alt Hacker NewsSome thoughts:
* you can run data centres on grid electricity, which can come from mostly-renewable sources (in short, you need gas mainly as as an occasional backup).
* running things off-grid is dumb, and they’re only doing it because they’re desperate to get their data centres up and running yesterday so that they’re the ones who get to the singularity first (or some approximation thereof).
* the US electricity grid is f**d, mostly for the same reasons you can’t build any linear infrastructure in the United States - too many bodies hold veto powers and use any such infrastructure as an extortion opportunity.
* The spike in gas-powered generation for data centres is essentially a US phenomenon. Globally, the vast majority of new electricity supply is coming from renewables.
* in a sane world, Amazon and new large-scale data centre providers would face punitive carbon charges to incentivise them to switch to mostly renewables as soon as possible.
Replies
Gas is ridiculously cheap in the US while it's often the most expensive source of electricity in the rest of the world.
We're currently seeing a bifurcation where Asia bets on anything but oil and gas while the US goes in the opposite direction. Note that anything but oil and gas includes coal, so this isn't about the environment.
> you can run data centres on grid electricity
The reason they're not doing that is because grid providers can't grow their supply fast enough to support new AI data centres.