The issue is an environmental one. The cost here is environmental damage. The solution will need to be policy decisions that take that damage into account.
The alternative is regulation, which, I'm not even sure how it could be used to address this particular issue. Ban AI or crypto? Humans will find new ways to waste vast amounts of energy with computers. Require that computers have a certain efficiency rating of megaflops/joules? People will use more of this now far more efficient computing, resulting in more overall usage. Require corporations to be audited for energy efficiency and be certified? Goodbye all small players that cannot handle all the overhead of such legislation.
Mandating domestically owned servers is commonplace.
And this was in response to someone whose best idea was “ban ai”
How about tax the carbon emissions.
The other issue that comes up with green generation is how variable it is, sometimes it'll be cloudy and still air, others will be windy and sunny, and the grid needs to capable of supplying everyone in both scenarios and not overbuilding generation they can't turn off. Having industries available to soak up an appropriate amount of energy available within their ecosystem would be great, but it's a hard sell to anyone to invest billions in sites where there could be no guarantees on utilization if they get bad weather for a few months. If there is any "plays nicely with others" regulation on consumption of a common resource, it's going to be reactive to problems than ahead of time.
It helps that the actual electrical generators don't care where the steam is coming from, so we could be leveraging the gensets from decommissioned coal plants in fission reactors. All that's missing is the political will.