During a House Oversight Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) questioned Mark P. Mills, the Executive Director of the National Center for Energy Analytics, about how energy policies have affected the speed of artificial intelligence development.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you. I now recognize the gentlelady from Colorado, Mrs. Bovert, for five minutes.
00:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chilson, AI's rise, it really offers a dual lifeline.
00:13Coal as a power bridge and AI as a transition engine.
00:19Do you believe that they're both crucial to keeping rural communities from collapsing?
00:25I'm more of an expert on the AI side, so I'll address that.
00:30I do think that we are seeing that intelligence in the form of connected from here but to big data centers is a benefit across the economic spectrum and that everybody can benefit from this.
00:45We've seen some good research that shows that, in fact, AI tools help benefit, actually, people who are newer or less capable in certain types of jobs to really level up their skills quickly.
01:02And they're sort of diminishing returns at the top end.
01:05And so there's been some good research on this.
01:07So I do think that across the economy, we will see huge benefits to this technology, including in rural areas that maybe have not historically received the benefits of high technology.
01:19Awesome. Thank you.
01:20And, Mr. Mills, you stated that AI data centers will require the equivalent of adding an entire state's worth of power generation just in the next few years alone.
01:31I believe that that's true.
01:34And if so, how can anyone seriously argue that wind and solar are going to be enough for all of this?
01:42Well, people do seriously argue that, of course.
01:46And it's not that it's technically impossible to build enough wind and solar and batteries.
01:51It's these things.
01:52Engineers can do a lot of things if you give them enough money.
01:55The issues are really how much money.
01:57We've given them a lot already.
01:58I haven't seen it produce anything.
02:01It's really a velocity question and location question.
02:04I think what you'll find, and we're already seeing this, you're seeing some plans for blended, as I mentioned, Louisiana, where you're blending solar and gas turbines.
02:13And what you'll find is you can reduce the number of gas turbines you have and the amount of gas you're consuming by using enough of them plus wind and solar.
02:21That's going to keep happening because the absolute quantity of demand is so great that I think the industry is going to chase everything they possibly can.
02:28It's not that they're totally price insensitive, and this is my opinion, but they're close to price insensitive in a sense.
02:38The product is so important and the velocity is so important that they'll pay a premium, including, I suspect, that the utilities have much more negotiating power than they realize.
02:49And some of the utilities, I think, are recognized that they can negotiate construction arrangements and business arrangements that don't impact consumers, increase rates.
02:58Right, and I would think that we see such a blended form of energy right now because there are so many subsidies.
03:03And without the subsidies, it may not be as much of a blend.
03:07We're all fine with all of the above energy, but when we're shutting down coal plants in rural communities like in Colorado and putting that energy aside and then saying we're going to replace it with 6,000 square acres of solar panels,
03:21but we don't have the transmission lines, and we don't have the funding for that yet, and when this is so crucial with AI's rise, I think it's imperative that we have that reliable source and stop demonizing fossil fuels.
03:34We have some coal plants that are being converted into LNG facilities, and then I would love to see SMRs come to the surface, too, have these small modular reactors in places.
03:45And so do you believe that the energy policies that we've seen have actually kind of slowed down the progress potentially in AI's development?
03:58To a significant extent, yes, because when you do asymmetric subsidies, the solar and wind industry are no longer nascent small industries that need a boost with subsidies.
04:08They're massive industries globally, huge supply chains.
04:12They no longer need massive subsidies, so it has distorted how the market would respond, and you probably know that both in Georgia and Illinois there have been delays or cancellations of coal plant shutdowns precisely because of the need for adequate and dispatchable power.
04:29I hope that that spreads to other states and we slow down as well, and in fact, I'll make a prediction.
04:34It will make some of my green friends' heads explode, to use that expression, but I do think you're going to see a coal plant built to fund data centers.
04:42That's happening in Asia and in Vietnam and in –
04:47China's building some 200 coal-fired energy plants and selling us solar panels, yes.
04:53But to your point, you know, we have coal plants in Colorado that are reduced down from three stacks to one, and if – in five seconds, could you just explain simply how much energy we need to supply this?
05:07What does that look like to the average person?
05:10And I'll yield.
05:11This – a single refrigerator-sized computer rack in a data center, and there are thousands of racks, a single one, uses more electricity than 50 Teslas or any other electric car.
05:21So it gives you a sense when you build millions of those, you're adding the equivalent of hundreds million new EVs to the road in a couple of years.
05:29Yes, and just for the record, EVs don't have gas pedals, they have coal pedals.