates.
    - rob74 9mo ago
      But then you get an aging population and all the problems that that brings with it.
      - disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
        Only for a generation (mostly \s but entirely true).
        andsoitis 9mo ago
        >> But then you get an aging population and all the problems that that brings with it. > Only for a generation (mostly \s but entirely true). That's not accurate. The problems of population aging are not confined to a single generation. They are structural and persistent, unless the underlying institutions adapt. Aging is a continuing demographic process, not a single event. Once a society enters sustained low fertility and longer life expectancy, each cohort is smaller than the one before it. Each cohort also lives longer. That means that today's workers support more retirees. Tomorrow's workers will support even more, unless something changes. It can feel (but isn't) like a single generation problem if major structural changes happen like: raising retirement age in line with life expectancy, shifting pensions to funded, large-scale immigration, major productivity gains from technology, or cultural shifts to high fertility.
        disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
        > Once a society enters sustained low fertility and longer life expectancy, each cohort is smaller than the one before it. I mean, unless fertility completely collapses (to like less than 0.5) then it'll mostly be a single generation problem. Regardless of any future changes, the current generation (my kids etc) will be supporting a much larger older cohort, with problems arising from that. I am one of 4 siblings, have two kids, and as long as both of them have two kids, no more problems arise (obviously extrapolating to the population). There's some amount of irreducible demand for kids so I'd be surprised to see TFR continue to decline on a generational basis. Mind you, I could be wrong (or alternatively, we could see a massive increase in TFR like we did post WW2).
- andsoitis 9mo ago
  > The solution should be something like requiring them to build nuclear or renewable energy, That's happening without regulations, though, isn't it? It's been making headlines for the last few months. For instance: - Meta https://carboncredits.com/meta-signs-three-nuclear-deals-of-up-to-6-6-gw-to-fuel-ai-data-center-growth/?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://carboncredits.com/meta-signs-three-nuclear-deals-of-... - Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos_Power?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos_Power?utm_source=chatgp... - Microsoft https://www.jamasoftware.com/blog/2025/10/14/tech-giants-turn-to-nuclear-power-for-ais-energy-appetite/?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.jamasoftware.com/blog/2025/10/14/tech-giants-tur... - Amazon https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-powered-data-center?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-powered-data-center?utm_so... If anything, it seems to me that AI is revitalizing nuclear energy investments, which I think is a good thing. Wouldn't you agree?
  - rickydroll 9mo ago
    It takes approximately 5 to 10 years to bring a nuclear plant online. Clean energy is growing at an average of 40GW a year for the next 10 years. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65964 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65964 By the time a nuclear plant comes online, Renewables have incrementally added 400 gigawatts. Granted, nukes generate 4 to 8 times more energy, but solar can significantly improve crop yields and soil health. They also make it easy to raise sheep and cattle. It's a good thing I like lamb (yum).
schiffern 9mo ago
Thank you for acknowledging the elephant in the room. I've literally seen people on HN argue that AI's increased power demand isn't bad for climate goals, because the money will encourage renewables. It's astounding how people don't see it, even when it's the invisible hand of the market that's choking them to death.
- dormento 9mo ago
  As expertly put by Upton Sinclair, "it is difficult to get someone to understand, when their salary depends on them not understanding it."
- viraptor 9mo ago
  It's the same song as with crypto. Just as silly as then - of course many people will burn whatever is the cheapest fuel right now, even if they maybe invest in something else in the future. But the total goes up anyway.
- arghwhat 9mo ago
  It's not the power demand that is the problem. It's that the majority of AI deployments are happening in a country which has a has had very poor renewable adoption and is now actively sabotaging renewable projects with an active opposition to climate goals because a particular group wants to protect their existing revenue. Renewables are cheap and highly profitable, and money talks - even in the US, as can be seen in Texas. But it's hard to fight against your government when they want to force you to buy their rich friends' fossil fuels instead...
  - dangus 9mo ago
    Exactly this. Powering all AI data centers with renewable energy is actually trivially easy. You could even legislate it and make big tech companies responsible for providing the power themselves. One stroke of the pen resolves the issue. If OpenAI can afford to “spend $1 trillion” on AI they can afford to build some wind/solar/battery power plants.
    - 9mo ago
torgoodfillibut 9mo ago
I don't like the social harms related to AI but I think the energy is a silly emphasis. No one has ever thought twice about any heavy industry or absurdist garbage for consumers, home heating, etc. If we were on track for everything else a serious uptake of AI might have put us barely off track.. But this is like blaming the wafer thin mint for the fat guy exploding.
Sol- 9mo ago
I think it's still worthwhile, though. AI, given its current trajectory, will be able to help immensely with science and engineering challenges. Degrowth isn't a recipe for sustainable reduction of CO2 emissions.
- cmiles8 9mo ago
  This is broadly more PR puffery. We don’t need some magic AI model to tell us how to cut emissions. We just need to execute things we already know work.
- squigz 9mo ago
  Pumping even more CO2 into the air hoping the magic box spits out a solution to remove the CO2 from the air doesn't seem like a sustainable recipe either.
- oblio 9mo ago
  The big engineering challenges right now are electrifying everything (which means convincing people that it's the right thing to do and that gas powered vehicles belong to the trashbin of history, amongst others) and banning production of "virgin" plastic items, especially single use items (which also required a whole lot of convincing). Most of that is convincing is done in the exact opposite direction with... you guessed it... AI.
api 9mo ago
We can power it all and then some with renewable and nuclear energy. We elected a regime openly hostile to that and openly pro fossil fuel. Like they literally ran on burning more coal, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that we are burning more coal. AI doesn’t matter. If it’s not AI it’ll be EVs. Or if you’re pro immigration (as I am) then what do you think letting more people into the country does for power demand? It’s something like 5kW averaged out over 24/7 per head. That’s probably conservative when you do a full accounting of all demand per head. Every new immigrant is probably equivalent to a rack of GPUs. Degrowth is political fantasy. It will establish a populist backlash every time. Or are you going to line up to be the first to become poorer? I look at that stuff as a very privileged fantasy. Only the rich can romanticize poverty. The people who fantasize about green back to the land scenarios are usually wealthy middle or upper class people in developed nations who have zero first hand experience of what that actually means outside the Avatar films.
- cl0ckt0wer 9mo ago
  We've had my more movement on the nuclear front than any time since 3mile island
yread 9mo ago
Yep, someone was bragging recently they used 13B tokens last year. At 8mg CO2/token that's ~100t of CO2. Consumption of 5 households (or 200 NYC-London flights) just for vibe coding!
tedk-42 9mo ago
Wrong. Energy usage goes up for all societies, no matter how efficient we make things to be. Our living standard goes up with more electricity (EVs for example require more energy, as would more electrification of things). The real problem is no investment in alternative sources like Nuclear. We've had this debate before and the usual renewable only crowd only see as far as today's usage to say what we 'need'.
nebula8804 9mo ago
>The idea that all this AI is powered by “green” energy and unicorn farts is just a bunch of PR puffery from tech companies trying to divert attention from the environmental damage they’re causing. Do we have a solid breakdown ala Our World in Data for the energy mix mused to power AI Datacenters? The only thing I have seen is the facility that Musk acquired in Memphis for Grok is illegaily emitting more pollutants than allowed because of Musk's insane drive for speed and it is causing health problems in the underlying poor community. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw Its the reason I will never use Grok but i've been curious about where ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are hosted. Google has had a history of efficient data centers and they are running custom silicon so i'd assume they are the best here?

by cmiles8 9mo ago

energy123 9mo ago

It is, but degrowth is an election losing proposition. Any talk like this needs to be transparently non-hostile to demand for political purposes. The solution should be something like requiring them to build nuclear or renewable energy, or tax them and put the money into a subsidy fund for clean energy.

joelthelion 9mo ago
There is a real need for education of the masses. Not destroying the planet should win elections, not lose them.
- energy123 9mo ago
  I favor public education, but let's not kid ourselves, there is not a polity on earth where degrowth would get more than 20% support. It's a weird social media echo chamber artefact that will exclusively sabotage efforts to decarbonize.
  - viraptor 9mo ago
    In a sane election system, 20% gives a party a significant position in the government that influences the coalition and drives some of the future decisions. Just not in the two-party circus.
    - rob74 9mo ago
      ...or everyone else decides to marginalize that 20% party and allies with the far right instead (I don't want to defend the US system, but proportional representation is not a panacea either).
    - andsoitis 9mo ago
      > In a sane election system, 20% gives a party a significant position in the government that influences the coalition and drives some of the future decisions. Just not in the two-party circus. There is no consensus among political scientists that either a two-party system or a multi-party/coalition system is inherently “better.” Each design produces different trade-offs in representation, stability, accountability, and policy outcomes.
  - nicoburns 9mo ago
    > there is not a polity on earth where degrowth would get more than 20% support Eh, I'm not so sure about that. Sustainability politics is mainstream in Europe in a way it isn't in the US. Aside from ethical concerns, a lot of people over here see climate change as a very real economic threat (likely to cause them material economic harm within their lifetimes). You're probably right that a general degrowth strategy wouldn't ever be popular, but I bet a policy that say restricted AI and cryptocurrency with the aim of reducing electricity prices would be.
    - andsoitis 9mo ago
      > You're probably right that a general degrowth strategy wouldn't ever be popular, but I bet a policy that say restricted AI and cryptocurrency with the aim of reducing electricity prices would be. That's arbitrary. If you went back in time before AI and crypto, which industries would you pick to constrain growth or development of? Is it whatever the latest industry is that is driving incremental emissions? If so, I don't know that it is a compelling mental model, because that is a degrowth mindset.
      - nicoburns 9mo ago
        > which industries would you pick to constrain growth or development of? Is it whatever the latest industry is that is driving incremental emissions? My mental model is more about industries that are using a lot of resources without actually generating value comensurate with that use.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
  - hvb2 9mo ago
    There's a lot to gain from just efficiency it doesn't have to be degrowth. But forever growth also isn't sustainable. No matter how productive we are, the planet would still not survive.
- lotsofpulp 9mo ago
  Intentionally reducing quality of life in the short term will never win elections, no matter how educated a populace is. The best strategy to reduce consumption that seems to be working is allowing below replacement total fertility rates.
  - rob74 9mo ago
    But then you get an aging population and all the problems that that brings with it.
    - disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
      Only for a generation (mostly \s but entirely true).
      - andsoitis 9mo ago
        >> But then you get an aging population and all the problems that that brings with it. > Only for a generation (mostly \s but entirely true). That's not accurate. The problems of population aging are not confined to a single generation. They are structural and persistent, unless the underlying institutions adapt. Aging is a continuing demographic process, not a single event. Once a society enters sustained low fertility and longer life expectancy, each cohort is smaller than the one before it. Each cohort also lives longer. That means that today's workers support more retirees. Tomorrow's workers will support even more, unless something changes. It can feel (but isn't) like a single generation problem if major structural changes happen like: raising retirement age in line with life expectancy, shifting pensions to funded, large-scale immigration, major productivity gains from technology, or cultural shifts to high fertility.
        disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
        > Once a society enters sustained low fertility and longer life expectancy, each cohort is smaller than the one before it. I mean, unless fertility completely collapses (to like less than 0.5) then it'll mostly be a single generation problem. Regardless of any future changes, the current generation (my kids etc) will be supporting a much larger older cohort, with problems arising from that. I am one of 4 siblings, have two kids, and as long as both of them have two kids, no more problems arise (obviously extrapolating to the population). There's some amount of irreducible demand for kids so I'd be surprised to see TFR continue to decline on a generational basis. Mind you, I could be wrong (or alternatively, we could see a massive increase in TFR like we did post WW2).
andsoitis 9mo ago
> The solution should be something like requiring them to build nuclear or renewable energy, That's happening without regulations, though, isn't it? It's been making headlines for the last few months. For instance: - Meta https://carboncredits.com/meta-signs-three-nuclear-deals-of-up-to-6-6-gw-to-fuel-ai-data-center-growth/?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://carboncredits.com/meta-signs-three-nuclear-deals-of-... - Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos_Power?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos_Power?utm_source=chatgp... - Microsoft https://www.jamasoftware.com/blog/2025/10/14/tech-giants-turn-to-nuclear-power-for-ais-energy-appetite/?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.jamasoftware.com/blog/2025/10/14/tech-giants-tur... - Amazon https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-powered-data-center?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-powered-data-center?utm_so... If anything, it seems to me that AI is revitalizing nuclear energy investments, which I think is a good thing. Wouldn't you agree?
- rickydroll 9mo ago
  It takes approximately 5 to 10 years to bring a nuclear plant online. Clean energy is growing at an average of 40GW a year for the next 10 years. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65964 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65964 By the time a nuclear plant comes online, Renewables have incrementally added 400 gigawatts. Granted, nukes generate 4 to 8 times more energy, but solar can significantly improve crop yields and soil health. They also make it easy to raise sheep and cattle. It's a good thing I like lamb (yum).

schiffern 9mo ago

Thank you for acknowledging the elephant in the room. I've literally seen people on HN argue that AI's increased power demand isn't bad for climate goals, because the money will encourage renewables. It's astounding how people don't see it, even when it's the invisible hand of the market that's choking them to death.

dormento 9mo ago
As expertly put by Upton Sinclair, "it is difficult to get someone to understand, when their salary depends on them not understanding it."
viraptor 9mo ago
It's the same song as with crypto. Just as silly as then - of course many people will burn whatever is the cheapest fuel right now, even if they maybe invest in something else in the future. But the total goes up anyway.
arghwhat 9mo ago
It's not the power demand that is the problem. It's that the majority of AI deployments are happening in a country which has a has had very poor renewable adoption and is now actively sabotaging renewable projects with an active opposition to climate goals because a particular group wants to protect their existing revenue. Renewables are cheap and highly profitable, and money talks - even in the US, as can be seen in Texas. But it's hard to fight against your government when they want to force you to buy their rich friends' fossil fuels instead...
- dangus 9mo ago
  Exactly this. Powering all AI data centers with renewable energy is actually trivially easy. You could even legislate it and make big tech companies responsible for providing the power themselves. One stroke of the pen resolves the issue. If OpenAI can afford to “spend $1 trillion” on AI they can afford to build some wind/solar/battery power plants.
  - 9mo ago

torgoodfillibut 9mo ago

I don't like the social harms related to AI but I think the energy is a silly emphasis. No one has ever thought twice about any heavy industry or absurdist garbage for consumers, home heating, etc. If we were on track for everything else a serious uptake of AI might have put us barely off track.. But this is like blaming the wafer thin mint for the fat guy exploding.

Sol- 9mo ago

I think it's still worthwhile, though. AI, given its current trajectory, will be able to help immensely with science and engineering challenges. Degrowth isn't a recipe for sustainable reduction of CO2 emissions.

cmiles8 9mo ago
This is broadly more PR puffery. We don’t need some magic AI model to tell us how to cut emissions. We just need to execute things we already know work.
squigz 9mo ago
Pumping even more CO2 into the air hoping the magic box spits out a solution to remove the CO2 from the air doesn't seem like a sustainable recipe either.
oblio 9mo ago
The big engineering challenges right now are electrifying everything (which means convincing people that it's the right thing to do and that gas powered vehicles belong to the trashbin of history, amongst others) and banning production of "virgin" plastic items, especially single use items (which also required a whole lot of convincing). Most of that is convincing is done in the exact opposite direction with... you guessed it... AI.

api 9mo ago

We can power it all and then some with renewable and nuclear energy. We elected a regime openly hostile to that and openly pro fossil fuel. Like they literally ran on burning more coal, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that we are burning more coal. AI doesn’t matter. If it’s not AI it’ll be EVs. Or if you’re pro immigration (as I am) then what do you think letting more people into the country does for power demand? It’s something like 5kW averaged out over 24/7 per head. That’s probably conservative when you do a full accounting of all demand per head. Every new immigrant is probably equivalent to a rack of GPUs. Degrowth is political fantasy. It will establish a populist backlash every time. Or are you going to line up to be the first to become poorer? I look at that stuff as a very privileged fantasy. Only the rich can romanticize poverty. The people who fantasize about green back to the land scenarios are usually wealthy middle or upper class people in developed nations who have zero first hand experience of what that actually means outside the Avatar films.

cl0ckt0wer 9mo ago
We've had my more movement on the nuclear front than any time since 3mile island

yread 9mo ago

Yep, someone was bragging recently they used 13B tokens last year. At 8mg CO2/token that's ~100t of CO2. Consumption of 5 households (or 200 NYC-London flights) just for vibe coding!

tedk-42 9mo ago

Wrong. Energy usage goes up for all societies, no matter how efficient we make things to be. Our living standard goes up with more electricity (EVs for example require more energy, as would more electrification of things). The real problem is no investment in alternative sources like Nuclear. We've had this debate before and the usual renewable only crowd only see as far as today's usage to say what we 'need'.

nebula8804 9mo ago

>The idea that all this AI is powered by “green” energy and unicorn farts is just a bunch of PR puffery from tech companies trying to divert attention from the environmental damage they’re causing. Do we have a solid breakdown ala Our World in Data for the energy mix mused to power AI Datacenters? The only thing I have seen is the facility that Musk acquired in Memphis for Grok is illegaily emitting more pollutants than allowed because of Musk's insane drive for speed and it is causing health problems in the underlying poor community. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw Its the reason I will never use Grok but i've been curious about where ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are hosted. Google has had a history of efficient data centers and they are running custom silicon so i'd assume they are the best here?