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Comment by softwaredoug | Hacker News Reader

AI and data centers may be the forcing function for the US to build green energy to improve grid capacity. Lately almost all new energy capacity is green energy[1]. With batteries becoming better and better, the AI revolution could turn into the green energy revolution in the US.

1 - https://cleanpower.org/news/market-report-2024-snapshot/?utm...

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Didn't people say this about crypto as well, like, a decade ago? Did anything come of that?

I find it endlessly fascinating that the US tech industry keeps developing new ways to consume absurd amounts of energy (even within the context of a government that still nominally has an Energy Star initiative) but still somehow thinks that power generation is someone else's problem and barely even takes a stake in it.

Google did some stuff a while back, locating data centres with power generation in mind, but do any of the main AI providers (putting aside xAI, which has its blurred-edge connection to Tesla) actually have holdings in power generation?

Energy Star was one of the victims of this administration.

That doesn't particularly surprise me, but was it just extreme DOGE cost-cutting or was it "one of the aicryptobros on the dais thinks this is antithetical to his business model"?

(I suppose this could be a "porque no los dos?" meme moment)

The program makes money. Most of the programs DOGE cut are profitable or break even as far as I'm aware. They destroyed things for the sake of ideology.

Building green energy is cheap. Hooking them up to the grid is what's expensive.

I believe this isn't as much about green energy, but that hooking any new energy generation to the grid is expensive.

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