It’s been a big week for A.I. data centers. That means it’s also been a big week for coal and natural gas.
Nvidia this week announced a $100 billion investment to support OpenAI’s enormous build-out of data centers that use its chips. The next day, OpenAI said it had signed deals with SoftBank and Oracle to build five new data centers as part of the Stargate Project, a $500 billion plan for A.I. infrastructure. (The three companies unveiled it at the White House back in January.)
The announcements are the latest in a global push to speed the construction of A.I. data centers. OpenAI, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are together spending more than $325 billion on them by the end of the year. To stay on the bleeding edge, the companies want the latest processors, cooling systems, facilities — all running 24/7 on mind-bending quanta of electricity.
In the U.S., more than half of that power is coming from fossil fuels.
President Trump, who called green energy a “scam” at the U.N. General Assembly this week, has enthusiastically endorsed natural gas, coal and oil. He has also subsidized them. As part of his official A.I. plan, he pledged to scrap “radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape” and fast-track fossil fuel projects instead.
But there are reasons beyond politics that help explain why smog-spewing fossil fuels have become the go-to power source for futuristic data centers. The pairing is almost unavoidable — at least for now.
Renewables
Sprawling solar farms, windmills and hydroelectric dams are the best energy options for the planet, and usually the cheapest. Their economic upside has made them, collectively, the fastest-growing power source for data centers worldwide.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post Why Don’t Data Centers Use More Green Energy? appeared first on New York Times.
