Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Just west of Washington, d C. There's a pretty idyllic
Speaker 2: place with rolling hills and horse pastures.
Speaker 1: It's really pretty driving around, really beautiful, lots of trees.
Speaker 1: Especially coming from New York City. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is so fun to get out of the office.
Speaker 1: Is really nice out here.
Speaker 2: Josh Saul recently went to Louden County, Virginia. He covers
Speaker 2: energy for Bloomberg, and he says this area was mostly
Speaker 2: farmland until just over a decade ago. It was something
Speaker 2: that county touted in economic development videos.
Speaker 3: One of the things I real egove about Louden County
Speaker 3: is it has rural parts and then urban hearts.
Speaker 1: Quality of life is great here.
Speaker 4: It's fresh air, there's biking mountains, the wineries, almost like
Speaker 4: a California scene.
Speaker 2: Now. It has a population of about half a million people.
Speaker 2: It has the highest median income per county in the US,
Speaker 2: and it's home to Dulles International Airport and something we're
Speaker 2: going to see a lot more of in the years
Speaker 2: to come.
Speaker 1: Louden County offers the easy access to power, tempered environment,
Speaker 1: terrific workforce to draw from, and of course connectivity, which
Speaker 1: is second to.
Speaker 2: Nine easy access to power. Recently, Louden County has seen
Speaker 2: some new construction.
Speaker 1: Josh says, big big buildings, like a couple of Walmarts
Speaker 1: stacked on top of each other, just stretching out. They
Speaker 1: look just like a flotilla of spaceships that kind of
Speaker 1: landed down right there.
Speaker 2: These are massive data centers that now dot the Ladden
Speaker 2: County landscape. Each one is a big windowless warehouse.
Speaker 1: It's pretty fun to walk around. They have server racks
Speaker 1: which are I guess about eight feet tall, little taller
Speaker 1: than me, which are just packed with servers which just
Speaker 1: look like the black box decks to your computer, but
Speaker 1: a little bigger and fancier with more blinking lights. And
Speaker 1: you know, they're just server racks. Kind of as far
Speaker 1: as the I can see.
Speaker 2: One of these data centers, Josh says, can consume as
Speaker 2: much power as thirty thousand homes, and that electricity has
Speaker 2: to come from somewhere. But all these server farms cropping
Speaker 2: up haven't exactly been met with enthusiasm by Louden County residents.
Speaker 1: I went to a community meeting where people were just mad.
Speaker 4: At a certain point if we continue to approve all
Speaker 4: of these data center buildings. There will be a time
Speaker 4: when there won't be a park.
Speaker 1: There won't be there were just so many data centers
Speaker 1: going up all around their homes, you know. And they
Speaker 1: live in a sort of kind of American suburban rural
Speaker 1: nice open fields and lots of trees and also strip
Speaker 1: malls and also gas stations and just kind of nice,
Speaker 1: leafy America, And all of a sudden, there were real
Speaker 1: big industrial look and data centers going in around around
Speaker 1: their homes and on their way to their kids' schools.
Speaker 4: So we've really got to get a handle on what
Speaker 4: we're doing and think about where the power is going
Speaker 4: to come from.
Speaker 2: As the AI industry takes off, there's a competition among
Speaker 2: places like Loud County for the economic development that comes
Speaker 2: with being a data center hub. But that distinction comes
Speaker 2: with some really big trade offs.
Speaker 1: It just raises a lot of questions, how do we
Speaker 1: generate this much power? What does it mean for our
Speaker 1: climate goals? What does it mean for reliability and cost
Speaker 1: of power?
Speaker 2: And that's becoming an issue not just in Northern Virginia.
Speaker 1: It's the same issue that we're seeing all over the world.
Speaker 1: AI is really scrambling our power grids.
Speaker 2: I'm David Gura, and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News on today's episode, how AI's insatiable demand for
Speaker 2: energy is altering the landscape in hundreds of towns worldwide,
Speaker 2: putting a strain on local power grids and on commitments
Speaker 2: to reduce energy consumption to combat climate change. The promise
Speaker 2: of artificial intelligence has captured the global imagination, but that
Speaker 2: promise comes with a price. AI needs lots of power,
Speaker 2: way more than technologies that come before it. According to
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Josh Saul.
Speaker 1: The difference is that generative AI, instead of just storing
Speaker 1: your photos or you know, running very simple calculations or
Speaker 1: relatively simple calculations, can create new deductions, new inferences. And
Speaker 1: it's that creation, it's that inference of new things that
Speaker 1: requires so much processing power and therefore so much electricity.
Speaker 2: And this is just the beginning right now. Some say
Speaker 2: AI is still in its infancy, and generative AI is
Speaker 2: expected to be a one point three trillion dollar market
Speaker 2: by twenty thirty two.
Speaker 1: The demand seems to just be going up and up.
Speaker 2: Globally, there are now more than seven thousand data centers
Speaker 2: with the capacity to consume a combined five hundred and
Speaker 2: fourteen tarawad hours of electricity every year. That's greater than
Speaker 2: the total yearly electricity production for Italy or Australia. They're
Speaker 2: just huge, massive energy black holes.
Speaker 1: We had the CEO of a big energy company in
Speaker 1: last week and he told us that he for the
Speaker 1: first time got a request for a five gigawat data center.
Speaker 1: That would be you know, five gigawatts, that's five nuclear reactors.
Speaker 1: That's about the city of Miami, he compared it to.
Speaker 1: So that's just a huge amount of power.
Speaker 2: As Josh mentioned, the power needs of AI are significantly
Speaker 2: different because of all that goes into training models. It
Speaker 2: requires way more computing power than what's used for cloud
Speaker 2: storage of data.
Speaker 1: Generative AI really refers to inference. It refers to AI
Speaker 1: taking you know, data sets or information that it's absorbed
Speaker 1: and coming up with new things. So that could be
Speaker 1: as simple as you know, a silly song that I
Speaker 1: have it create to send to my wife, to new
Speaker 1: climate models, new business models, almost anything you can imagine.
Speaker 2: And this development is of course not unique to loud
Speaker 2: In County. Data centers are cropping up all over the US.
Speaker 2: And around the world to keep up with demand.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the UK, AI is expected to suck
Speaker 1: up five hundred percent more energy over the next decade.
Speaker 1: Here in the US, data centers currently use about three
Speaker 1: percent of our power. According to some estimates, it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be up to eight percent by twenty thirty. And
Speaker 1: Ireland is the place that really boggles my mind. They're
Speaker 1: using more energy for their data centers than they have
Speaker 1: renewable energy total. So it's basically, if you imagined, like
Speaker 1: all the clean energy in the country, it's all going
Speaker 1: just to their data centers. Ireland has attracted so many
Speaker 1: data centers from the big tech companies you know, Microsoft, Amazon,
Speaker 1: and others, that the data centers are forecast to consume
Speaker 1: a third of the country's energy by twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: It's like you have houses, businesses, and data centers. It's
Speaker 1: just wild.
Speaker 2: The issue is that this demand for electricity is not
Speaker 2: just burdening grids in places like Northern Virginia, it's also
Speaker 2: leading to some compromises in terms of where that electricity
Speaker 2: comes from.
Speaker 1: Power companies have been happy to quickly add on or
Speaker 1: delay retirements in order to keep more power on the grid.
Speaker 1: That's something that's troubling because in a general sense, we've
Speaker 1: been excited to shut down coal plants, to not build
Speaker 1: new gas plants, for example, because both of those emit carbon,
Speaker 1: which is what's warming the world or causing climate change.
Speaker 1: But when you have big, new, one gigawatt data centers
Speaker 1: showing up, then you have the power companies or even
Speaker 1: their regulators saying, hey, that one gigawatt coal plant, let's
Speaker 1: keep that bad boy burning.
Speaker 2: Coming up. The practical consequences of this surge and electricity
Speaker 2: demand from data centers in terms of the price you
Speaker 2: pay for power and the fight against global warming. As
Speaker 2: places like Laden County and rural Texas, Ireland and Malaysia
Speaker 2: struggle to keep up with how much power data centers
Speaker 2: need Bloomberg's Josh Saws as utilities are scrambling to get
Speaker 2: ahead of that demand. They're upgrading their systems, installing new
Speaker 2: transmission lines, constructing new power plans, and all of that
Speaker 2: comes with a cost. Are people footing the bill for
Speaker 2: all of this? I mean, are prices going up?
Speaker 1: Experts tell us that the price of power does go up.
Speaker 1: I mean a simple supply and demand. Utilities like the
Speaker 1: one in Virginia are very focused on allocating those costs,
Speaker 1: with more going to data centers and less going to
Speaker 1: homeowners or to small business owners. But certainly it's the
Speaker 1: price of power is going up, and it's not.
Speaker 2: Just the cost of electricity. All this demand on the
Speaker 2: grid is leading to delays of all kinds of other
Speaker 2: non data center related development here.
Speaker 1: In the US. Even in other places, power companies are
Speaker 1: kind of stretching out the amount of time it takes
Speaker 1: to hook up to the grid. That's something that we
Speaker 1: haven't really seen that much before in the US, especially
Speaker 1: that you don't just get a power hookup when you
Speaker 1: want it. I mean, can you imagine building a house
Speaker 1: and the local power company says, hey, we might be
Speaker 1: able to hook you up to power until twenty twenty nine.
Speaker 1: Till then good luck, careful with the candles.
Speaker 2: This is not just a problem in the United States.
Speaker 2: It's something happening in many other countries, and some places
Speaker 2: have decided that they need to slow things down.
Speaker 1: It's really the issues as we describe to them in
Speaker 1: Virginia identically happening all around the world. You know, Ireland
Speaker 1: also had a moratorium. Malaysia also had a moratorium of
Speaker 1: several years on new data centers.
Speaker 2: But a lot of these tech companies are now building
Speaker 2: data centers that they can't, at least as of yet,
Speaker 2: hook up to the grid. Existing infrastructure just isn't ready
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 1: I mean without electricity, the servers are completely useless. I
Speaker 1: mean you could stack them up and kickflip over them,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't do anything with them without electricity. So
Speaker 1: certainly having wires to them, having a fishient generation, having
Speaker 1: a well balanced grid, all of that is absolutely crucial
Speaker 1: to the development of AI.
Speaker 2: All of this is creating a conundrum for tech companies
Speaker 2: whose future rests on their ability to push forward generative
Speaker 2: AI technologies.
Speaker 1: How are the.
Speaker 2: Tech companies thinking through the realities of this. What are
Speaker 2: they saying about the challenge of getting the energy that
Speaker 2: they need to run these data centers.
Speaker 1: Pretty much all of the big tech companies have set ambitious,
Speaker 1: impressive clean energy goals, you know, they almost to a
Speaker 1: company have said by twenty thirty, we're going to be
Speaker 1: one hundred percent clean energy for our data centers. But
Speaker 1: it's a difficult thing to do because data centers are
Speaker 1: on all the time, one hundred percent of the time.
Speaker 1: So to match that to clean energy is hard.
Speaker 2: Do they the tech companies believe that kind of traditional
Speaker 2: green energies. Do they think that green energy is going
Speaker 2: to be enough to make up the difference that they need.
Speaker 1: Well, everybody loves nuclear, I mean nuclear has gotten so hot.
Speaker 1: Like Joe Rogan talking about nuclear. Oh, it's all we
Speaker 1: need to have enough water for California. Just a bunch
Speaker 1: of desalination plants next to nuclear and we'll turn the
Speaker 1: whole valley green. Bill Gates talking about it now everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone's very excited about New clear it's baseload power, but
Speaker 1: the truth is that it's extremely expensive and takes an
Speaker 1: extremely long time. The only big nuclear plant that has
Speaker 1: been built in the US in recent years was finished
Speaker 1: recently in Georgia, and it was the over budget and
Speaker 1: ten years behind schedule. I mean, it's just tremendously expensive
Speaker 1: and difficult to build, and that makes it really hard
Speaker 1: to count on nuclear as a big part of what's
Speaker 1: going to power these projects. But again, our grid as
Speaker 1: it was set up, even when I started reporting on
Speaker 1: this maybe a few years ago, the idea was that
Speaker 1: we would be shutting down the fossil fuel generation in
Speaker 1: order to lower carbon emissions, and when you add new
Speaker 1: load onto that, it just makes that job of shutting
Speaker 1: things down really really hard.
Speaker 2: For now, in Loudon County, there's no sign the development
Speaker 2: of new data centers is going to stop or slow down,
Speaker 2: and that's made its story something of a cautionary tale
Speaker 2: for other counties nearby. Josh recently attended a community meeting
Speaker 2: in Prince William County, which is just next door to Louden,
Speaker 2: and it's already starting to see server farms crop up
Speaker 2: in its horse pastures.
Speaker 1: You know, about a dozen people stood up in each
Speaker 1: of them saying real clearly, you know, we do not
Speaker 1: want to be like Louden County. Prince William is different.
Speaker 3: Prince William County is in a hole. We are in
Speaker 3: a hole like Louden County, and we are in a
Speaker 3: hole like the state of Virginia and many other places
Speaker 3: throughout the country. At some point we need to take
Speaker 3: stock of how much infrastructure is going to be required.
Speaker 1: We do not want this. This is a dystopian nightmare.
Speaker 5: And we cannot and should not support any more data
Speaker 5: center expansion from what is already permitted within the overlay.
Speaker 5: Due to the crippling energy demands of the current data
Speaker 5: center infrastructure in this county.
Speaker 1: Already, and the supervisors listened to the whole thing and
Speaker 1: then voted almost unanimously to allow the larger data center.
Speaker 5: It's going to be the first vote in a domin
Speaker 5: no effect of data center sprawl that you cannot control,
Speaker 5: that balls out of your hands, and that the public
Speaker 5: rightfully blames you for because we will hold you accountable
Speaker 5: for it.
Speaker 2: It reinforces this idea that even though AI is still
Speaker 2: in its early days, because of how incredibly fast it's
Speaker 2: growing and how much money is behind its development, it's
Speaker 2: very hard to stand in its way.
Speaker 1: I think there's a huge amount of momentum for more
Speaker 1: data centers, and I think all of us vote for
Speaker 1: more data centers. Every time we have a more sophisticated
Speaker 1: medical procedure done at a hospital, every time we order
Speaker 1: something online, every time we send a Miley Cyrus meme
Speaker 1: to our wife. It's all running through the data centers.
Speaker 1: It's all running through our phones and our data centers
Speaker 1: and our computers and our employers. And I think it
Speaker 1: just means more and more data centers around the world
Speaker 1: and around the US, and on your drive to work.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Adriana Tapia. It was edited
Speaker 2: by Stacy Vanick Smith and Seth Figgerman. It was mixed
Speaker 2: by Alex Sigura, who also fact checked this episode. Our
Speaker 2: senior producers are Kim Gittlson and Naomi Shaven, and our
Speaker 2: senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beemster Borr is our
Speaker 2: executive producer. Sage Bauman is head of podcast. Thanks so
Speaker 2: much for listening. Please follow and review The Big Take
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Speaker 2: the show. We'll be back tomorrow