A New IEA Report and the Iberian Blackout End Dreams of an ‘Energy Transition’ | RealClearPolicy
And strike one came a few weeks prior to the Iberian calamity with the release of a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) titled Energy and AI. That report sought to answer the question about how to reliably meet the surprising jump in power demands expected in the coming decade s boom in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. Answering that also answers, even if not intentionally, the same question about meeting society s future demands.
As the IEA report noted, just one large AI data center uses as much electricity as two million households, and myriads are planned. Thus, digital infrastructures will soon create demands equivalent to reliably powering hundreds of millions of new households. Spoiler alert: the IEA forecast shows fossil fuels continue to play a central role.
However, since the IEA is the chief cheerleader for an energy transition, the executive summary of this latest report leads by observing that half the expected data center demand will be met by renewables. Not until deep into that report s 300 pages does one find the candid observation that natural gas supplies the other half in the U.S., and coal fills that role in China. The IEA s framing of the answer is a glass-half-full view of a failed vision, especially considering that trillions of dollars have been invested so far in pursuing the transition goal.
Well, never mind I guess.