US tech firms pledge at White House to bear costs of energy for datacenters

Fair point, data isn't scarce like oil. Nobody's losing their forum posts. That part of my analogy is weak.

But you're answering a question I'm not asking. The question isn't "was something taken from you." It's "who deserves a share when collective human output generates trillions in commercial value."

your torrenting analogy makes my case. Nobody loses their original movie when it gets pirated either. We still recognize that the people who made it deserve compensation when others profit from it. The entire IP enforcement apparatus is built on exactly that principle.

Non-rivalrous doesn't mean non-exploitable.

Terrific if it happens. I may even ignore the AI (valuation) bubble for the duration.

David Roberts (https://volts.wtf) has repeatedly noted that AI companies need the power, need it now, and have the capital to get it. So he (and others) advocate that Big Tech fund the grid improvements and new power generation.

Point #1 Virtual Power Plants

Roberts advocates adopting virtual power plants (VPPs). Think grid of grids, like the internet is a network of networks. Think peer-to-peer energy sharing. VPPs unlock dynamic load shifting, two-way energy sharing (think of all those roof top solar panels and powerwalls), and therefore -- most importantly -- reduces peak demand on a grid which will allow greater utilitization.

IIRC: our grids currently operate at 30% capacity (to accommodate rare peak demand events). Grid enhancement techs plus VPPs can boost that to 80% or higher. Reducing the urgency for building more transmission and distribution infra. (In the short term; we still need to greatly embiggen our grid(s).)

It'd be kinda amazing if the urgency to build more data centers mooted the incumbent's (utilities, regulators) opposition to improving our grid(s), thereby benefiting everyone everywhere.

Tangent: there's a backlog of grid enhancing technologies available, just waiting for funding and incentives to line up.

Tangent: VPPs also enable new financial products, which will further accelerate electrification (of All The Things).

Point #2 Solar + Battery

Solar + battery is the fastest, cheapest way to get new power generation. More so every year.

Yes, we still need to massively invest in All The Things to reach Net Zero and beyond. Wind, geothermal, nuclear (fission and fusion), hydro, every flavor of storage, de-carbonize industry and agriculture, conservation, rewilding, and everything else.

But at this moment in time, today, we need gigawatts of new generation and the grid that can support it. That means solar + battery.

Aside, IIRC, data centers are projected to demand just 5% our electricity supply. So society will be the net beneficiaries (on this axis).

Were Big Tech to fund the generation and grid that we need, maybe society will indulge some of Big Tech's less egregious offenses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence

Important Point: the rising costs of transmission, distribution, and fuel costs account for electricity's higher prices. New renewable power generation is now the cheapest option, and getting cheaper. The challenge is delivering that cheap electricity to customers.

It's not democracy if you can't destroy it. It's not democracy if the citizens cannot reject it. It's not democracy if it's being forced down your throat.

Sick of how SV/VC absolutely ruin words for their own monetary benefit.

How about you put up it up to a national vote and see what democracy gets you? I highly suspect that vast majorities of the electorate would want to nationalize this tech to benefit everyone rather than benefiting the few.

Democracy means there is a politics of rejection, rejection is normal in functioning democracies; what isn't normal are small handfuls of people capturing all collective human intelligence then claiming only they are allowed to benefit from it.

Power prices have nearly nothing to do with proximity like that, at least in most areas. Local interconnect surcharges are a thing, but not usually material.

It's the entire region where prices will increase. A facility could be built 200 miles away from you and it would have just as much of an impact on your power bill as one built across the road.

> Also BigTech is not going to build the power generation plants, it must be built by existing processes to minimize impact on pricing

The issue with this requirement is that it's not a capital problem. Big tech would be happy to pay someone to build more power generation and just take a power feed, even if it costs marginally more.

What they cannot do is wait 12 years for what they could get done in 2. And I do not blame them at all for this at all - building anything in the US is basically impossible these days due to the NIMBY and general culture of not getting things done. We forgot how to rapidly build infrastructure in an efficient manner, and anyone putting proverbial boot to ass to get this done is a good thing.

It's not a case of a datacenter operator wanting to save a few pennies per kwh. It's a case of the power literally not being there and the utilities being utterly incompetent at building anything in any reasonable timeframe.

>However, if you're insinuating that the Clean Water Act is made by "slimy politicians and big picture ignoring environmentalists" then you're wrong. That's about the best common sense environmental reform in the last 100 years aside from removing lead from gas.

I'm more than insinuating it. The cause may be noble but the state and local implementations have been perverted by all the minutia and business interests and NIMBYism. I would go so far as to say that (state and local implementation of requirements within) the clean water act is a non-negligible contributor to the decline of manufacturing and agriculture in the northeast and upper midwest.

We basically took "thou shalt not dump for that is bad for our surface and ground water" and over 50yr turned it into a blank check for all manner of leeches to make a buck and all manner of NIMBYs to make things unnecessarily expensive.

Petty 1.5-acre "I want my lightly forested former field to be a field again" and "business is going great I want my gavel parking lot paved" being stalled by five figure costs and even with those costs incurred it doesn't guarantee compliance. That's a far cry from the "yeah we just dump this stuff in a settling pond, IDK where it goes after that but man that river over there sure is a weird color" type 1960s industry behavior that it was meant to really curb. And the big industrial offenders still get to do what they want, not as bad as before of course, but still bad. Some Megacorp's runoff might turn the fish neon green or their 1k unit condo development might turn the river brown with silt but of course they'll be right there with their lawyers and experts who'll tell you why it's fine even when it's not to anyone with a brain and two eyeballs. The layman can't pay off people like that be on their side and neither can the regulators. (I assume this frequent fact pattern what you refer to by "living in the stink")

I think it ought to be revamped at the state and local level into something that's substantially more "results based" rather than the proactive red tape "make the bureaucrats feel like their ass is covered if someone ever complains about what they approved" based system we have now.

(And just to be clear for any readers who aren't familiar, the clean water act basically doesn't do much to affect the average person or business at a federal level. The local implementations and all the key definitions, industry standards, etc, are where the rubber really meets the road)

Edit: Basically I'm saying that in the past 50yr the interests the CWA was supposed to stymie learned how to pay their way around it, the parties who make a buck doing that have gotten themselves all but written into the compliance process to the detriment of the interests the CWA was supposed to not seriously burden. It needs to be replaced or revised to solve those two big problems.