Meanwhile, we have the bacon sandwich approach
The winds of change are howling through electricity grids
Since 2022, AI -related firms have stormed the S&P 500 market — growing by $12 trillion dollars.
The IEA just posted a whole report dedicated to AI. The demand from data-centers is so large in some places it is already rivaling the kind of monster consumption we are used to seeing from aluminum smelters. There are six states in the United States where data centers already consume over 10% of the electricity supply. In Ireland, data centers swallow about 20% of the electricity.
Currently, a normal data center consumes the same amount of electricity as 100,000 houses. But the new gargantuan data centers under construction will consume 20 times as much — equivalent to adding 2 million homes to the grid…
The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of Ed Miliband’s bacon sandwich approach to electricity generation.
Countries with a record of reliable and affordable power will be best placed to unlock data centre growth, localise the computing power that is critical to homegrown AI development, and spur the IT industry more generally…
History will show that countries with energy to spare will take over the world, and maybe the solar system.
Source: https://akhaart.blogspot.com/2025/05/meanwhile-we-have-bacon-sandwich.html
