New gas-powered data centers could emit more greenhouse gases than whole nations

philipallstar

> New gas projects linked to just 11 data center campuses around the US have the potential to create more greenhouse gases than the country of Morocco emitted in 2024 "Have the potential to", "Morocco". Presumably doesn't count the greenhouse gases emitted by Moroccans using overseas cloud services and AI. At least the example wasn't Vatican City.

melling

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/01/iran-energy-cr... It’s quite impressive how the world is unable to reduce greenhouse emissions.

twoodfin

Very quick Googling suggests Wired’s estimate would be ~1.9% of US emissions. AI data center investment is, at core, a bet on increasing the productivity of labor. That’s what businesses will pay for, and what will earn the big money. If US labor productivity rises by more than 2%—and implicit in the size of this bet is a guess much higher—US carbon intensity goes down correspondingly, and these data centers end up as a win for the climate.

lpcvoid

I hope the AI bubble bursts before our earth is too hot to survive on for millions of people.

aresant

The AI data center narrative is the perfect storm: First most of the data center build out is happening in areas that have had little other opportunity so local resistance is muted. Abilene, Texas is referenced and is the kind of place my grandfather would lovingly say is where you go to learn to be a “dirt farmer” Second, every environmentalist in the US is fighting 100 different battles with the most anti-regulation, pro-energy administration in decades (ever?) and has limited bandwidth. And third, the AI narrative around national security, longevity, and super-intelligence-enabled abundance provides massive national coverage - the implications being that AI will solve any environmental and or human economic disasters that they enable.

kleiba2

> the potential to create more greenhouse gases than the country of Morocco emitted in 2024. Does that comparison mean anything to anybody?

5asU

Burning natural resources for bitcoin and chibi cartoon figures is the goal of this administration. All while increasing natural gas prices through blockades and threats of secondary sanctions. It will make oil billionaires (e.g., like the ones who founded the Daily Wire) very happy.

usrusr

And the sad part is that ai would be a perfect fit for intermittent energy sources: run inference 24/7 (on whatever you can muster, even if it's fossil it simply does not consume all that much compared to training) and over-build training to achieve whatever total throughout you need in time of energy abundance. How heavy would CO2 pricing have to be to make the market do this instead of the exact opposite?

L_226

https://archive.ph/L1twq

markus_zhang

Ah, I knew electricians still have a future.

josefritzishere

Our species is going to go extinct over samurai cat memes.

binary132

Meanwhile anyone can run a capable LLM in their own living room, or even on their own mobile device, but nobody wants to talk about that. And no, 99.999% of slop does not need a math Olympics finalist model, sorry.