• jj4211@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 day ago

    Note that the negative impact of these facilities are, by designed, concentrated on the communities that get stuck with them. The overall percentage has to be considered in the context of them focusing that impact into relatively small, super dense footprints.

    Also, the percentage is higher than 1%, and in the US is about 5%. This reflects the current situation that the AI companies lament is just too constrained on them, with ambitions of getting to 20% if circumstances allow them to build up the way they want. So it’s already somewhat significant, especially with the way it gets concentrated, and further they want to bump it up at least four fold beyond what they’ve managed to do so far.

    In anticipation of that, energy strategies that planned to be more tame and grow by renewables got pushed aside in favor of more natural gas, and especially portable power generation which tends to be more polluting.