I keep wondering this too. It feels like such a self fulfilling prophecy: don’t build new power plants. Don’t build nuclear. Get mad when the grid can’t keep up…it’s defeatist and anti-growth-of-any-sort through a different lens.
Consumption Growth Acceleration: After 14 years of near-stagnant growth (0.1% annually from 2008-2021), US electricity consumption surged 3.0% in 2024, driven by data centers, electric vehicles, and economic recovery, signaling a new era of demand growth.
- most grids can't sustain the AI energy demands at the moment
- literally no one could tell you if scaling up with clean/renewable energy sources to meet demand is even going to get greenlit right now. it is straight up gambling to try and give a black and white answer to it.
so to a lot of degrees i absolutely understand why a state might pump the brakes. this is increased pressure on a limited resource that is squeezing _the peoples_ economic circumstances. pump the brakes because no one is talking about how to greenlight it and scale up the right way so it doesn't result in even more financial uncertainty for people that are already financially uncertain. its absolutely not something i would want to give the go ahead on without guarantees that renewable energy is going to be the backbone of the increased energy demand.