Hertz-Shargel said that prices are currently high for other reasons, including the aging electric grid and extreme weather that creates storm damage.

Meanwhile, the government is also warning of potential issues in the future due to data centers.

An Energy Department report from July said that increasing power demand, including from AI, was increasing risks of blackouts.

The Energy Information Administration, the nation’s independent energy statistics agency, has forecast new highs in electricity usage in 2025 and 2026, saying increases in the commercial sector will be driven “largely by more demand from data centers.”

The Trump administration has argued that data centers can actually help bring down electricity prices over time.

Asked about the issue, a White House official recently told reporters that the additional infrastructure needed to power data centers will ultimately lead to more supply of electricity and power lines, and therefore lower prices in the long term.

Hertz-Shargel said that this can be true in “limited situations” but that overall, data centers are expected to raise prices.

He said that in these limited cases, data centers “consume power when others are not and that does allow better utilization of grid infrastructure, which can, in certain cases, lower energy prices for a certain amount of data center and demand contribution.”

“However, once you get to anywhere near the levels of demand … that are being planned for, you’re way past that regime, and you’re in a regime where now utilities are needed to build much bigger and newer and much more expensive infrastructure, including expensive gas plants … so you’re spending much more money and you’re significantly raising the cost of electricity, both the cost of the electricity itself as a commodity and also the cost of the infrastructure that must be recovered,” he added.

Higher demand, and therefore higher prices, are expected to keep more fossil fuels, particularly coal and natural gas, on the grid for more time. In the case of gas, the increased demand is likely to result in more investment.

“It looks like we have a setback in our climate and decarbonization trajectory here, as we build a lot of new gas plants and some pipeline capacity and drill more. It looks like our emissions are going to go up for a while and old coal plants are being retained on the system,” said Rob Gramlich, founder and president of consulting firm Grid Strategies LLC.

Grid Strategies has recently projected that electricity demand in 2030 could grow massively over the next several years, with 55 percent of the demand increase coming from data centers.

Hertz-Shargel agreed that a data center boom could increase the nation’s planet-warming emissions, particularly through the expansion of gas plants.

“There always was going to be some degree of natural gas build, but it is far greater than it would have been,” he said, noting that there have been “commitments by some of the natural gas turbine manufacturers to increase their production capacity to satisfy this need.”

However, others, including those who are more supportive of data centers, argue that the build-out could make other, lower-emissions technologies such as nuclear energy cheaper and easier to scale in the long run.

“For nuclear to become a really important energy source and help to address climate, it has to scale up, and in order to scale up, it has to get the first reactors built and then start building an order book quickly,” said Robin Gaster, research director at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s center for clean energy innovation. The foundation has received donations from tech companies, among others.

“Data centers can provide the demand that will get nuclear over the hump,” Gaster added.

Meanwhile, environmental advocates see a problem not only for climate change but also for clean air, especially as some data centers use diesel-powered backup generators.

“For these diesel backup generators, it’s very high emissions for soot particulates and sometimes even mercury [and] sulfur dioxide,” Jeremy Fisher, a principal adviser for climate and energy at the Sierra Club, told The Hill last month.

Mercury is a neurotoxin; soot can cause premature death, heart attacks and asthma; and sulfur dioxide can harm the respiratory system.

“No other industry compares with the amount of backup generation that these data centers insist on having on site, so it becomes a very local pollution issue,” Fisher said.

>>1461093
Gotta keep that AI bubble from bursting while Trump is president. Let it burst under a democrat so they can be blamed.

>>1461094
>Asked about the issue, a White House official recently told reporters that the additional infrastructure needed to power data centers will ultimately lead to more supply of electricity and power lines, and therefore lower prices in the long term.
Fucking how? Because AI is literal magic that can just do anything? Fuck off, retard.
Love how the bastards are doing this while also gutting our energy sector too. We’re gonna need more electricity than ever? Great, lets cut solar and wind and etc, their woke or something.
This shit is going to destroy the world as we know it.

>Consumes all your electricity and you have to pay for it.

>>1461127
They're applying trickle down economic thinking. Everyone knows that even if the energy companies could make electricity more efficiently, they'd just pocket the savings to boost profit margins.

>>1461095
>“It looks like we have a setback in our climate and decarbonization trajectory here, as we build a lot of new gas plants and some pipeline capacity and drill more. It looks like our emissions are going to go up for a while and old coal plants are being retained on the system,” said Rob Gramlich, founder and president of consulting firm Grid Strategies LLC.
They're out making artificial intelligence and and the jackasses running it say we need more fucking coal to power them.
We are so fucked.

First the AI came for our jobs
Then the AI came for our water
Then the AI came for us
The elites think they aren't expendable haha

>>1461132
To be fair you literally support global capital which is an extension of trickle down.
And trickle down does work, FYI.

>>1461093
MOM~! The furry porn "artists" are complaining about AI again!

>>1461164
>AI taking your jobs
>AI taking your water
>AI taking your power
>AI taking your planet
>"Y-you're just an angry artist!"
Fucking retard.

>>1461165
You aren't going to stop it though.
It's all over the news how AI is enriching our lives, expanding our education.
Or so the poopooganda says.

>>1461167
I know.

>>1461093
All these resources poured into AI and still NOT ONE company who is based on developing AI has turned a profit yet. What a completely pathetic waste of time and resources just to make stupid looking pictures.

>>1461192
>just to make stupid looking pictures
The point isn't to make stupid looking pictures. The point is to cut out all the middlemen involved in getting creative products to market.

No more paying graphic designers for ads. No more licensing stock photos. No more paying royalties.

Imagine if that list of people at the start/end of a movie no longer existed. Not only do you no longer have to pay them, but theaters could get in an extra screening each day.