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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US Supreme Court Has Chance To End Climate Lawfare

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Daily Caller

US Supreme Court Has Chance To End Climate Lawfare

Published on December 10, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

All eyes will be on the Supreme Court later this week when the justices conference on Friday to decide whether to grant a petition for writ of certiorari on a high-stakes climate lawsuit out of Colorado. The case is a part of the long-running lawfare campaign seeking to extract billions of dollars in jury awards from oil companies on claims of nebulous damages caused by carbon emissions.

In Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc., et al. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, major American energy companies are asking the Supreme Court to decide whether federal law precludes state law nuisance claims targeting interstate and global emissions. This comes as the City and County of Boulder, Colo. sued a long list of energy companies under Colorado state nuisance law for alleged impacts from global climate change.

The Colorado Supreme Court allowed a lower state trial court decision to go through, improbably finding that federal law did not preempt state law claims. The central question hangs on whether the federal Clean Air Act (CAA) preempts state common law public nuisance claims related to the regulation of carbon emissions. In this case, as in at least 10 other cases that have been decided in favor of the defendant companies, the CAA clearly does preempt Colorado law. It seems inevitable that the Supreme Court, if it grants the cert petition, would make the same ruling.

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Such a finding by the Supreme Court would reinforce a 2021 ruling by the Second Circuit Appeals Court that also upheld this longstanding principle of federal law. In City of New York v. Chevron Corp. (2021), the Second Circuit ruled that municipalities may not use state tort law to hold multinational companies liable for climate damages, since global warming is a uniquely international concern that touches upon issues of federalism and foreign policy. Consequently, the court called for the explicit application of federal common law, with the CAA granting the Environmental Protection Agency – not federal courts – the authority to regulate domestic greenhouse gas emissions. This Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, should weigh in here and find in the same way.

Boulder-associated attorneys have become increasingly open to acknowledging the judicial lawfare inherent in their case, as they try to supplant federal regulatory jurisdiction with litigation meant to force higher energy prices rise for consumers. David Bookbinder, an environmental lawyer associated with the Boulder legal team, said the quiet part out loud in a recent Federalist Society webinar titled “Can State Courts Set Global Climate Policy. “Tort liability is an indirect carbon tax,” Bookbinder stated plainly. “You sue an oil company, an oil company is liable. The oil company then passes that liability on to the people who are buying its products … The people who buy those products are now going to be paying for the cost imposed by those products.”

Oh.

While Bookbinder recently distanced himself from the case, no notice of withdrawal had appeared in the court’s records as of this writing. Bookbinder also writes that “Gas prices and climate change policy have become political footballs because neither party in Congress has had the courage to stand up to the oil and gas lobby. Both sides fear the spin machine, so consumers get stuck paying the bill.”

Let’s be honest: The “spin machine” works in all directions. Make no mistake about it, consumers are already getting stuck paying the bill related to this long running lawfare campaign even though the defendants have repeatedly been found not to be liable in case after case. The many millions of dollars in needless legal costs sustained by the dozens of defendants named in these cases ultimately get passed to consumers via higher energy costs. This isn’t some evil conspiracy by the oil companies: It is Business Management 101.

Because the climate alarm lobby hasn’t been able to force its long-sought national carbon tax through the legislative process, sympathetic activists and plaintiff firms now pursue this backdoor effort in the nation’s courts. But their problem is that the law on this is crystal clear, and it is long past time for the Supreme Court to step in and put a stop to this serial abuse of the system.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

Alberta

The case for expanding Canada’s energy exports

Published on December 10, 2025

Todayville

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Deborah Jaremko

For Canada, the path to a stronger economy — and stronger global influence — runs through energy.

That’s the view of David Detomasi, a professor at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University.

Detomasi, author of Profits and Power: Navigating the Politics and Geopolitics of Oil, argues that there is a moral case for developing Canada’s energy, both for Canadians and the world.

David Detomasi. Photo courtesy Smith School of Business, Queen’s University

CEC: What does being an energy superpower mean to you?

DD: It means Canada is strong enough to affect the system as a whole by its choices.

There is something really valuable about Canada’s — and Alberta’s — way of producing carbon energy that goes beyond just the monetary rewards.

CEC: You talk about the moral case for developing Canada’s energy. What do you mean?

DD: I think the default assumption in public rhetoric is that the environmental movement is the only voice speaking for the moral betterment of the world. That needs to be challenged.

That public rhetoric is that the act of cultivating a powerful, effective economic engine is somehow wrong or bad, and that efforts to create wealth are somehow morally tainted.

I think that’s dead wrong. Economic growth is morally good, and we should foster it.

Economic growth generates money, and you can’t do anything you want to do in social expenditures without that engine.

Economic growth is critical to doing all the other things we want to do as Canadians, like having a publicly funded health care system or providing transfer payments to less well-off provinces.

Over the last 10 years, many people in Canada came to equate moral leadership with getting off of oil and gas as quickly as possible. I think that is a mistake, and far too narrow.

Instead, I think moral leadership means you play that game, you play it well, and you do it in our interest, in the Canadian way.

We need a solid base of economic prosperity in this country first, and then we can help others.

CEC: Why is it important to expand Canada’s energy trade?

DD: Canada is, and has always been, a trading nation, because we’ve got a lot of geography and not that many people.

If we don’t trade what we have with the outside world, we aren’t going to be able to develop economically, because we don’t have the internal size and capacity.

Historically, most of that trade has been with the United States. Geography and history mean it will always be our primary trade partner.

But the United States clearly can be an unreliable partner. Free and open trade matters more to Canada than it does to the U.S. Indeed, a big chunk of the American people is skeptical of participating in a global trading system.

As the United States perhaps withdraws from the international trading and investment system, there’s room for Canada to reinforce it in places where we can use our resource advantages to build new, stronger relationships.

One of these is Europe, which still imports a lot of gas. We can also build positive relationships with the enormous emerging markets of China and India, both of whom want and will need enormous supplies of energy for many decades.

I would like to be able to offer partners the alternative option of buying Canadian energy so that they are less reliant on, say, Iranian or Russian energy.

Canada can also maybe eventually help the two billion people in the world currently without energy access.

CEC: What benefits could Canadians gain by becoming an energy superpower?

DD: The first and primary responsibility of our federal government is to look after Canada. At the end of the day, the goal is to improve Canada’s welfare and enhance its sovereignty.

More carbon energy development helps Canada. We have massive debt, an investment crisis and productivity problems that we’ve been talking about forever. Economic and job growth are weak.

Solving these will require profitable and productive industries. We don’t have so many economic strengths in this country that we can voluntarily ignore or constrain one of our biggest industries.

The economic benefits pay for things that make you stronger as a country.

They make you more resilient on the social welfare front and make increasing defence expenditures, which we sorely need, more affordable. It allows us to manage the debt that we’re running up, and supports deals for Canada’s Indigenous peoples.

CEC: Are there specific projects that you advocate for to make Canada an energy superpower?

DD: Canada’s energy needs egress, and getting it out to places other than the United States. That means more transport and port facilities to Canada’s coasts.

We also need domestic energy transport networks. People don’t know this, but a big chunk of Ontario’s oil supply runs through Michigan, posing a latent security risk to Ontario’s energy security.

We need to change the perception that pipelines are evil. There’s a spiderweb of them across the globe, and more are being built.

Building pipelines here, with Canadian technology and know-how, builds our competitiveness and enhances our sovereignty.

Economic growth enhances sovereignty and provides the resources to do other things. We should applaud and encourage it, and the carbon energy sector can lead the way.