Dan Howells, Director of Climate Campaigns for Green America
There is a ton of hype about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its ability to make all our lives easier. It can do everything from creating a better wheel to helping students cheat on homework essays. A tad facetious but for all the envisioned benefits, AI comes with a big environmental cost. Not every function of AI is an energy hog, but in general it is widely acknowledged AI will drive the need for more and more electricity to power the data centers it relies on. And some tech companies are looking to nuclear power to feed AI’s thirst for electricity, including a controversial reopening of Three Mile Island – the site of the worst nuclear disaster in the US – to meet the energy needs of Microsoft.
Nuclear power has many downsides – from the waste that cannot be safely disposed of, to the possibility of accidents impacting millions of people, to the environmental justice impacts of uranium mining. It is also costly to build, and plants are often delayed for years. The newest nuclear plants to come online in Georgia were seven years late and $17 billion over budget. Small modular nuclear plants that would be cheaper to build, but still have safety issues, are years off from commercial deployment, if they are ever deployed. It is a fantasy to pretend that nuclear power will save us from climate change or meet increasing energy needs, including from AI. Yet instead of looking to drastically increase the use of renewable energy that is far cheaper and safer, combined with gains in energy efficiency, companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are looking to build more nuclear power plants.
No one wants a nuclear plant or waste disposal site in their neighborhood. So as AI becomes more and more a part of our future tech companies are increasingly delaying the shut down or restarting fossil fuel plants. These plants are polluting local communities and driving up energy costs for consumers. Instead of turning to nuclear and fossil fuels, tech companies should take the opportunity to bolster renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions to change the way we use and produce electricity. The choice companies like Amazon and Microsoft make could lead our clean energy future or a continuation of a dangerous and dirty energy past. If AI is so smart it would choose renewables.
