Could Environmentalists Derail AI Growth?

The discussion highlights the significant challenges posed by data center expansions, including their high electricity and water usage. Environmental concerns and potential regulatory scrutiny are also noted. The conversation touches on the possibility of smaller nuclear plants as a solution and references the impact of LNG prices and supply issues. The increasing political significance of energy consumption for data centers is emphasized.

Transcript:

I don’t either. And another big issue for these data center expansions is not only do they use an incredible amount of electricity, they use an incredible amount of water for cooling and things of that nature.

And I’ve even seen plans where they are going to sink these into either bodies of water or the ocean or something like that so they can get the flow of water without tapping out local systems.

Of course, you need desalination in the ocean, but they can get the flow of water without tapping out local systems.

The other thing that’s going to happen is environmentalists are going to get involved in this.

It’s just electricity, wires. It isn’t exactly like pipelines, but it’s got that flavor.

Yeah, you can almost count on that. And one would think that at some point, like you said, smaller nuclear plants may be the answer because they put a big kibosh on it 10, 15, 20 years ago.

It almost brought Europe to its knees because they disengaged all of their nuclear plants. And then LNG skyrocketed.

Input on LNG and gas was cut off by the explosions and the sabotage.

And it’s going to be something to answer to because this is only going to grow.

This could well become a political issue. And once it’s political, the people in power turn it into a regulatory issue.

This could be a presidential, Senate level issue sometime in the next few years because you’re talking about people and companies basically saying we don’t have enough electricity.

Right, right.