> Looking the other side of the market, OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is bringing in around $3 billion a year in sales revenue, and has spent around $7 billion developing its model. Even if every penny of that was spent on electricity, the effect would be little more than a blip.

The electricity spend on AI datacenters won't be uniformly distributed. It will probably concentrate in areas that currently have cheaper (and dirtier) electricity, like what xAI is doing in Tennessee.

That will likely drive up local energy prices in those places, which will be further exacerbated by the US's disinvestment in renewable energy and resulting increased reliance on high cost fossil fuels.