POWER PLAY — White House efforts to help the tech industry obtain the massive amounts of energy needed to power artificial intelligence research and data centers are raising concern among green groups that these new initiatives might undermine the Biden administration’s climate agenda. Environmental activists have focused on a high-profile meeting last month between administration officials and executives from some of the biggest technology, utility and energy companies. That meeting led to creation of an interagency task force to advance data center development, but it also raised questions about who wasn’t there — and why. A coalition of 35 public interest groups responded by writing a letter to President Joe Biden and other top officials earlier this month, demanding that they hear from public advocates as well as massive corporations. “The way that [the Biden administration is] trampling environmental and public voices on this is pretty surprising, because they have gone out of their way to put what guardrails they can around AI,” said Emily Peterson-Cassin of Demand Progress, the group that spearheaded the letter. “It reminds me of the tech solutionism from back in the Obama-era.” Greg LeRoy, executive director at the progressive advocacy Good Jobs First, said he signed the letter because he doubted those at the meeting discussed what he saw as a risk of “undoing the green tech revolution envisioned by the Inflation Reduction Act — because AI is causing such a surge in data center energy consumption.” White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson said in response to questions about the letter that the administration has held “dozens of meetings with labor leaders, public interest groups, academics, and industry leaders” and that the data center task force will meet with “a wide range of stakeholders as we develop the safeguards and infrastructure to meet clean energy needs and ensure technological innovation is working for the American people.” Thomas Popik , who leads the nonprofit Foundation for Resilient Societies, said tech companies and environmental groups don’t have to be locked in a zero-sum game. “Technology companies can play a very positive role if they have the financial resources to jumpstart new technologies that result in an affordable, reliable and clean electric grid, but to the extent that they just capture existing resources and divert them from the public interest, that's not going to move us forward as a society,” he said. Amazon, Google and Microsoft are going all-in on nuclear energy as they hunt for carbon-free power, sparking revival of a sector that had fallen out of favor. “Clearly we have a lack of power capacity to support the AI expansion in parts of the U.S., especially in those like Virginia, Arizona and California,” said Shaolei Ren , an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside. “So I think the Biden administration is trying to streamline the process to expand the power grid infrastructure, because typically this is a very lengthy process and the power grid operators are not prepared for this dramatic growth of AI computing.” Activists have also raised concerns that the increased demand for power driven by the big tech firms could potentially drive up electricity prices for consumers. Peterson-Cassin noted that in calling for more guidance from regulators on “how to protect ratepayers from subsidizing some of the world's largest corporations and how to make sure we still meet our climate goals.” A big question facing the Biden climate agenda is whether the AI boom will kickstart a fossil fuel resurgence: The Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board, informed by discussion with utilities, academics and tech giants, concluded in a report released in July that DOE should address “the economics and carbon footprint of new natural gas capacity additions” and “delayed retirements of coal” facilities. Exelon President and CEO Calvin Butler, who attended the White House meeting, said that “there are unique challenges associated with the growing electricity demand for AI, which cannot be overstated” and that the U.S. must be “proactive” in building out transmission so that both data centers and clean energy can easily connect to the grid. The AI boom could also “delay the timelines” for big tech companies to meet their climate goals, said David Porter, vice president of electrification and sustainable energy strategy at the Electric Power Research Institute, whose CEO and president attended the White House meeting. But “AI is the next frontier, and this is going to be a high-growth business opportunity for them, so it may take time to catch up, but they will get there,” he said. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who attended the White House meeting, said the tech sector, power companies and the administration all understand the environmental concerns and argued that AI can provide energy benefits. “The administration was very clear that they would like American companies to have an opportunity to build data centers here in America,” Huang said at a Bipartisan Policy Center event last month. “Building the AI infrastructure of our country is a vital national interest, and although it consumes energy to train the models, the models that are created will do the work much more energy efficiently. When you think about AI and the productivity gains that we'll get from it, it is going to be incredible.”
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