AI data centers still consume a lot less than most other things on the grid. In percentages it's less than 1%. Much less. It might get to a percent in a few years. The energy demand growth from other sources is much more significant. Things like industrial heating, domestic heating and other domestic usage, transport (car and truck charging), etc. are growing much more aggressively than even the most aggressive growth scenarios for AI.

Electrification of the economy, which is a thing that at least the US is way behind on, is going to be a massive driver of electricity demand across the world. And a lot of countries are going to benefit from cost savings there. Not having to import expensive oil and gas in favor of cheaply produced solar/wind energy is going to wipe out quite a few billions from the trade balance of countries across the world. China is leading by example here. Their diesel imports are declining sharply already. Investments in renewables are rising accordingly. This is not driven by green washing but by raw economics.

For the same reason, oil and gas prices usage is predicted to enter a steady decline pretty much everywhere. The IEA (known for overly conservative oil biased predictions) is predicting this will be in decline by 2030. They are probably wrong again and it might be a few years sooner. In China next year is a better estimate.

Most growth on the grid (80-90%) is driven by renewables + battery addition to the grid. It's actually not even close in most countries. Including the US. Gas turbines are hard to get in a hurry. Most of the ones that are realistically going to be installed soonish were ordered quite some time ago. Same with nuclear reactors. Supply of those is even less elastic (decades rather than years).

In the mean time, there are hundreds of gw of clean energy (which can be ordered and brought online with very short lead times) coming online every year. Think a few dozen of nuclear reactors worth of capacity. In the US alone. Every year. Vs. a handful of nuclear reactors over the next decade. And a sprinkling of gas plants barely replacing lost capacity (closures of coal and older gas plants). All at great cost of course and typically after long delays.

A lot of the AI related fossil fuel usage growth is increasing load on existing infrastructure; which for cost reasons was being under utilized. As soon as cheaper power can be secured, that capacity will revert back to being underutilized. That's just simple economics.

Whether the US will be able to adapt to other countries doing things cheaper and better than them remains to be seen. It looks like it will have lots of expensive and obsolete gas infrastructure pretty soon. And a lot of debt that financed that. And a lot of data centers operating under high gas prices competing with data centers built close to ones with access to cheap renewables might become a thing as well. Some people are predicting a bubble. When that bursts, the more economical data centers might have a higher chance of surviving.

> Electrification of the economy, which is a thing that at least the US is way behind on, is going to be a massive driver of electricity demand across the world. And a lot of countries are going to benefit from cost savings there. Not having to import expensive oil and gas in favor of cheaply produced solar/wind energy is going to wipe out quite a few billions from the trade balance of countries across the world. China is leading by example here. Their diesel imports are declining sharply already. Investments in renewables are rising accordingly. This is not driven by green washing but by raw economics.

Interesting reading on the topic: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/the-electrotech-rev...

> Whether the US will be able to adapt to other countries doing things cheaper and better than them remains to be seen.

The US (or at least, fossil fuel interests in the US which seem to have a lot of influence over the current administration) seem determined to become an "energy superpower" by exporting oil and gas. In particular, seems they'd very much like Europe to switch from Russian gas to US LNG. We'll see how that goes. Personally, I find it hard to see how LNG from the other side of the world will remain competitive with ever-reducing costs of solar, wind, and batteries.