Artificial intelligence is the biggest story in tech, period. From generating unbelievable art to powering the next generation of gaming and discovery, AI feels like the future arriving ahead of schedule. But behind the sleek interfaces and mind-bending capabilities lies a dirty, power-hungry secret: AI is one of the most energy-intensive technologies ever created.
The big question facing the tech world is no longer what AI can do, but how we’re going to power it all. A new US AI energy plan is taking shape, and if you follow the money, it’s clear the winners aren’t just the tech giants in Silicon Valley. The real beneficiaries are the gas and chemical companies of old-world industry.
AI’s Insatiable Thirst for Power
First, let’s get a handle on the scale of the problem. Training a major AI model like GPT-4 or generating images on Midjourney isn’t like running Microsoft Word. It requires massive, warehouse-sized data centers packed with powerful processors running 24/7.
Think of it this way: a single AI data center can consume as much electricity as a medium-sized city. As companies race to build bigger and better models, the global demand for electricity is set to skyrocket in a way we haven’t seen in decades. This creates a huge power vacuum that needs to be filled, and fast.
Connecting the Dots: The AI Plan’s Real Goal
So, how does the current administration plan to generate all this new power? While you might hope for a futuristic vision of solar panels and wind turbines powering our AI future, the administration’s strategy is pointing in a different direction.
The core of the new policy focuses on fast-tracking the approval and construction of new power plants and pipelines. The catch? The vast majority of these new projects are designed to run on natural gas. This is where the Trump AI plan gives a massive advantage to gas companies. By cutting red tape specifically for fossil fuel infrastructure, the policy directly incentivizes building a power grid for AI that depends on burning more gas.
Why Gas and Chemical Companies Are the Big Winners
The logic is simple:
- More AI requires more data centers.
- More data centers require more electricity.
- The new plan makes it easiest to generate that electricity with natural gas.
This creates a guaranteed, long-term revenue stream for the fossil fuel industry. Gas companies get to sell enormous volumes of natural gas to these new power plants. At the same time, chemical companies, which often use natural gas as a primary raw material (feedstock) for plastics and other industrial products, also win. A boom in gas production means lower costs and more business for them, too.
Essentially, the AI revolution is being used as the justification to build out a fossil fuel infrastructure that will last for decades.
What About a Green Tech Future?
Critics argue that this is a massive missed opportunity. The AI boom could have been the catalyst for an unprecedented investment in renewable energy like solar, wind, and next-gen battery storage.
However, the administration’s pushback is that renewables can’t provide the kind of reliable, 24/7 “baseload” power that data centers need, and that building gas plants is simply faster. Whether you buy that argument or not, the result is the same: the future of a cutting-edge technology is being chained to a 20th-century energy source.
For those of us who love technology, it’s a jarring reality. The clean, digital world of AI we interact with on our screens could soon be one of the biggest drivers of fossil fuel consumption on the planet. The next time you ask an AI to write a poem or generate a picture, it’s worth asking: what’s powering the response? According to this new plan, the answer is increasingly “natural gas.”