Tag: infrastructure

Data Centers Are Eating the Grid Alive

The future of data centers is about to make a huge draw on the power grid. According to a DOE-backed report from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, U.S. data center energy use could nearly triple by 2028, eating up as much as 12% of the country’s electricity. Why? Blame AI and its insatiable hunger for powerful chips and energy-guzzling cooling systems.

Currently, data centers are responsible for a modest 4% of U.S. power demand. But with AI servers becoming the star of the show, the power draw has already doubled since 2017. The GPU chips that are needed to run complex machine learning algorithms are pushing the limits of what the grid can handle. And then there is the heat they generate, causing cooling systems to work overtime.

The report warns that this growth could strain electrical grids, spike energy prices, and raise a few eyebrows about the climate impact. Researchers are calling for better transparency around energy use and efficiency improvements, but Big Tech isn’t exactly eager to spill the tea on their proprietary power habits.

And don’t count on renewables to ride to the rescue just yet. A study last month highlighted that scaling up solar and wind power isn’t happening fast enough to keep up with this demand surge. Plus, when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, the grid still needs fossil fuels to back it up.

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Data Centers Are Sending Global Electricity Demand Soaring

The global electricity demand is expected to grow exponentially in the coming decades, largely due to an increased demand from tech companies for new data centers to support the rollout of high-energy-consuming advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI). As governments worldwide introduce new climate policies and pump billions into alternative energy sources and clean tech, these efforts may be quashed by the increased electricity demand from data centers unless greater international regulatory action is taken to ensure that tech companies invest in clean energy sources and do not use fossil fuels for power.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report in October entitled “What the data centre and AI boom could mean for the energy sector”. It showed that with investment in new data centers surging over the past two years, particularly in the U.S., the electricity demand is increasing rapidly – a trend that is set to continue. 

The report states that in the U.S., annual investment in data center construction has doubled in the past two years alone. China and the European Union are also seeing investment in data centers increase rapidly. In 2023, the overall capital investment by tech leaders Google, Microsoft, and Amazon was greater than that of the U.S. oil and gas industry, at approximately 0.5 percent of the U.S. GDP.

The tech sector expects to deploy AI technologies more widely in the coming decades as the technology is improved and becomes more ingrained in everyday life. This is just one of several advanced technologies expected to contribute to the rise in demand for power worldwide in the coming decades. 

Global aggregate electricity demand is set to increase by 6,750 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2030, per the IEA’s Stated Policies Scenario. This is spurred by several factors including digitalization, economic growth, electric vehicles, air conditioners, and the rising importance of electricity-intensive manufacturing. In large economies such as the U.S., China, and the EU, data centers contribute around 2 to 4 percent of total electricity consumption at present. However, the sector has already surpassed 10 percent of electricity consumption in at least five U.S. states. Meanwhile, in Ireland, it contributes more than 20 percent of all electricity consumption.

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Utility Companies Are Run By Technocrats Obsessed With Control Over Energy

Starting in the early 1930s, the Technocracy movement was obsessed with control over energy. The first two requirements laid down for Technocracy in 1934 were (1) Register on a continuous 24-hour-per-day basis the total net conversion of energy and (2) By means of the registration of energy converted and consumed, make possible a balanced load.” You could easily see this exact wording on your modern energy bill.

As I wrote in Technocracy’s Necessary Requirements,

Conversion of energy means creating useable energy from stored energy like coal, oil or natural gas; when they are burned, electricity is generated. Hydroelectric and nuclear also convert energy. There were two reasons to keep track of useable energy: First, it was the basis for issuing “energy script” to all citizens for buying and selling goods and services. Second, it predicted economic activity because all such activity is directly dependent upon energy. (Note that Technocrats intended to pre-determine how much energy would be made available in the first place.)

Once available energy was quantified, it was to be allocated to consumers and manufacturers so as to limit production and consumption. Technocrats would have control of both ends, so that everything is managed according to their scientific formulas.

The modern Smart Grid, with its ubiquitous WiFi-enabled Smart Meters on homes and businesses, is the exact fulfillment of these two requirements. The concept of “energy web” was first revitalized in 1999 by the Bonneville Power Authority (BPA) in Portland, Oregon. A government agency, BPA had a rich history of Technocrats dating back to its creation in 1937. The “energy web” was renamed Smart Grid in 2009 during the Obama Administration. Note that Smart Grid was a global initiative that intended to blanket the entire world with this new energy control technology.

If America were to face this reality, these Technocrat charlatans would be thrown into the dustbin of history. Unfortunately, policy leaders like Heartland Institute are blind to it. — Technocracy News & Trends Editor Patrick Wood.

When electric power was a novel idea and just beginning to be adopted in urban centers, the industry had a Wild West feel to it as multiple companies strung wires, opened power plants, and sold electricity on an unregulated market. Competition was fierce, but state and local governments concluded that the inefficiencies and redundancies endangered the public and imposed higher costs.

So states set up service territories with monopolistic or oligopolistic service providers, who were entrusted with providing reliable power and sufficient reserve for peak periods in return for being guaranteed a profit on rates proposed by the utilities but approved or set by newly established state public utility commissions (PUCs). These commissions were charged with ensuring public utilities served the general public universally within their territory, providing reliable service at reasonable rates.

Much has changed since then. Politicians began to supplant engineers to decide, based on self-interested calculations, what types of power should be favored and disfavored, and what types of appliances and modes of transportation Americans could use. As the 21st century dawned, a new consideration entered the picture: Climate change.

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FBI thwarts man’s alleged plan to attack Nashville power grid with explosive-laden drone

A Columbia, Tennessee man allegedly attempted to fly a drone packed with explosives into an energy facility before the FBI stopped him from destroying the critical infrastructure, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

In a press release, the DOJ said 24-year-old Skyler Philippi was arrested and charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted destruction of an energy facility.

“As charged, Skyler Philippi believed he was moments away from launching an attack on a Nashville energy facility to further his violent white supremacist ideology – but the FBI had already compromised his plot,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said. “This case serves as yet another warning to those seeking to sow violence and chaos in the name of hatred by attacking our country’s critical infrastructure: the Justice Department will find you, we will disrupt your plot, and we will hold you accountable.”

The DOJ said Philippi told a confidential human source (CHS) in June, that he wanted to commit a mass shooting at a YMCA in the Columbia, Tennessee area.

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What Happened to Internet for All?

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaigned on a promise to connect Americans to high-speed internet. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set aside $42.5 billion to the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. “What we’re doing is, as I said, not unlike what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did when he brought electricity to nearly every American home and farm in our nation. Today Kamala and I are making an equally historic investment to connect everyone in America to high speed internet, and affordable high speed internet, by 2030,” Biden stated. To date, no one has been connected to the internet under this program.

Biden is correct that he has acted like Roosevelt insofar as creating countless social programs and encouraging Americans to become dependent on the welfare state.  The $42.5 billion actually rises to $90 billion when we factor in the Affordable Connectivity Program. Kamala Harris was tasked with overseeing the Internet for All initiative, but she has done absolutely nothing to help the program progress. “While Republicans in Congress have refused to help us revive this program, our Administration is refusing to let them stop us from delivering for families across America,” Harris stated this past June.

Harris believes she could solve the problem if endless funds were made available. She did nothing with the initial investment and continues to ask for more funding despite having nothing to show for the BILLIONS invested in these Build Back Better programs. We recently saw the same fiasco with FEMA misplacing billions, claiming its budget toppled, and then blaming the Republicans for not blindly handing them more funding.

Harris consistently factors in race to her social programs and has supported the Digital Equity Plan than will prioritize internet access to minorities first. Divide and conquer.

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More Bad News For Ukraine: 90% Of It’s Thermal Power Capacity Is GONE

Prime Minister Denis Shmigal has said that almost all of Ukraine’s thermal power generation capabilities have been destroyed by Russian long-range strikes. Shmigal added that the country must now rely on substitutes.

The news continues to get worse for Ukraine as we head toward winter.

The prime minister added that Kyiv’s priority is to provide these regions with alternative sources of heat and electricity, noting that Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, has received dozens of energy equipment units, including powerful electricity generators.

While writing on Telegram on Tuesday, Shmigal said Kiev is doing its best to increase energy sustainability, especially in frontline regions and areas bordering Russia. He added that “cities that depend on large thermal power plants are especially vulnerable,” given that Russia “purposefully attacked” these types of facilities, “destroying or damaging almost 90% of all thermal power generation” in the country.

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America Is Falling Apart: Our National Priorities Are in Dire Need of Restructuring

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”—Bob Dylan

A water main breaks every two minutes somewhere in the U.S., resulting in contaminated drinking supplies and boil water notices.

One out of three bridges in the U.S. needs repair, endangering hundreds of millions of commuters. More than 42,000 bridges across the country, carrying about 167 million vehicles each day, are in disrepair.

It is estimated that 300 million people could face power outages across the United States between 2024 and 2028, due in large part to widespread power grid failures.

No wonder U.S. infrastructure received a C- on the Infrastructure Report Card.

America is falling apart.

Collapsing bridges, buckling roads, overheated railways, deteriorating power lines, contaminated water lines, outdated public transportation, overtaxed power grids, aging ports and waterways, unsafe tunnels and highways, and spotty or insufficient telecommunications assets are all becoming frequent hallmarks of the American way of life.

If the nation is woefully unprepared to deal with climate disasters such as floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts, despite the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that have been pledged to shore up the nation’s infrastructure problems, it is because politicians across the political spectrum have failed us.

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene makes this failure by the government to put the needs of the American people first painfully evident. Entire towns are under water. Roadways have collapsed or are otherwise impassable. Potable water is scarce. More than 1.5 million households are still without power.

Clearly, our national priorities need to be re-examined.

While the politicians play partisan games with our tax dollars, the nation’s critical infrastructure—both the physical foundations of the nation and the figurative foundations of our freedoms—continues to be neglected and deprioritized in favor of grandstanding, bloated military budgets on endless wars abroad, foreign aid to shore up the infrastructure and military defenses of international allies, and all manner of graft and pork barrel spending.

When all is said and done, the bread-and-circus distractions and sleight-of-hand political theater being trotted out in order to keep Americans distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms adds nothing of real value to the lives of the average American.

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UK’s National Grid Admits It Doesn’t Have A Clue How To Reach Net Zero

A few weeks ago, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and his Head of Mission Control, Chris Stark wrote a public letter to Fintan Slye of the National Grid ESO asking for practical advice on how to deliver a clean power grid by 2030.

The letter asked Slye to set out a range of pathways to enable a decarbonised power system by 2030. For each pathway they asked for the forecast energy generation and demand mix and the underlying assumptions that need to be met for these to be deliverable. They also asked for the key requirements for the transmission network and interconnectors and for a high-level assessment of the costs, benefits, opportunities, challenges and risks as well as the key actions to be taken by Government, NESO, Ofgem and industry to enable delivery of the pathways.

Recently, Fintan Slye took to X to announce his initial response. Strangely Slye’s letter is not addressed to Miliband or Stark, but takes the form of an open letter to industry.

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Senators open inquiry into Kamala Harris’ failure to deliver $42b internet program promised to rural Americans

Nine senators have opened an inquiry into Kamala Harris’s failure to deliver on her promises as the country’s “broadband czar.”

At the heart of the inquiry is a $42.45 billion program aimed at providing rural America with high-speed internet. Despite this significant investment, the program has not connected a single individual to the internet after more than 1,000 days.

FCC commissioner Brendan Carr has been expressing his concerns about this major failure on X and recently shared a new letter penned by nine senators about the mismanagement of this program under Harris.

The letter begins by outlining her failure and comparing it to her massive failures as border czar, noting: “It appears that your performance as “broadband czar” has mirrored your performance as “border czar,” marked by poor management and a lack of effectiveness despite significant federal broadband investments and your promises to deliver broadband to rural areas.”

It explains how under the Infrastructure Investment and JOBS Act, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration was given $42.45 billion to carry out the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment program, also known as BEAD, to bring broadband access to rural areas and to other unserved communities.

The letter cites Harris’s promise that “we can bring broadband to rural America today” and points out that three years later, not a single individual in these communities has received this connectivity.

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WWIII: Ukraine Strikes Infrastructure Targets Deep Inside Russia Overnight, Including Mosocw, Tver

Ukraine launched multiple drone strikes overnight on 01 September 2024, targeting critical infrastructure in Russia, including power plants and a refinery in the Moscow and Tver regions.

According to Russian authorities, explosions and blazes were reported at the Moscow Oil Refinery, the Konakovo Power Station (Tver Region). An unsuccessful attempt was also made to attack the Kashira power plant.

Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed that 158 drones were destroyed across several regions, including Moscow, Tver, Kursk, Bryansk, Voronezh, Belgorod, Kaluga, and Lipetsk. No casualties were reported.

This escalation follows Ukraine’s increased use of drone technology to strike at Russian infrastructure, with Kyiv seeking U.S. approval to use Western-supplied weapons more extensively inside Russia.

A retaliatory response from Moscow is expected following these drone strikes across Russia.

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