October 3, 2024

Tech used to buy all our renewable energy, now it even that is not enough.

AI is driving so much need for energy (three New York's in the USA worth) that the facade that we can supply that much energy through renewable means has been thrown out.

If tech companies with unlimited money cannot get enough energy just to do math, what hope is there for the rest of society to power things beyond our dreams of electric sheep.

We are allowing a completely unregulated market providing both interesting and dubious value to drive consumption of electricity that could be used to offset emissions. Instead, the growth in demand from tech companies is swallowing-up all the new production.

• Microsoft: got the revive the mothballed nuclear plant at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, through a 20 year power supply deal. This will open Uni 2 of the facility which shut down in 2019. They have branded it the Crane Clean Energy Centre, because Three Mile Island does not bring fond memories. Constellation Energy is a publicly traded company and Microsoft has a secret power purchase agreement that brought it back on line.
• Amazon: paid $650mn in March to put a data centre next to the Susquehanna Steam Electric nuclear plant, also in Pennsylvania. SSE is owned by a private equity firm Riverstone Holdings.

All the tech companies are already complaining that they cannot take "all the risk" from building new nuclear. As if the public should give them money and get nothing in return for taking all the surplus generation capacity for themselves.

Nuclear facilities, like most electrical power generation systems, have lives measured in decades. The tech sector measures its fads developments in quarterly profit reports.

The question around this is do we want large monopoly tech companies that are mostly run by sociopathic con men who embody enshitification running nuclear facilities.

I think the answer is not just "no," but are you even awake?

Back in June we discussed the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and its not fully thought out impact on supply chains and production. While the cry from small scale farmers went unheard, anger from large multinationals has had an impact.

The implementation of the regulations have been delayed at least a year. Even in Canada, large forestry companies questioned how you can have a forestry industry if wood cannot come from cutting trees down.

This is hardly a win for the left and sensible regulation. The reason why the regulation has been delayed is because far right parties are complaining there is any regulation at all.

Lower or higher?

And, while production is up, the USA still imports oil.

Everyone focuses on carbon emissions reduction in the USA. But, that's all from shutting off coal generation.

Here is the hilarious wishful thinking of bankers on full display.

Generation X is a squeezed generation in advanced capitalist countries. It is the same generation that is giving us far-right parties and anti-vaxx mania.

But, is it really their fault that they are so angry all the time?

The data does not show a generation having a good time.

> Gen X was the “401(k) experiment” generation, as Goldman Sachs Asset Management put it in a report, and many were late to get started with personal savings. A study from Northwestern Mutual found that Gen Xers expect to need $1.56 million to retire comfortably — and yet have only saved $108,600 so far.

BoA thinks that spending is low for GenX because they are trying to save for retirement (not because their wages have collapsed and they are trying to claw their way out of debt). And, they say that's ok because they are going to "inherit" trillions of dollars. What they don't tell you is that their parents do not have any money either.