Electricity Pricing in the Age of AI

I see so much of this these days. "Six months ago it couldn't X. Now it can X. Just imagine what it can do in 2 years!!!"

It is past time to bring all the externalities produced by data centers back onto the data center budget itself. For example, the tariff for data center electricity should be high enough to eliminate the impact of increased electricity costs on everybody else. Also, if they're going to do on-prem power plants, they should be built and maintained by the local power utility, and the electricity from those on-prem data power plants should again be tariffed at the same level as the general grid.

The same thing should be for water as well. It should produce potable water pumped back through a sewage treatment plant owned by the local water utility, and the cost of fresh water for data centers should be high enough that the cost of all this new infrastructure is fully borne by the data center.

I'm sure some people complained that it will make data centers uneconomical, to which I reply: I should not make up your revenue shortfall. Either your revenue supports all your costs, or you go out of business.