Data centers contribute to high prices as energy bills electrify local politics

The AI/DC bubble is about pure greed. You're only about a third correct

He likes nuclear, at least. Mega bonus. Solar is pretty middling in comparison, so that’s fine with me.

> They tend to pay industrial rates like any other industrial consumer would

Well yeah, you don't need to look further than Econ 101 and supply and demand. If demand goes up, prices go up.

The real problem is that the gains from the new demand don't end up fairly distributed, which is bad but not really directly related to the discussion.

> In the end if we want wealth, we need industry. Industry needs cheap and abundant power to be competitive - AI datacenter or Aluminum smelter.

Why do we want wealth when it is only going to the wealthiest? AI data centers benefit Big Tech, its employees, and its shareholders. So, who is "we"? I believe I can make the argument that the majority of Americans do not want this, only a privileged minority (ie those getting wealthy from this current hype cycle).

Poll: American voters don't want data centers built in their communities - https://www.thecentersquare.com/issues/energy/article_d5b564... - July 2nd, 2025

> Energy consumption correlates very strongly with wealth, and we've spent decades in the margins messing around with efficiency gains vs. actually investing in anything substantial. When your power company is willing to give you a credit for a more efficient appliance so they don't have to upgrade the grid to your neighborhood you know things have jumped the shark and we are in malinvestment territory.

No longer true.

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling

If AI data centers want power, they should be charged a painful premium for it, paid out of the pockets of Big Tech building it. They have the resources, clearly, from the very obvious capital flows. Meta has issued its largest bond offering ever, $30B, for its Hyperion project in Richland Parish, Louisiana. Because when the bubble pops, we're all going to be left holding the bag ("socializing the losses"). We should not all have to suffer higher electrical prices for the benefit of Big Tech and their shareholders. They can pay up for the necessary power infrastructure if they want the gains they're chasing.

If consumers want cheaper power, they should advocate for more rapid deployment of wind, solar, battery storage, transmission and interconnectors, demand response, and other technologies to make the price of fossil fuels irrelevant in their electrical costs. Data centers are not a component of cheaper energy bills, importantly. They are demand, and compete with consumers for electricity in the market. Fossil fuel prices are volatile; if you do not want to be exposed to volatile fossil fuel pricing, do not use fossil fuels in your electrical grid. It is unlikely fossil fuels get cheaper in the future, as they will be starved for investment. You cannot control the global fossil fuel market (with the primary suppliers being OPEC+ and the US), but you can control your domestic supply and demand for energy. Europe fossil gas prices are never going to go back down to pre-2020 levels as long as they rely on LNG imports vs supply from Russia, for example. The faster Europe pushes out fossil generation in its grid, the faster energy prices go back down (cost of solar at a certain points during the day goes to 0 once enough solar has been deployed; eventually, the cost of generation becomes a much smaller component of electricity prices, as the dominate factors become distribution and infrastructure to get generation to loads).

The above is crystal clear in the graphics in my citation above "Ember Energy: European electricity prices and costs."

Additional citations:

EU expects to add record renewable capacity in 2025, industry sees headwinds - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat... - April 10th, 2025

> EU countries are expected to add 89GW of new renewable energy capacity in 2025, including 70GW of solar and 19GW of wind, according to Commission projections shared with Reuters. The projections are based on industry data.

The White House’s Bet on Fossil Fuels Is Already Losing - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-10-28/white-... | https://archive.today/vpvch - October 28th, 2025

> US financial markets are favoring renewable energy over fossil fuels, with global investment for new renewable energy development reaching a record $386 billion during the first half of 2025.

> Revenue forecasts show a widening dichotomy between clean and dirty industries, with renewables expected to report 16% sales growth next year and 21% in 2027, while traditional energy companies report 1% and 6% sales growth.

> Global renewable power is forecast to increase by 4,600 gigawatts by the end of the decade, an amount equivalent to adding the generation capacity of China, the EU and Japan. (my note: 4 years to add 4.6TW of renewables globally)

> Even as the US and European Union recently increased their reliance on coal, solar dethroned the fossil fuel mainstay last year, becoming the world’s most installed energy generation technology according to BloombergNEF’s 2025 Power Transition Trends report. “In 2015, solar power seemed far from overtaking coal, constrained both by scale and economics,” BloombergNEF said in report this month. Yet, within a decade, solar costs have fallen so dramatically that the dynamic has entirely reversed. Solar is now two times cheaper than the fossil fuel.” So-called green energy is the lowest-cost and quickest-to-deploy power generator in the US, even without incentives, according to Lazard Inc.

Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy+ (LCOE+) - https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e... - June 2025

(enough sunlight falls on the Earth in 30 minutes to power humanity for a year, and we're fighting over ancient sunlight pumped from the ground; why? we already solved fusion, just at a distance using the sun and batteries; 1GW of solar is installed globally every 15 hours as of this comment)

What planet are you on?

I’m in Canada, in a tight valley that snows a lot.

7.8kw on the roof, even if I paid full price out of pocket it would be fully paid off in 13 years, and then I get $1000 a year of free power for another 20 or so years.

Even at full price it’s a total no brainer.

Is this because of the labor costs in the US? In other countries the payback period is much shorter. Someone I know in Brazil told me it is 3-5 years for them.

On a related note, I asked my AC guy if he knows any trustworthy solar installers. He told me that only crooks are in that business :)

>> I would have been fine with a 10 year payback, but 25+ was just not worth doing.

We are struggling with this also -- with or without an incentive. The payback period is long. Makes sense if you think forward rates will be super-high. But people are quite aggressive with their forward rate estimates, yet super-liberal with the lifespan estimates.

I've dealt with enough appliance breakdowns to know all the tricks companies pull

- You have a 25 year warranty, but only on parts. The labor ends up costing more than an entire new system.

- You have a 25 year warranty, but only on labor. The parts ends up costing more than an entire new system, possibly because the parts are no longer made. Labor warranty is now useless and you need to buy a new system all over.

- You have a 25 year warranty on parts and labor, but the company declares bankruptcy and you have no warranty any longer.

- You have a 25 year warranty on parts and labor, but the company got acquired and the acquiring company "cant find your warranty details in their system". Regulators are powerless to actually help despite months of letters.

- You have a 25 year warranty on parts and labor, but a tree/hail falls on the house and they declare it out of bounds of warranty. You go through your home insurance, but they only cover current value, not replacement value. You buy a whole new system, only partially covered and start all over again.

- You have a 25 year warranty on parts and labor, but manufacturer blames the malfunction on improper installation, but the installation company is long-gone/retired/non-responsive/bankrupt. Possibly the Accord insurance form is fake also (how many people actually verify the insurance Accord is real?)

Been there, done that, on all the above. Eventually, your only religion is deferred maintenance because you know you get ripped off royally no matter what you do. We havent yet heard horror stories because these systems are new, but you'll hear all the above as time goes on, and people realize the actual life of their systems are far shorter than their payback periods.