Bad for consumers, bad for the environment, 230+ groups say
Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/09/datacenter_pause_congress_help/
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Mandate that data centers self-power via renewable energy already! It’s such a simple fucking solution that solves basically all the problems of data centers.
Relevant note: The research that came out a while back saying that a long conversation with an AI chatbot could use up to half a liter of water included the water used to cool the power plant that’s powering the data center. The same paper spelled out that the actual water use of the data center itself is only 12% of that. So if we force data centers to be powered via renewable energy a long conversation with a chatbot would only use 0.06 liters of water which is basically negligible. Especially when you consider that the 0.5L was a worst-case scenario (older data centers letting all the water evaporate).
It runs into the fundamental problem with renewable energy at the moment. It lacks energy storage capabilities to run 24/7 and you can’t have power interuptions in a data center. But even if that wasn’t the problem, you are asking President who’s whole election motto was “Drill, baby, drill” and who cancelled all green tech investment from previous administration to consider a mandate on renewable energy? Good luck.
And many of these companies are inversting in green energy in a form of nuclear power while being subsidized by taxpayers in individual states because who doesn’t love socialism for the rich.
inb4 opposition to AI datacenters is domestic terrorism
Do we need to cut down an old growth forest for this?
No, but we’re gonna.
Will we have the juice to turn it on before 2037?
Well, not real energy, but the markets have started selling us ‘magic wattage’ and derivatives our engineers assure me will have our machines functioning at peak efficiency.
