The USA is an energy producing juggernaut. The margin between produced energy and consumption in 2024 was widest ever.

The blame is going to data centers. And this pisses me off because another example of how Americans as a whole are getting squeezed at the benefit of a few. Taxpayers subsidize these things, shareholders getting rich from AI boom and job replacement, Americans paying higher energy costs and live with growing fear of losing their jobs.

Back from Japan after a couple months. ChatGPT is banned there. Maybe we need to tell these tech companies to slow the F down and as a society we actually study if it's best to proceed as we are especially if we are going to subsidize. I'm getting tired of the usual talking point that "if you don't do this, you'll fall behind China and lose jobs" STFU, we're already losing jobs and US infrastructure is **** compared to Asia.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU000072610

140 gigawatts of coal fired electrical production has been idled since 2011. China, on the other hand, built 100 gigawatts of coal fired generation...last year.

Don't think data centers are to blame.

See your local environmentalist for the latest scuttlebutt.

The devaluing of the USD over the past 5 years is one reason.

Idiot communists couldn't boil water properly 40 years ago and scared the boomers away from nuclear power

Sims said:

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140 gigawatts of coal fired electrical production has been idled since 2011.

Don't think data centers are to blame.

See your local environmentalist for the latest scuttlebutt.

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No, data centers are to blame. Coal is not cheaper then most gas fires plant. Gas is pretty cheap.

Data Centers are not paying the cost of their incremental demand but rather getting subsidized by the region of power consumers. Which for Texans is quite a bit.

Regulation and incentives being directed in the wrong areas. Need to keep cutting red tape if you want cheap energy.

texagbeliever said:

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Sims said:

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140 gigawatts of coal fired electrical production has been idled since 2011.

Don't think data centers are to blame.

See your local environmentalist for the latest scuttlebutt.

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No, data centers are to blame. Coal is not cheaper then most gas fires plant. Gas is pretty cheap.

Data Centers are not paying the cost of their incremental demand but rather getting subsidized by the region of power consumers. Which for Texans is quite a bit.

---

Were data centers to blame in 1980?



Coal is not cheaper but when you remove the coal baseload capacity and replace it with spurious capacity of solar and wind...prices will go up unquestionably.

Sims said:

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texagbeliever said:

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Sims said:

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140 gigawatts of coal fired electrical production has been idled since 2011.

Don't think data centers are to blame.

See your local environmentalist for the latest scuttlebutt.

---

No, data centers are to blame. Coal is not cheaper then most gas fires plant. Gas is pretty cheap.

Data Centers are not paying the cost of their incremental demand but rather getting subsidized by the region of power consumers. Which for Texans is quite a bit.

---

Were data centers to blame in 1980?



Coal is not cheaper but when you remove the coal baseload capacity and replace it with spurious capacity of solar and wind...prices will go up unquestionably.

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Fact. We as a nation are not building enough baseload plants fast enough. Its going to come to a head in about a dozen states in about 2-3 years.

The conversations happening today on converting a lot of coal plants to gas should have been done a decade ago, not in 2025. Shutting down coal and being replaced by fairy dust and unicorn farts was never a good plan. Many of us have been very vocal about it and our industry leaders have massively failed its customers.

Some of us are now more concerned about even having water this time next year...in the USA. We've committed suicide down here in Corpus by killing the only option we had to get water (aside from God granting us biblical rain) where...coincidentally....50% of US oil exports originate.

I'm guessing you will be hearing more about our plight at some point next year when ~500K people in the area can no longer get water and major O&G industry starts shutting down and leaving.

YouBet said:

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Some of us are now more concerned about even having water this time next year...in the USA. We've committed suicide down here in Corpus by killing the only option we had to get water (aside from God granting us biblical rain) where...coincidentally....50% of US oil exports originate.

I'm guessing you will be hearing more about our plight at some point next year when ~500K people in the area can no longer get water and major O&G industry starts shutting down and leaving.

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But datacenters...

Seriously though, Corpus is a sad situation. Shoots down a desal plant with an infinite supply of water at its doorstep in favor of pumping ground water from other parts of the state - that likely have a replenish rate in the 100s of years rather than instantaneous.

They shot it down over budget concerns when the projection was the average household purchases would see bill increases of 10 - 15 dollars per month. Even if it was 5x that much, I'm sure they would be happy to have a reliable source of water.

Wild.

Just to tie my thoughts together...

A leading opponent of coal fired power generation and also one of the most vocal, and highest spending, opponents of the Corpus Inner Harbor Desal plant, was the Sierra Club.

The degrowth movement is a primary force against raised standards of living in the US.

Sims said:

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140 gigawatts of coal fired electrical production has been idled since 2011.

Don't think data centers are to blame.

See your local environmentalist for the latest scuttlebutt.

---

I don't think you truly understand how much power datacenters require and how fast they are expanding. Met a guy a couple years back who worked for Georgia Power and we were discussing how they had the first nuclear power plant coming online in a long time. He said Microsoft has essentially already purchased it for powering just some of their datacenters. They had already stretched the power in Virginia and North Carolina and were moving on. He also talked about how much more this was going to expand. Anyone who understands AI and GPUs and HPCs can see this. It's why they are building the massive datacenters in Abilene to be close to so much power generation with minimal demand. The size of the new datacenters and volume is hard to fathom and all of it requires massive, massive amounts of power. The cooling systems alone are monster energy hogs and absolutely critical to making it all work.

If you don't think that has a macro impact you really aren't paying attention. Let the very wealthy and very profitable companies who own and operate those AI datacenters pay a serious premium for it and don't pass it along to the rest of us.

Inflation caused the price of everything else to go up. Why wouldn't it naturally cause the cost of producing energy to go up as well?

Oh, I know it has an impact. I buy forward electricity contracts for several hundreds of megawatts professionally.

But it's a copout to say datacenters are to blame without any context or concurrent causes.

If we're blaming Data Centers can we also get back to blaming EVs?

It's unbelievable. If I had known this was going to be such an issue, I would have convinced my wife not to move down here. Walked right into a pretty extreme livability scenario. I almost have to wonder if the federal government might not step in and somehow overrule our local dumbasses on city council simply because of the critical, national energy infrastructure in place with new stuff being built. All of that needs water.

That gives me major heartburn, but killing the desal plant with literally no backup plan is just unreal to me.

As it stands, we are now keeping the door open of having a second landing pad somewhere else in case we need to evacuate for lack of water.

Quote:

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Coal is not cheaper but when you remove the coal baseload capacity and replace it with spurious capacity of solar and wind...prices will go up unquestionably.

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Our electricity is produced by TVA. This month we'll pay 11.7 cents per kilowatt hour, up about a penny from a year ago. Generally speaking, when the price of natural gas goes up, it's reflected in the cost of electricity (at least that's been my take).

That said, TVA tends to make decisions that appear to be driven by those who operate a bit left of center. For example, they closed Bull Run, a functioning coal fired plant in 2023. This past summer, TVA issued alerts regarding the power strain on their system, which I thought ironic given the closure of Bull Run. Any chance of re-opening it were ending this past July when they blew up the smokestack.

I do think data centers might become an issue at some point, but it appears to me these data centers know up front they need to address their needs for power.

HollywoodBQ said:

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If we're blaming Data Centers can we also get back to blaming EVs?

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Both are behind Puerto Ricans in the blame game.

Dan Scott said:

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The USA is an energy producing juggernaut. The margin between produced energy and consumption in 2024 was widest ever.

The blame is going to data centers. And this pisses me off because another example of how Americans as a whole are getting squeezed at the benefit of a few. Taxpayers subsidize these things, shareholders getting rich from AI boom and job replacement, Americans paying higher energy costs and live with growing fear of losing their jobs.

Back from Japan after a couple months. ChatGPT is banned there. Maybe we need to tell these tech companies to slow the F down and as a society we actually study if it's best to proceed as we are especially if we are going to subsidize. I'm getting tired of the usual talking point that "if you don't do this, you'll fall behind China and lose jobs" STFU, we're already losing jobs and US infrastructure is **** compared to Asia.

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If we still had Sandow, Big Brown, Monticello, and Gibbons Creek online, we wouldn't have this problem. Obama and his war on coal caused this.

Agree. AI is driving a MASSIVE increase in electricity demand. Those businesses need to pay for all of the extra cost and not force it onto residential electric consumers or non-AI businesses.

Free money has consequences

Data centers

I paid $4 for gas this morning in Phoenix. It helps promote lower emissions because I'm not driving anywhere I don't have to.

YouBet said:

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Some of us are now more concerned about even having water this time next year...in the USA. We've committed suicide down here in Corpus by killing the only option we had to get water (aside from God granting us biblical rain) where...coincidentally....50% of US oil exports originate.

I'm guessing you will be hearing more about our plight at some point next year when ~500K people in the area can no longer get water and major O&G industry starts shutting down and leaving.

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Yeah but think of all the redfish saved by killing that project. Seriously though, corpus is headed in a bad direction and killing that water project was probably the final nail in the coffin.

Bob Knights Liver said:

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The devaluing of the USD over the past 5 years is one reason.

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I'm not sure there is anything more important in the long term than this. It's affecting the cost of goods and services, and if we have a major market correction, it will have a lot to do with this.

If all energy sources competed on the same playing field you'd see a real deregulated market, and energy prices would be astronomical. This is just my observation, but removing fuel competition from markets creates other issues as well, not just electricity. Data centers aren't the only issue, but they are a large part of it, not to mention all the extra residential load being added.

Sims said:

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Oh, I know it has an impact. I buy forward electricity contracts for several hundreds of megawatts professionally.

But it's a copout to say datacenters are to blame without any context or concurrent causes.

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Like many things it's rarely a single thing that causes a macro problem, that said it certainly is making a significant impact and is a valid argument because it has absolutely spiked energy demand on a large scale. I think it would also be wrong to say that the significant increase in datacenters and the types of computers they are using isn't at least partly responsible for the additional costs. Energy production can't keep up with demand and datacenters are the biggest factor of change recently, they were not previously the power drains they are now. FWIW, folks that can optimize GPU's and LLM's to make them run even a fraction more efficiently are making serious money right now, not unusual to be $500-1 million and beyond for good SW Engineers in that space.

Related, but the idiots in California finally had reality smack them in the face now that Gavin is going to run for POTUS in 2028 and realizing they were staring the barrel at major fuel shortages and massive price hikes.

They just passed a new law that greatly expands drilling permits for the next decade, halted their cap on refiner's margins, and now they are trying to keep Valero from closing their last facility.

I bring it up because CA has no way to support these new, big data centers with their current footprint and I bet this is also a driving factor for above.

BigRobSA said:

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HollywoodBQ said:

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If we're blaming Data Centers can we also get back to blaming EVs?

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Both are behind Puerto Ricans in the blame game.

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In PR, they don't have enough reliable power to run a Data Center, or charge an EV. Which is obviously Trump's fault - LOL.

jja79 said:

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I paid $4 for gas this morning in Phoenix. It helps promote lower emissions because I'm not driving anywhere I don't have to.

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I saw gas at almost $7/gallon in California and it still wasn't high enough.

We're going to need $12 - $15 / gallon before it really hits home with the voters.

Data centers should be allowed to build a mini-nuke plant to power its facilities

We need to be charging data centers more for energy. I feel the pace of their increased usage makes that a necessity. We can't just charge them cost when their increased presence demands we continually provide more power.

Y'all killed coal

Agreed, we should tell them to turn their computers off when the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing. We can't have things that need power at night, that's ridiculous.