POLITICS: AI’s energy needs put every fuel in play

For more than two decades, America has been trapped in a debilitating, partisan energy debate: Republicans eschew renewable energy and support the fossil-fuel industry — including initiatives like the Northern Access Pipeline through western New York — while Democrats rail against fossil fuels and champion green energy technologies.

The old partisan boundaries of this debate are already changing. A growing number of Republicans support US clean-energy dominance, and some Democrats resist the common-sense permitting reform necessary to deploy it.

Yet the extreme power needs of artificial intelligence will completely upend how we discuss energy in this country. 

AI demands a lot of power. It’s difficult to conceptualize how much electricity AI will need in just a few years.

A recently published peer-reviewed analysis found that NVIDIA, the biggest player in AI hardware globally, will ship out an estimated 1.5 million AI server units by 2027.

When those servers are up and running at full capacity, they will consume 85.4 terawatt hours of electricity annually — more electricity than the nations of Switzerland and Greece each consume in a year.

Of course, not all of those NVIDIA servers will end up operating in the United States.

But if America continues to lead in the AI race — a goal President-elect Donald Trump is almost guaranteed to pursue — the US will consume a significant share of the AI chip and server market. 

Our nation is blessed with abundant energy, yet our excess capacity still isn’t nearly able to handle the increased energy demands of AI.

And AI isn’t alone. According to the International Energy Agency, cryptocurrency and data centers could also double their 2022 energy consumption levels by 2026.

Further, increasing numbers of electric vehicles will require an even greater need for electricity production.

All these realities mean the traditional energy debate is now fully moot.

American energy consumption has been stable for decades. In a world of relatively predictable consumption, conservatives could argue that increasing domestic fossil-fuel production would make America energy-independent without investments in renewable energy.

This argument was not unreasonable (apart from environmental factors). In 2023, fossil fuels accounted for roughly 84% of domestic energy production — almost enough to cover America’s entire energy consumption.

Meanwhile, progressives could argue, with justification, that stable American consumption meant energy-efficiency initiatives and renewable-energy investment could wean the US off fossil fuels in favor of carbon-free domestic fuel sources.

Gov. Hochul’s congestion tax may be an ineffective burden on the poorest New Yorkers, but no one can deny that real advances like higher fuel economy have improved air quality and urban livability.

In effect, both sides debated the best way to fill up a fuel tank of roughly the same size, and they both made good points. 

But the energy demands of AI mean that fuel tank must get much bigger — and we lack the luxury of switching out one fuel for another.

Renewable technology isn’t yet able to meet our current demands, and our natural-gas capacity is simply insufficient to generate the power we need. 

Our only option is to use every energy source at our disposal. And I mean everything: natural gas, solar, geothermal, hydropower, energy storage, nuclear, you name it. 

Aggressively expanding our capacity on every front to meet AI’s seemingly insatiable energy demands can seem like an impossible lift. But we have no other choice.

AI isn’t just a fun technology that can crack jokes, edit essays, help with research projects and produce lifelike videos. It will be the critical national-security technology of the 21st century, transforming everything from cybersecurity to intelligence-gathering to autonomous weapons systems and more.

If we don’t win the AI race, China will — and we don’t want to live in a world where communist China dominates AI.

The partisan energy debate is over.

With the energy demands of AI and the distinct possibility that China will be victorious in this new technology race, we have only two options: Use every energy source available — or lose.

Neil Chatterjee served as chairman and a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.