Residential Customers Will Pay For AI Electricity
Experts on electricity use in the US have wondered who will pay the bill for the massive demand for AI server farm power. First, there will not be enough electricity for this demand soon. Second, someone must pay the bill to expand the grid and energy sources.
While green sources like wind and solar will eventually supply large amounts of electricity, that may be years from now.. Commissioning nuclear plants and building new ones is a long-term project, so they cannot be in place for as long as a decade. That leaves coal and other fossil fuels to be resurrected.
And, no matter what the source of electricity or a better grid might be, who pays? In a paper titled “Extracting Profits from the Public: How Utility Ratepayers Are Paying for Big Tech’s Power, ” Harvard says that “Tech by socializing their costs through electricity price charges to the public. Hiding subsidies for trillion-dollar companies in power prices increases utility profits by raising costs for American consumers.” In other words, Google, Amazon, OpenAI, xIA, and Microsoft do not, at least, as their fair share should be.
Bitcoin And Air Conditioning
The consumer is already weighed down by the rising cost of electric bills for air conditioning as global warming drives up temperatures. Indirectly, they also pay for Bitcoin mining.
What emerges is a low-income or middle-income American who has an electricity bill as big as their mortgage or rent. This consumer gets squeezed. His buying power drops, and with that, consumer spending and sentiment. And, with that comes a drop in GDP
Big Tech Energy Bill
Will big tech pay for the electricity it uses? Eventually, this will become a political debate addressed in legislatures or courts.
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