Like "Sanctuary" Cities, Easy to Proclaim Your Virtue Until You Have to Step Up

Data centers in northern Virginia (WSJ photo)

The tech giants all profess to be "green," but when the choice is between net-zero carbon emissions and the creation of power-hungry artificial-intelligence data centers, watch what they do, not what they say. [bold added]

An explosion of so-called hyperscale data centers in places such as Northern Virginia has upended plans by electric utilities to cut the use of fossil fuels. In some areas, that means burning coal for longer than planned.

These giant data centers will provide computing power needed for artificial intelligence. They are setting off a four-way battle among electric utilities trying to keep the lights on, tech companies that like to tout their climate credentials, consumers angry at rising electricity prices and regulators overseeing investments in the grid and trying to turn it green...

Many new data centers coming to Northern Virginia are known as hyperscale, or facilities that are far larger than previous generations of data centers. The big ones use as much power as the city of Seattle...

Wind and solar can’t serve data-center demand around the clock, so growth will need to be supplemented by natural-gas-fired power generation, said Arshad Mansoor, chief executive of the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute.

“You can be an idealist,” Mansoor said. “But if you’re a realist, you’ll add a ton of solar and you can balance that with gas.” The only other option to new gas plants is delaying coal and nuclear-plant retirements, he said.

The moguls who run the mega-cap tech giants know very well that the artificial-intelligence gold rush will delay national decarbonisation for years. By talking a good environmental game (and deflecting blame onto the utilities) they hope to retain their ESG credentials and keep consumers and regulators off their backs.