The Alternative Green Energy Thread

michaels

This is the closest we have to an ungreen and unethical thread so I am bring this here

https://electrek.co/2026/07/27/meta-is-backing-10-gas-plants-and-just-quit-a-global-renewables-pledge/

Meta (Facebook) are commissioning 7.5GW of gas generaiton to power a data centre complex in the US. I am yet to be convinced there is not an order of magnitude error somewhere in the numbers: 7.5gw running full time would power 85% of all UK homes?!

QrizB

I am yet to be convinced there is not an order of magnitude error somewhere in the numbers: 7.5gw running full time would power 85% of all UK homes?!

The numbers seem to be correct.

Eg. here's a press release (linked from the electrek article) from Entergy, a US utilitity company, saying Meta has contracted with them to build "seven new natural gas-fueled combined-cycle power plants totaling more than 5,200 megawatts" to supply Meta's 5GW datacentre development.

AI datacentre are immense consumers of electricity.

michaels

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82083443#Comment_82083443

There is immense and immense though. If you told me the data centres supporting all the UK internet usage required 5% as much energy as UK households used them I would say 'wow, that is a lot'. 100% seems unbelievable. All that movie streaming, Spotify listening, social media and search use takes as much power as keeping all our household electrical devices going? Wow is not a big enough word….

QrizB

All that movie streaming, Spotify listening, social media and search use takes as much power as keeping all our household electrical devices going?

Those particular data centres don't seem to be intended to do any of those things. Instead they'll be running racks of numerical processors dedicated to providing almost-right answers to questions asked of LLM AIs.

This is one of the reasons you keep hearing people warning that AI spending is unsustainable. The cost of the equipment and the energy is far higher than the utility of the service it provides.

Per the opening paragraph of this report from late 2025:

In the USA, AI data centers will need around 20 to 30 gigawatts (GW) of combined power by late 2027. 30 GW is about 5% of US average current power generation capacity and 2.5% of China’s. 30 GW would be around 25% of power generation capacity in Japan, 50% in France, and 90% in the UK.

JKenH

But isn’t it the case, historically, that we underestimate the impact of new technologies. Would we ever have anticipated the extent to which the internet has permeated our lives? I may be wrong but I believe that AI is the largest single technological revolution that has occurred in my lifetime. Just look at the impact it is having on employment; the jobs it is replacing. Even in industries such as healthcare, where people are still always going to be needed, its impact will still be revolutionary. I believe this can be monetised. Fitness tracking apps and wearables are already able to predict medical conditions. Perhaps the average Joe or Jane might only be prepared to pay the equivalent of a Netflix subscription but industry and government departments may be prepared to pay much more. As AI develops it could be a tremendous help in fields we might not have considered such as social care and mental health.

At the moment I don’t pay for AI but I would be happy to pay £20/month for the service I already receive. It has made my life so much easier and I do stuff with it I would never behave dreamed it could do, e.g. photoshop style image processing or creating artwork/illustrations from a written description. I quite enjoy chatting with Gemini on issues in the news when I can’t find anyone else to argue with and if I were on my own I could see myself having a chat bot permanently engaged.

The amount of of electricity this type of activity is going to absorb will be enormous and we may be underestimating its impact on our grid. Countries with much greater and more consistent renewable generation capacity are going to be at a distinct advantage once the problem of 12 hour energy storage is cracked and that isn’t very far away.

michaels

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82084179#Comment_82084179

Thank goodness I am not the only one who uses Gemini (other LLMs are available) as a sounding board for general interest topics as well as personal projects. It can be a bit sycophantic though, don't you think?

Gemini and I had a long discussion about whether the level of investment could be monetised, not because I don;t think it will replace an awful lot of jobs but because I don't think it will be able to capture the value saved to the companies who shed the jobs because of competition i AI provision - just because you save a £30k customer service bod doesn't mean you can sell your ai for £30k per bod replaced.

JKenH

Data centres could pay hundreds of millions in deposits for power demands - BBC News

Ofgem has proposed new measures which could see developers of data centres made to pay hundreds of millions of pounds up front.

The British energy regulator said a refundable fee should be charged for projects that want to connect to the network, amid mounting demand for connections to the electricity grid.

It is proposing developers pay a deposit between £237,500 to £712,500 per megawatt - meaning data centres seeking 1 gigawatt (GW) of power would have to pay hundreds of millions up front, paid back if the project was completed.

It said the amount of electricity capacity being requested by projects seeking to connect to the grid had risen from 41 GW to 125 GW in the past year, reflecting a sharp increase in demand.

This is significantly more than double 2025's peak electricity demand in Britain of around 46 GW.

JKenH

China had another poor quarter in Q2 2026 with coal generation in particular rising both in total and as a proportion of the generation mix. Thermal power commissioning also reached a record high according to this report. Perhaps this was an unusual quarter but China despite rolling out more and more renewables is still struggling to use the capacity effectively.

China Energy and Emissions Trends – June 2026 snapshot – Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air

  • Fossil power generation rose 0.5% year-on-year in June and 2% in Q2, but remained below its 2023 peak. Bad wind conditions and increased wind and solar curtailment left space for coal to inch up despite huge capacity increases. Weak utilisation of wind and solar capacity is storing up output growth for when grid management issues are resolved, but hurting new investment in the meantime. 

• Thermal power commissioning reached a record high in the first five months of 2026, growing by 84% year-on-year. Solar and wind power capacity additions fell by 70% and 46% year-on-year, respectively, due to the high base in the same period last year ahead of a new pricing policy taking effect. 

michaels

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82085289#Comment_82085289

Anything on total demand, presumably they have the same AI data centre demand growth issues?

JKenH

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82085488#Comment_82085488

Annual electrify demand in China is around 10,000 TWh of which “internet services” account for around 100TWh. China’s per Capita electricity consumption at 7500kWh is now more than I.75 x that of the UK (4300 kWh) but still lags behind the U.S. (trend to 2024 below). AI is growing rapidly causing “internet services” use to rise by 44% year on year.

China's power use rises as AI, high-tech industries drive demand | english.scio.gov.cn

Total power consumption reached nearly 5.1 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in the January-June period, according to data released by the National Energy Administration.

Power consumption in the tertiary sector rose 8 percent to 991.6 billion kWh, the fastest growth among the three major sectors of the economy.

Electricity use by internet data services surged 44 percent from a year earlier to 49.4 billion kWh, while consumption by electric vehicle charging and battery-swapping services soared by 56.9 percent to 81 billion kWh in the first half of 2026.