Tech giants’ self-made AI energy crisis

For years tech giants have been helping climate catastrophists shut down reliable fossil fuel electricity. Now the grid they’ve helped gut cannot possibly supply their growing AI needs.

MAY 16

For years tech giants have been helping climate catastrophists shut down reliable fossil fuel electricity, falsely claiming they can be replaced by solar/wind.

Now the grid they’ve helped gut can’t supply their growing AI needs.¹

For the last decade, tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Meta, and Google have, through dedicated anti-fossil-fuel propaganda and political efforts, promoted the shutdown of reliable fossil fuel power plants in favor of unreliable solar and wind.
Tech giants have propagandized against reliable fossil fuel power plants by falsely claiming to be “100% renewable” and implying everyone could do it. In fact, they have just paid utilities to credit them for others’ solar and wind use and blame others for their coal and gas use.²
In addition to their “100% renewable” propaganda, tech giants directly endorsed people and policies who shut down reliable fossil fuel power plants.E.g., The RE100 coalition, including Google, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, advocates for policies to “accelerate change towards zero carbon grids at scale by 2040.”³
Companies’ propaganda that solar/wind could rapidly replace fossil fuels has proven false.
Statewide blackouts in California (2020) and Texas (2021) were caused by the failure of solar/wind—which can go near zero at any time—to make up for lack of reliable fossil fuel capacity.
Thanks in significant part to tech giants’ advocacy, we have now shut down enough reliable power plants to be in a nationwide electricity crisis.
For example, most of North America is at elevated/high risk of electricity shortfalls between 2024-2028.⁴

The anti-fossil-fuel, pro-unreliable solar and wind political climate that tech giants have fostered is getting much worse, as the Administration has pledged to further reduce reliable electricity supply via power plant shutdowns and add artificial demand through EV mandates.

Biden’s EV mandate: a dictatorial attack on the American driver and the US grid

ALEX EPSTEIN

APR 22

Biden's EV mandate: a dictatorial attack on the American driver and the US grid

Biden’s de facto mandate of over 50% EVs by 2032 is a dictatorial attack on the American driver and the US grid that will 1. Force Americans to drive inferior cars. 2. Place massive new demand for reliable electricity on a grid that is declining in reliable electricity supply.

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While for years tech giants didn’t seem to have any concern about the electricity supply disaster their propaganda and policies were bringing about, they are now very interested because of the accelerating power requirements of computing, above all the hyper-competitive AI space.
To function at its potential, AI requires massive amounts of power. E.g., state-of-the-art data centers can require as much electricity as a large nuclear reactor.⁵
Electricity demand from US data centers already doubled between 2014 and 2023. Now with the fast growth of energy-hungry AI, demand from data centers could triple from 2.5% to 7.5% of our electricity use by 2030, according to Boston Consulting Group.⁶

In large part due to AI, nationwide electricity demand is projected to skyrocket. Official 10-year projections for the US have summer and winter peak demand rising by over 79 gigawatt and over 90 gigawatt. 90 gigawatt is equivalent to adding the entire power generating capacity of California (!)⁷

Given the woeful underpowered grid that AI giants have helped bring about, dramatically rising demand from AI will not only contribute to massive electricity shortages, but it will also destroy a lot of potential for AI to occur in the United States.
Limited and expensive electricity will force data centers to operate with higher cost or lower capacity within the US—or take a performance hit in the form of increased latency (which can drastically reduce the value of the product) by moving offshore.
Not only is offshoring data centers destructive from an economic standpoint, it also poses a substantial security risk. E.g., Building a data center in China—which we already depend on dangerously for critical minerals—gives the CCP physical power over more parts of our economy.
Economically, data centers are a gold mine of opportunities.Globally, data centers employed 2M people full-time in 2019, many in high-skill/high-pay jobs—and this number is forecast to increase nearly 300K by 2025.
Our gutted grid will cost many Americans these opportunities.⁸
In the face of woefully inadequate electricity supply for their AI goals, tech giant CEOs are finally speaking up about the lack of power.
E.g., Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview that energy will be the #1 bottleneck to AI progress.

It is not enough for tech giants to warn us about the lack of reliable power. They need to take responsibility for their anti-fossil-fuel advocacy that helped caused it. And they need to support energy freedom policies that allow all fuels to compete to provide reliable power.

End preferences for unreliable electricity

ALEX EPSTEIN

DECEMBER 14, 2022

End preferences for unreliable electricity

Today’s grids are being ruined by systemic preferences for unreliable electricity: 1) no price penalty for being unreliable 2) huge subsidies for unreliables 3) mandates for unreliables Congress should end these now. The Opportunity America, given its combination of abundant domestic energy resources, technological ingenuity, and free-market competition, has …

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An example of a tech giant influencer not taking any responsibility for causing the electricity crisis is BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who pushed companies and governments to adopt “net-zero” policies using mostly solar/wind, but now admits they can’t power AI data centers!
A better attitude toward electricity was expressed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: “There will always be people who wait and sit around and say ‘we shouldn’t do AI because we may burn a little more carbon’… the anti-progress streak” and this “is something that we can all fight against.”⁹
America faces a choice. We can either continue our current trajectory, descend into a Third World grid, and become totally inhospitable for AI, or we can adopt energy freedom policies and become a world leader in both AI and electricity.
Share this article with tech giant CEOs and tell them to publicly apologize for damaging our grid and to commit to energy freedom policies.Google: @sundarpichai ([email protected])
Apple: @tim_cook ([email protected])
Meta: @finkd ([email protected])
Microsoft: @satyanadella ([email protected])

Michelle Hung contributed to this piece.

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Energy

The IEA’s Peak Oil Fever Dream Looks To Be In Full Collapse

Published on September 14, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned International Energy Agency (IEA) head Fatih Birol in July that he was considering cancelling America’s membership in and funding of its activities due to its increasingly political nature.

Specifically, Wright pointed to the agency’s modeling methods used to compile its various reports and projections, which the Secretary and many others believe have trended more into the realm of advocacy than fact-based analysis in recent years.

That trend has long been clear and is a direct result of an intentional shift in the IEA’s mission that evolved in the months during and following the COVID pandemic. In 2022, the agency’s board of governors reinforced this changed mission away from the analysis of real energy-related data and policies to one of producing reports to support and “guide countries as they build net-zero emission energy systems to comply with internationally agreed climate goals” consistent with the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016.

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One step Birol and his team took to incorporate its new role as cheerleader for an energy transition that isn’t actually happening was to eliminate the “current policies” modeling scenario which had long formed the base case for its periodic projections. That sterile analysis of the facts on the ground was replaced it with a more aspirational set of assumptions based on the announced policy intentions of governments around the world. Using this new method based more on hope and dreams than facts on the ground unsurprisingly led the IEA to begin famously predicting a peak in global oil demand by 2029, something no one else sees coming.

Those projections have helped promote the belief among policymakers and investors that a high percentage of current oil company reserves would wind up becoming stranded assets, thus artificially – and many would contend falsely – deflating the value of their company stocks. This unfounded belief has also helped discourage banks from allocating capital to funding exploration for additional oil reserves that the world will almost certainly require in the decades to come.

Secretary Wright, in his role as leading energy policymaker for an administration more focused on dealing with the realities of America’s energy security needs than the fever dreams of the far-left climate alarm lobby, determined that investing millions of taxpayer dollars in IEA’s advocacy efforts each year was a poor use of his department’s budget. So, in an interview with Bloomberg in July, Wright said, “We will do one of two things: we will reform the way the IEA operates, or we will withdraw,” adding that his “strong preference is to reform it.”

Lo and behold, less than two months later, Javier Blas says in a September 10 Bloomberg op/ed headlined “The Myth of Peak Fossil Fuel Demand is Crumbling,” that the IEA will reincorporate its “current policies” scenario in its upcoming annual report. Blas notes that, “the annual report being prepared by the International Energy Agency… shows the alternative — decades more of robust fossil-fuel use, with oil and gas demand growing over the next 25 years — isn’t just possible but probable.”

On his X account, Blas posted a chart showing that, instead of projecting a “peak” of crude oil demand prior to 2030, IEA’s “current policies” scenario will be more in line with recent projections by both OPEC and ExxonMobil showing crude demand continuing to rise through the year 2050 and beyond.

Whether that is a concession to Secretary Wright’s concerns or to simple reality on the ground is not clear. Regardless, it is without question a clear about-face which hopefully signals a return by the IEA to its original mission to serve as a reliable analyst and producer of fact-based information about the global energy situation.

The global community has no shortage of well-funded advocates for the aspirational goals of the climate alarmist community. If this pending return to reality by the IEA in its upcoming annual report signals an end to its efforts to be included among that crowded field, that will be a win for everyone, regardless of the motivations behind it.

Energy

Trump Admin Torpedoing Biden’s Oil And Gas Crackdown

Published on September 14, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Audrey Streb

The Trump administration is rolling back President Joe Biden’s restrictions on oil and gas, planning 21 lease sales in 2025 — a sharp contrast to Biden’s first year, which saw none.

The Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have already held 11 lease sales under Trump generating over $110 million for Americans, and plan to host 10 more in 2025, the agency told the Daily Caller News Foundation. While the Biden administration imposed a sweeping offshore drilling ban and greenlit a record-low offshore oil and gas leasing schedule, the Trump administration is working to reopen development on federal lands and waters.

“President Donald Trump has revived American energy. While the Biden administration left our energy resources to waste at the cost of taxpayers, Americans can feel relief knowing that they now have an administration laser focused on unleashing our domestic energy sources, lowering costs, and securing a more affordable and reliable energy future,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told the DCNF. “The number of new oil and gas lease sales simply speak for themselves.”

Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has reported 3,608 new oil and gas permits in Trump’s second term thus far, compared to 2,528 permits during the Biden administration, according to the DOI. Trump and the DOI have approved 43% more federal drilling permits than his predecessors had at the same point in their presidencies, according to the agency.

The DOI has also opened more than 450,000 acres of federal land for potential energy development, and the DOI and BLM are set to approve more drilling permits than any other fiscal year in the past 15 years, the agency said.

On his first day back in the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order to “unleash American energy” and declared a national energy emergency. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) further directed the DOI to open more domestic energy exploration opportunities, ordering the agency to “immediately resume onshore quarterly lease sales in specified states.”

Trump has emphasized bolstering conventional resources, which stands in contrast to Biden’s stifling of the oil and gas industry, as he froze liquified natural gas (LNG) exports, blocked the major Keystone XL pipeline and halted BLM lease approvals on his first day as president. Biden instead championed a green energy agenda, pushing for major wind and solar projects through billions in subsidies, loans and grants.

Notably, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) previously confirmed to the DCNF that the Biden administration failed to adequately review the environmental impacts of certain offshore wind projects before approving them. The Trump administration has cracked down on offshore wind, halting many major projects and reviewing several more, with Burgum arguing that the energy resource the Biden administration favored is “not reliable enough” at an event on Sept. 10.

Additionally, gasoline prices have been dropping nationally in recent months, with costs hitting four-year lows headed into summer and Labor Day weekend, according to GasBuddy and the American Automobile Association. The average retail price for gasoline is projected to keep dropping due to falling oil prices, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.

“[Oil] prices are not set by current supplies. They’re set by future expectations,” Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment, told the DCNF previously. “President Donald Trump is sending signals that the oil industry here is going to be very vibrant. He’s shrinking permitting time for fossil fuel projects, so expectations for fossil fuel supply in the United States are great.”