A short clip recently appeared on my social media feed. It involved an extract from a recent Donald Trump speech, on the face of it concerning artificial intelligence (AI) and electricity. In many ways, it was typical Trump: bombastic, lots of words, many of them repeated several times for emphasis, but with little detail.
“Some of you are involved with AI”, he announced.
“You know that AI needs electricity.”
“AI needs tremendous amounts of electricity. We will need to double the amount of electricity that we have right now in the USA. We will get that done. Who would think we could get that done? But we will. We will be building power plants and using fossil fuels.”
So much electricity
The promise made was that there would be so much electricity that there will be pleading:
“Please President, no more electricity.”
He did mention that the USA has environmental impact statement requirements, but “China can do it much easier”. He assured the audience that his proposed ideas would remove “certain ridiculous requirements”.
On one point Trump is correct, AI does require enormous amounts of electricity. AI can establish patterns in vast amounts of data but to do so its computer systems need to operate 24/7, often over long periods, and can use up to 30 times the power of conventional programmes.
It may also be significant that the short extract above was part of a longer speech which Trump delivered to the cryptocurrency group at Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee. The Trump family has recently announced their own business venture into the cryptocurrency field. No possible conflict of interest here!
Energy-intensive technology with high carbon footprints
Interestingly Bitcoin Mining is another energy-intensive activity. The energy use can be divided into Bitcoin creation (mining), estimated at 150,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per Bitcoin, and Bitcoin transaction (trading) at 850 kWh per transaction which is approximately the monthly electricity use for an average American home. The UK average is estimated at 350 kWh,
Two technologies then, both with high carbon footprints.
One with the potential to analyse without human bias vast amounts of data and contribute to science, climate itself, epidemiology, managing transport and health services come immediately to mind. AI also has the potential to sell us consumer products which we may not need or want or use social media feeds to target potential electors.
Crypto offers the opportunity for speculation-driven wealth accumulation or, in the instance of wealth already acquired, a means of hedging against inflation. Gold, which has traditionally fulfilled that role, has a lower energy and emission cost. It has been estimated that the carbon footprint of a bitcoin equivalent worth of Gold from mining is approximately 25 tonnes of C02, compared to 572 tonnes of C02 from Bitcoin ‘mining’.
Hurricane Milton
Recently, both presidential candidates have visited parts of North Carolina devastated by storm Helene. With Hurricane Milton about to make landfall in Florida, the link between extreme weather events and fossil fuel-driven climate change has not been established to the degree required to make climate a major election issue for voters.
One wishes there was an ‘office of climate responsibility’ against which the various proposals could be independently tested.
