Latest / Computer Says Maybe / The Climate Cost of AI Prophecies: How Data Centers Fuel Big Fossil w/ Ketan Joshi
Transcript
- [00:00:00] Alix: Hey there, I'm Alix Dunn, and welcome back to Computer Says Maybe, where I talk to the people pushing back on tech power and fighting for something better. It's October, and with the US midterms getting closer week over week, this month we're looking at politics and the role that AI is playing in this election season through one question: who gets to shape the future? [00:00:22] Alix: Last week, Carissa Velez, author of Prophecy, showed us how predictions from powerful people often aren't forecasts, they're a way of steering the future toward the outcome they want. When AI companies insist that their technology's inevitable, that narrows what the rest of us, from citizens to politicians, believe is possible. [00:00:41] Alix: But these prophecies don't just shape what we believe, they shape what we prioritize. So rather than fighting for a livable future by tackling the climate crisis, these prophecies are used to drive the building of data centers, power plants, and gas turbines, all in the name of an AI future we're told is coming [00:01:00] whether we want it or not. [00:01:02] Alix: So today, we're gonna look at what that AI future is actually costing us. I'm joined by Ketan Joshi, a climate analyst and researcher who works on the climate impacts of data centers and AI. In this episode, Ketan walks us through how dramatically data centers have grown from facilities drawing the power of, let's say, a suburb, to consuming as much power as an entire country. [00:01:24] Alix: He breaks down who's building these data centers, who's actually profiting from them, and who ends up paying the environmental costs. His lens is global, but the fights he describes are playing out in communities all across the US right now and on ballots this November. So let's get into my conversation with Ketan [00:01:45] Ketan Joshi: My name is Gitan Joshi. I'm an independent climate analyst and researcher based in Oslo, and I work on the climate impacts of data centers and AI. [00:01:53] Alix: When we think about data centers and when people are thinking, "Are these things as energy intensive as a lot of advocates [00:02:00] say?" Like, how would you describe the energy demand of data center infrastructure and, like, how are, how are companies powering them? [00:02:07] Ketan Joshi: The most straightforward way to think about it is not so much what they are now, but kind of where they've come from. Uh, data centers in the 2010s, the kind of stuff that was powering Netflix and social media and the video calls that we did in the previous decade, were kind of in the sort of 10 to 100 megawatt range, and that's, like, kind of a street or a suburb. [00:02:29] Ketan Joshi: Like, a suburb worth of houses, right? Like, your average kind of anywhere you are in the world, you can kind of just imagine, like, a medium sized suburb. That was what data centers used to be. And then kind of towards the start of this decade, they started to become, I would say, closer to city sized, right? [00:02:44] Ketan Joshi: So, you know, a central like business district's worth of, of power demand, which is kind of in the 100 to 500 megawatt range, which is pretty substantial, right? Like then you start having to think about major things like upgrading power lines and things like that. And the [00:03:00] most recent development, if you kind of go back like maybe three or four years, is that data centers have gone up a unit. [00:03:07] Ketan Joshi: So instead of saying megawatts, we now say gigawatts, which is like a thousand multiplier bigger, like going from, you know, grams to, to kilos or whatever. And these gigawatt scale data centers are not city sized, but like state or even sometimes country sized. And so you're thinking about like the power demand of not just like a big steel plant, but like three or four big steel plants all in one building and all, you know, multiple of these facilities applying for connection requests. [00:03:37] Ketan Joshi: And so I just mention it in that context because it gives you an idea of how each step hasn't been the same. It hasn't been like a linear sort of growth from like, you know, okay, well, they became a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger over time. What has happened over the past few years has been kind of going up on like a logarithmic scale, you know, like 10 times bigger and then 10 times bigger than that.[00:04:00] [00:04:00] Alix: I mean, that rapid increase in energy necessary to build the scale of facility these companies want obviously has necessitated a also step change in like how they get that energy. Where, where is the power coming from? [00:04:15] Ketan Joshi: The three big regions in the world where data centers have been built fast, the United States, China, and, and, and Europe. [00:04:21] Ketan Joshi: And, you know, other parts of the world like Australia has, uh, quite a substantial level of data center growth. They're k- kind of like number four and potentially, you know, number three or two. In the US, it has been a mix of data centers connecting into the local power grid and building their own power stations, predominantly gas power stations. [00:04:41] Ketan Joshi: Uh, and in both cases, they tend to boost fossil fuel. So, so the American power grid is, you know, mostly gas with quite a, a large amount of coal still. And so you plug anything into the power grid or you even just plug a kettle into the, into the plug in your wall and you turn it on- You kind of draw from what's there. [00:04:58] Ketan Joshi: And so your new [00:05:00] demand kind of lifts all the boats, and coal generates a bit more, gas generates a bit more, but so does nuclear and so do renewables. But, uh, the reason it's, it's such a climate problem in the US, of course, is because, first of all, it's drawing from a lot of fossil fuels. Even if there's a bit of renewables on top of that, you still end up with more emissions. [00:05:18] Ketan Joshi: In Europe, it's not quite so bad. The, the pace of development hasn't been quite as high, but there is still a fair amount of gas in Europe and, uh, and still in some regions, a fair amount of coal as well. And then in China, of course, China has a very, very coal-heavy grid. You can kind of split all of that into two categories when it comes to fossil fuel specifically. [00:05:37] Ketan Joshi: The first is plugging into a grid and, and having a gas plant generate more, or having a coal plant that was due to shut down in a year, but then it has to be kept open for another five years. And that is kind of harder to talk about and harder to think about because it's part of this, like, spider web of infrastructure that you can't really sort of have in your head as, like, a simple story. [00:05:58] Alix: Mm-hmm. [00:05:58] Ketan Joshi: Whereas the [00:06:00] gas story where they're building... They literally just build a new gas-fired power station next to the thing. That is a lot easier to explain to people because it's really just truly a new power station they build, uh, that is just burning usually very inefficient gas turbines with very high, like, greenhouse gas emissions. [00:06:20] Ketan Joshi: You know, most people would be familiar with the Memphis project, um, the XAI Data Center, um, in, in Memphis that's running on, um, a very large number of gas turbines that they just shipped in and, and plonked next to the facility. Uh, and they're applying for a grid connection, but they're probably just gonna keep the gas turbines there, I suspect. [00:06:38] Alix: So the Memphis example feels like the most egregious in terms of we need power now. By any means necessary, we are gonna ship these really low efficiency generators that are pumping loads of toxic f-fumes into the air, and also are not very, probably like efficient cost-wise either. I imagine they're very expensive, and I imagine [00:07:00] they're very expensive to run, but I could be wrong. [00:07:01] Alix: And then there's kind of this spectrum of like in the middle there's like, oh, all grids are drawing from a mix of fossil fuels, renewables, these different sources. And so when you draw more from that grid, you're essentially drawing more of whatever it is they're offering, and it's kind of a mix, and we're broadly trying to convert those to be more and more renewable. [00:07:19] Alix: And then you have the kind of, I don't know, the like utopian version which is that the grid is like just trucking with renewables. Um, it's super reliable. It's like... Uh, and then when you plug something in there, it's like you're kind of drawing from the sun and the physical panels that are required to like do as, like an example, solar or something. [00:07:36] Alix: And that basically you would want to be along that grid and be more like plugging these kinds of things into things that are more renewable powered. But I'm wondering, that then makes it a question of like how much can we push data centers towards those renewable grids rather than a question of like, do we want data centers? [00:07:54] Alix: And I wonder if you have thoughts on like to what extent do you see data centers as like a zero [00:08:00] sum thing, as just general draw of energy in society versus like trying to get specific about like what the energy source should be? [00:08:07] Ketan Joshi: Uh, Australia is in the midst of a transition away from coal and gas on its power grid, and it has particularly high solar growth. [00:08:15] Ketan Joshi: Uh, it has, uh, relatively okay-ish wind growth. It could be, could be better. What, what I've been doing for quite a fair amount of time, you know, since I left Australia is I still track the metrics of that transition on the power grid, and it's happening. Emissions are going down basically each year, but it's significantly slower than it was originally anticipated to be. [00:08:34] Ketan Joshi: And so What is happening is because it's going slower, that extra emissions each year, it just accumulates in the atmosphere, right? So that's bad. Like, that, that causes harm. It's quite a substantial amount. Yeah. I... You know, when I compared it to what the projections kind of thought it would be, you know, one was 23% higher emissions than, than, like, a previous projection. [00:08:54] Ketan Joshi: So it's falling, but it's falling way slower than anticipated. The reason behind [00:09:00] that is because renewable energy in Australia is being built, but it's not being built fast enough, uh, to push coal out of the grid fast enough. And that was kind of the old situation, right? Like, that was the situation in 2020, is, like, you kind of had this race to build renewables fast enough so that it could crowd that coal and gas out of the grid- Mm-hmm [00:09:19] Ketan Joshi: and you have a safer system that doesn't pump out so much pollution. What has happened in the years since is now every single, like, you know, quarter, we get, like, a revised forecast of energy demand, and that line for future energy demand is higher and higher. So if you think about it, not only do you have the problem that you started with where renewables weren't growing fast enough, you now have the problem where the goal that you wanna get to is moving further away from you in the distance. [00:09:47] Ketan Joshi: And so the root cause of the problem around why renewable energies are being built fast enough is because, A, you know, there's not strong enough government support, B, the sort of free market model of renewable energy [00:10:00] growth just doesn't give you sufficient renewables to, to meet climate targets. It gives you something, but not enough. [00:10:05] Ketan Joshi: And those are systemic problems, and data centers have kind of just arrived and just worsened it all. And I analyze this by looking at projections each year, and those projections show higher and higher emissions in the future because you just do the math and it's like, well, we have to meet more demand, but the amount of renewables that we're projecting is the same because nothing systemic... [00:10:28] Ketan Joshi: Like, there's been no change in policy. And so This is really important, this principle, right? Because it's easy to look at a, a data center project and go, "What's your problem?" They built a 200-megawatt wind farm, you know, next, next door. They've got deep pockets. Amazon has deep pockets, Google, Meta, et cetera. [00:10:45] Ketan Joshi: They can afford to build a relatively large wind farm. But the generation of that wind farm is still less than what they add to the grid with their data center. So, so let's just say it's, like, 50% of the data center's demand. Great, you know, [00:11:00] that's like new generation they've, they've added. But the other 50% still draws from the grid and still increases emissions, or in many cases, they still actually build a, a fossil fuel power station, like a gas plant. [00:11:11] Ketan Joshi: This is something I really want people to try and understand. If you ha- kind of have, like, a, a massive addition of new demand, but you kind of co- only cover a tiny fraction of it with renewables, that's a problem. And so this comes into a secondary problem with this, which is that a data center can say, "Well, chill out. [00:11:29] Ketan Joshi: Don't worry. I've covered 100% of my demand with new renewables," but they don't mean that they literally built an entirely new facility. [00:11:37] Alix: They bought it from the grid, right? [00:11:39] Ketan Joshi: Yeah, right. Like, they've done, like, they've done a sort of, like, a power purchasing deal, or they've bought some certificates, or even in the worst case, they've bought, like, traditional carbon offsets. [00:11:48] Ketan Joshi: And they kind of, you know, there might, there might be a piece of legislation that looks really good on paper or sounds really good, like 100% renewable mandate, but actually when you look into the details and it's like, oh, well, we just want them... We just asked them [00:12:00] to buy some certificates from a, a wind farm that already exists. [00:12:02] Alix: You describe yourself as a former renewables advocate. Is that because you've kind of changed the portfolio of things you focus on, or are you basically, like, advocating for more renewables absent a political discussion about the overall increase in demand is kind of pointless? Or, like, what, where did, where, how did that former sneak in there? [00:12:19] Ketan Joshi: Actually, my job with, in, back in Australia was, uh, you know, to be an advocate. I worked for a wind farm company, right? Uh- Oh, yeah ... and you know, my job was to kind of be a, a, like a informed but still, you know, big wind shill advocate. So what I've generally seen is that over the past sort of decade, you know, since I left being a formal renewable energy advocate, is that the industry hasn't really had much of a rise in support for it, particularly or in regions locally where renewables get built. [00:12:48] Ketan Joshi: And I think that maintaining a deep sense of purpose and morality about why renewables get built is actually quite important. Like, having a clear sense of we're doing it to make the energy [00:13:00] system safe and to protect people's health and communities suffering from the impacts of climate change. It is not a fashionable thing to talk about that anymore in, in renewable advocacy or climate advocacy even in general, but I think that having that in your heart as the reason that you do it, it's really important because- Why else are you doing it, right? [00:13:19] Ketan Joshi: Like, who cares about a, a wind farm if it's not doing something meaningful for society? [00:13:23] Alix: Do you think of, like, renewables as just, like, another industry now essentially just trying to sell stuff, or that, that, that kind of heart is gone? [00:13:30] Ketan Joshi: I, I actually talk a, a fair bit with, uh, people who are still in renewables, uh, and you know, many friends of mine and, and people, you know, uh, who I worked with, and there's a real split. [00:13:39] Ketan Joshi: There's like- Interesting ... people who still definitely feel a very deep and emotional connection with purpose, specifically of, of climate action and fossil fuel phaseout, and all of the sort of social and community benefits that come with that. And the other half have become, I would say, more cynical and, and more disconnected from that. [00:13:57] Ketan Joshi: Um, in fact, you can even find reports from [00:14:00] climate advocates and, you know, sort of who are now more like energy advocates, I would say, than, than climate advocates- [00:14:06] Alix: Interesting ... [00:14:06] Ketan Joshi: who explicitly say, "We should not really be talking about or mentioning climate change when we talk about renewables. We should talk about, like, energy security and, you know, renewables are cheaper and, and, and they sort of make, you know, they make things cheaper." [00:14:18] Ketan Joshi: But I, I, I personally don't really like that approach because it feels a little bit dishonest. Um, I mean, you know, I guess everyone will, will approach things from their own perspective, but we are primarily doing all of this for the purposes of protecting the safety and the livability of atmosphere, right? [00:14:36] Ketan Joshi: Like, that's why renewable energy and the energy transition are happening. And I think that whe- particularly when it comes to being like, "Oh, well, it's just cheaper," people don't experience that. And the reason that their bills are going up is because of war and fossil fuels and, you know, all of these things are just so intricately linked. [00:14:53] Ketan Joshi: But when you tell them renewables are gonna make your life cheaper, and their life doesn't become cheaper, it doesn't really matter what the [00:15:00] reasons are. Yeah. It just feels and looks like you've lied. And so I just think even if you look at it from a purely tactical perspective, which I don't, it doesn't really work. [00:15:09] Ketan Joshi: So it really actually links very closely into the data center thing, I think, because it's a real test, I think, of, of, of where you stand and how you feel about why- Mm ... the energy transition is happening. I think if you are really in this because you like solar and think it's cool and you want more of it, you may not be too bothered by the gas plant that's attached to the data center. [00:15:29] Ketan Joshi: But I think if you're in this for all those reasons that I mentioned, then you probably will actually care and, and, and you will feel a stronger opposition, I guess, to data centers incentivizing fossil fuels. [00:15:41] Alix: Well, I feel like this is all also coming from an industry that historically has had this I don't know. [00:15:47] Alix: Much ink has been spilt about whether or not the tech companies were ever progressive, but I think there has been this kind of air of we're interested in a well-governed world in the future where like climate [00:16:00] is, uh, I don't know, that people are protected from the excesses of industries and traditional industries are all like emitting all these things, but we're digital, we're clean. [00:16:08] Alix: You know, there's like a real vibe and I mean, it was also anchored in certain concrete commitments from companies particularly like Microsoft that were like, "No, we're taking this seriously. We're gonna like, you know, do the thing." And now you have this about face that feels so dramatic that basically they've gone from this lip service towards these goals to essentially like mask off, just like go, go, go, go, go at any cost. [00:16:32] Alix: Um, how do you square that circle in your head and then when you think about like the public, like do you think that the understanding of what's going on is changing? [00:16:40] Ketan Joshi: Two phenomena that I see happening very, very clearly. I spend a pretty ridiculous amount of time reading sustainability reports from big tech companies. [00:16:49] Alix: So sorry, and thank you. [00:16:50] Ketan Joshi: You know, it's so fascinating. I, I don't think any of them are written by AI. I think a lot of them, if not all of them, are written by people. You know, you can kind of tell when something has been written [00:17:00] by a chatbot or whatever, and this just feels so human in a strange sense because they really lay out their anxieties and their feelings about what their company is doing in their defensiveness and in, in what they exclude or obscure- Mm. [00:17:14] Ketan Joshi: in those reports. So the first thing that we've noticed, um, and when I say we, I mean I've just been working over the past sort of year and a bit with a consortium of like climate accountability and environmental organizations as like lead author on a but... on a, on several reports and what we've generally found is that first of all, they've stopped talking about carbon offsets. [00:17:34] Ketan Joshi: They don't really talk about renewable energy that much. When they talk about sustainability and climate, they talk about the capability of AI to solve climate change itself. Uh, and so this is basically, you, you know, most people would've heard some variant of this, which is essentially either that the technology becomes super intelligent and figures out a solution or that the technological applications that you have today, particularly of traditional AI like, um, wind forecasting and grid management and stuff [00:18:00] like that, is going to be the thing that solves climate change to the ridiculous and absurd extent that the amount of emissions reductions from all of that are way, way lower and deeper than the emissions increases that you get from data center growth on the grid. [00:18:16] Ketan Joshi: And so we have a r- a report out in February this year, um, that criticizes that position very strongly- Yeah ... from both ends, in that the evidence for that effect of reductions is very weak, but also that they're mixing two different types of AI. One is the older machine learning stuff, and the other is the generation of text, images, and videos, or the production of like automated software... [00:18:38] Ketan Joshi: automated coding, I should say, and, and, and automated computer operation or agents. Um, and so all of that stuff is very, very emissions intensive, energy intensive. That is the story that they tell themselves a, a bit and when you read these sustainability reports, they're obviously meant for worried staffers as well, right? [00:18:55] Ketan Joshi: Like employees, you know, who are just like having worried about their conscience and what they're working for and what they're [00:19:00] doing. Uh, and so it's, it's important to think about it that way, right? This is the story that they're telling themselves and telling the public. We attack it as greenwashing because we think that it's just not based in fact, but it's still significant to know that that's the story they tell. [00:19:15] Ketan Joshi: And then the other side of it is just the data, right? Like this is the information that they disclose. This is the stuff that is not the story they tell. It's the stuff that they hide. It's the stuff that's in like the footnotes and it's buried in some like random other PDF. And, you know, to, to give you an example, um, Apple, you know, who kind of I think people generally see as like the good one, they still hide the emissions from consuming electricity from the grid. [00:19:40] Ketan Joshi: Uh, the unadjusted version of that, which is just like you kind of look at the grid and go, "How much did I consume? What were the emissions?" That is still hidden in a third party assurance report in the footnotes of that third party report, which is like a completely separate PDF and it's like, I would argue the most single most important number, and they have to disclose it, you know, under the [00:20:00] protocol through which all of this stuff is governed. [00:20:02] Ketan Joshi: And the fact that they hide it is... feels like such an admission to me. Like, okay, this is the important thing that they're hiding and the real story that you get told when you look at all those numbers, I collect them and I've got a little bit on my website where people can, you know, download and play with those numbers, you know, because I wanted to tell the sort of untold story, right, which is basically Google, I think probably the most interesting of the batch of most recent disclosures. [00:20:27] Ketan Joshi: Their energy consumption has been increasing, as have all of these companies, but the amount by which it is increasing is itself increasing. Uh, so- Okay, so [00:20:37] Alix: the percentage change has grown. Yeah ... [00:20:39] Ketan Joshi: it's, it's accelerating Yeah ... and, and, and the, uh, degree to which Google's energy consumption is accelerating is phenomenal because the central story in their report is like, "Look at our energy efficiency" So like our chips have been getting more efficient. [00:20:52] Ketan Joshi: Every prompt that you send into Google Gemini is, is like a lower and lower energy consumption But the absolute volume of energy consumption [00:21:00] that they report is phenomenal, right? They added one New Zealand's worth of energy consumption between the previous year and this year. Why? Like, that can't be from prompts, you know? [00:21:10] Ketan Joshi: That can't be from like, "Hello, write a recipe for pasta." Like it's not... That is not driving that level of energy consumption. [00:21:18] Alix: Yeah. [00:21:18] Ketan Joshi: And we ask why. Like, you know, what is the reason behind that? And so every single one of these companies has not dropped their climate goals. Not one of them has dropped their climate goals, which also feels extremely significant to me, right? [00:21:32] Ketan Joshi: Google slightly adjusted one bit of one of its goals, I think, if I remember correctly, but it wasn't a major change. And I check these every year, right? Because I compare their emissions to what their goals are when they set them. And like, it's like Microsoft's story for instance is really amazing because they had this original metaphor of like, "Let's go for the moon. [00:21:52] Ketan Joshi: Let's do a moonshot." And then, you know, in 2022 they were like, "Well, we're in space, but we, but we don't know about... Like, we're doing all right." [00:22:00] And then in 2025 they were like, "The moon has moved further away from us." [00:22:05] Alix: The moon has moved further away. [00:22:08] Ketan Joshi: And then in the most recent year, they just dropped the analogy altogether because their emissions are just, you know, like this big straight upwards line. [00:22:17] Ketan Joshi: But they have still not dropped their climate goal. They basically just say, "Yeah, like, yeah, yeah, it doesn't look good. We acknowledge that. But, um, we're still gonna go for it. Like, we're still gonna go for our climate goal. We're not dropping it." Part of it is probably just because Microsoft drops climate goal is a bad looking headline. [00:22:35] Alix: Yeah. [00:22:36] Ketan Joshi: And so it may be better for them to just keep it there and just ignore it, like pretend like it doesn't exist. But it's still... The fact that it's a bad headline tells me that people still care about climate investors, shareholders, people, you know, communities more now after a particularly bad Northern Hemisphere summer than we did, you know, at the start of this year. [00:22:57] Ketan Joshi: And I, and I strongly s- maybe this is just [00:23:00] me hoping, but I think that there's probably gonna be a rise in sentiment and attention towards climate again, starting, you know, this year or next year. Part of it is, like, weather events. Part of it is just, like, geopolitics and, and people, you know, worrying about, like, fossil fuel power and capitalism and things like that. [00:23:18] Ketan Joshi: But I think the companies probably recognize this to some degree as well. And so they're in a holding pattern where they're like, "Okay, we don't have to put as much effort into, like, pretending that we care about climate as we did in 2021, but we're not gonna delete our climate goals. We're still gonna have a sustainability report." [00:23:34] Ketan Joshi: You know, they still face pressure. They still have shareholder votes that they've gotta deal with. And so I just hope... Like, that's kind of a semi-hopeful thought, you know? Because it's not like they're just going... Th- I mean, they are going completely bonkers with their-- with, like, the w- like, the energy that they, that they acquire and the, uh, level of consumption that their, like, their energy's going up. [00:23:55] Ketan Joshi: But some part of their brain still [00:24:00] cares about at least having a public image or a public position on climate. And to me, that's still, that's significant, right? Because every year, like, the numbers will just keep getting worse, but for some reason they just don't drop their targets. [00:24:13] Alix: Like, who's making money on this? [00:24:15] Alix: 'Cause it's clearly not the companies yet. There's, like, growing revenue, but it doesn't necessarily offset costs by any stretch of the imagination. Um, there's obviously companies providing data center services. There's fossil fuel industry building infrastructure. There's, like- City, local situations, the deals happening and with sometimes with countries. [00:24:36] Alix: But, like, this shell game of money h- is quite complicated, and I'm wondering from, like, an energy viewpoint and data center build-out viewpoint, like, where does... Who's ma- Is, are... Is anyone making money? [00:24:47] Ketan Joshi: I have a nice example actually to, to bring up, uh, that I was just reading about a couple of days ago. [00:24:52] Ketan Joshi: Microsoft did a deal with Chevron to build a very large gas-fired power station, uh, in Texas. But then I was kind of just looking at this deal, right? So [00:25:00] what, what has happened is Chevron are blasting out the news, right? Like every... You know, I follow Chevron, um, the LinkedIn algorithm thinks that I love Chevron 'cause I get all their ads, and all of their ads are about AI and this specific deal to build a Microsoft gas plant, and Microsoft never mentions it. [00:25:19] Ketan Joshi: Microsoft pretends- Wow ... like it doesn't exist. Which is so fascinating to me because I think probably what happens in a deal like that is that Chevron come out on top. Chevron come out of it with a huge amount of cash to build a multi-decade gas-fired power station which will be a source of demand for the product they supply. [00:25:40] Ketan Joshi: And so all they have to do is find something else that consumes electrical energy. You know, uh, let's just say the AI bubble pops and Microsoft is like, "I don't know what we're gonna do with this data center." You know? It's just total, total nonsense. Everyone loses money. Chevron does not lose money. [00:25:53] Ketan Joshi: Chevron comes out of that in a, with a very, very good position because they have a very large machine sitting there that, [00:26:00] uh, just needs to burn gas, the gas that Chevron will sell to it. And there will be something that consumes el- electricity, right? Like if Households electrify, if cars electrify, if there's some other industry, I don't know, like quantum, you know, that consumes a lot of energy that comes along, they're fine. [00:26:16] Ketan Joshi: And so they're basically getting a massive infrastructure build-out. And I think it's the same story across different fossil fuel companies, where they're getting a massive infrastructure build-out of gas-fired power. In the US, there's a lot of pipelines and, um, processing facilities as well. They're just getting all this capital as like, you know, table scraps from the AI boom and all the money that's flying around in circular ways, and that is just getting funneled into the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure that will last decades, even if the data center boom itself fades. [00:26:46] Ketan Joshi: You end up with this very long-lasting infrastructure. And so when I think about who's making money, I mean, it's pretty clear that, you know, in terms of the tech companies and the, like, chip manufacturers and the data center, uh, like the real estate [00:27:00] game around like, uh- Mm-hmm ... you know, blocking off, like, the land and things like that, there's a lot of people making a fair amount of money who I think are just gonna exit that whole scenario before the music stops and, and, and just go and live on an island somewhere or something. [00:27:13] Ketan Joshi: They probably make a fair amount of money as well. But the fossil fuel industry will probably, from what I can see, end up much more of a beneficiary of this than the renewable energy industry, for instance, who struggle to link themselves to, like, tech companies in the same way that fossil fuel companies do because a gas-fired power station can offer the service of like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, you wanna get online in six months, so, you know, we can provide that," whereas a, a solar and battery provider kind of struggles to, to have the same selling point. [00:27:44] Alix: And I think that speed question of so these fossil fuel companies can get their stuff online, like the worst version is possible faster than the best version- Yeah. ... feels like an important, important part of this. But there's also... Do [00:28:00] you see that narrative of it's temporary, don't worry, it'll eventually be renewable ch-changing? [00:28:05] Alix: And like, h- I mean, how do you, from a data perspective, like- Can it change given the growth and speed? [00:28:13] Ketan Joshi: A few things I see. So, so what happens, first of all, is like, um, a company will build a gas-fired power station and then kind of just slap like a renewable energy facility on there as a potential in the future. [00:28:23] Ketan Joshi: There's a few Australian projects that do this, particularly in the Outback, like in the Northern Territory. They'll just kind of be like, "Oh, you know, yeah, yeah, we're building a gas plant now, but i- in two years we'll build a solar farm." And people just go, "Okay, great." I, I, I find it so shocking that it just... [00:28:38] Ketan Joshi: people just get so disarmed by that, because we know the danger of empty promise as a climate delay tactic, and it works so well, and it shouldn't. Like, it really shouldn't. The other one I've seen more and more, um, I was just reading moments ago, uh, about a project that is doing this, is what they do is they build a gas plant, or they propose a very large gas plant, and then they say, [00:29:00] "We'll make it run on hydrogen," which is basically a, a, a sort of alternative fuel that you can produce from fossil fuels or from renewables, but it's very expensive and it's very complicated, and you can't really blend it very well with, like, methane. [00:29:13] Ketan Joshi: And so it just doesn't work in practice, basically, right? It's been like the empty promise tool of someone building fossil fuels for a while now. And so one thing I struggle with a fair amount is when a company says, "Oh, this is just transitional. Like, don't worry, we'll clean ourselves up in a few years." [00:29:32] Ketan Joshi: First of all, I struggle to explain to I think very warm and generous people who want to believe that they're being sincere that they need to be more cynical and, and ask for proof and ask for legislation that locks them, binds them to that. And as soon as that legislation occurs, you know, the companies will be like, "No, no, no. [00:29:50] Ketan Joshi: How dare you? You know, we didn't mean it. Like, you can't hold us to that promise." And one of the consequences of that is that now we're seeing in legislation in different parts of the world, [00:30:00] primarily in Australia and in Ireland, legislation that allows for pollution in the first sort of six to seven years and then says, "We'll deal with cleaning it up in kind of half a decade or a bit longer." [00:30:13] Ketan Joshi: So in Ireland they call it a glide path, which is like, "Yeah, yeah, we know that you can't... You know, it's very hard to build renewable straight away, so you can build a few gas-fired power stations in, like, now, and then we- you can deal with it later." And it just... It'll get, like, you know, advertised to the public as, like, a, a clean energy mandate or something, but then you open up the document and it's just like, "Yeah, yeah, you've got eight years to do it." [00:30:35] Alix: It's hard to watch these narrative tactics work over and over again, and hard to watch a very cynical industry get very good at, um, navigating the now and kind of waiting for the later when, like, all this stuff, um... Like, I think it's so wild that they're not actually adjusting climate commitments and then just kind of presuming that we'll figure it out, or even if we don't figure it out, people won't have a choice but to, like, forgive us. [00:30:59] Alix: Um, and [00:31:00] there's something really cavalier and gross about that. I mean, I, I do wonder, like, if we take this trajectory, which is only fast growing and growing in the speed with which it's growing um, of the build-out of these things, and you kind of take that trend line, I mean, like, what happens do you think? [00:31:22] Ketan Joshi: The situation we're in now seemed absurd three or four years ago. Like, if you'd kind of drawn the line on the, on the chart in front of me, I would've just been like, "I don't think so," you know? Like, that's... That line is too steep. It's not reasonable. I- it doesn't seem like- Yeah ... they can even... How would they even cause that much emissions, right? [00:31:40] Ketan Joshi: Like, that's, that's crazy. But it's happened, right? That's a measured reality, uh, or at least an approximated measured reality of what's going on for these companies. And so I try not to get too complacent about that. I think that their intent Their goal is to make that line go up and, you know, a- a- as a, as a way [00:32:00] through to get to whatever their actual goals are in terms of operating generative AI, AGI, uh, like artificial general intelligence, w- the scaling laws, like whatever's going on in their brains. [00:32:10] Ketan Joshi: The material reality is that they just want more and more energy, and so they're driven by that, and they have a lot of money to enact it, and they have a lot of lobbying power to, to remove regulations that might stop it. If no one stopped them, if there was no opposition to data centers or no regulations, they would probably get what they want. [00:32:27] Ketan Joshi: There are some physical constraints, particularly with gas. Like gas turbines are just getting more and more expensive, and the bits that go into them are also hard to manufacture. And like SpaceX, for instance, just announced a, a, a gas turbine blade manufacturing facility and so you can see already the physical constraints of just fossil fuel infrastructure starting to bite a little bit. [00:32:52] Ketan Joshi: That is the only thing I can think of that will be like a natural limiter on the growth of some of these fossil fuel projects. The rest of it, I think [00:33:00] that fossil fuels have like multi-decade lobbying infrastructure that they can call on. I think that the tech companies have a lot of influence and money, so with no action from people who are concerned about it and, and you know, like activist groups and, um, all of that, you know, uh, a- as you know, like the whole like ecosystem of people who, who criticize and oppose this, then it's pretty bad. [00:33:22] Alix: That's such an interesting example of SpaceX actually having to kind of reverse engineer a supply chain for something so connected to f- fossil fuel driven energy production. But they are literally becoming energy companies in a way that feels, I don't know, new. Like do you think of them as conceptualizing themselves as energy companies or like are we starting to see them- Well- [00:33:46] Alix: as energy companies? [00:33:46] Ketan Joshi: Yeah. There's another really nice example of that. Um, S- SoftBank Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank, is building the 9.2 gigawatt Ports Pike Data Center in Ohio and just to be [00:34:00] explicit, 9.2 gigawatts for a gas plant will be the single largest gas power station ever created or built in human history, regardless of country or industry. [00:34:09] Ketan Joshi: The next biggest is Four. That is a gas- Four ... processing facility in, um, Saudi Arabia. Yeah. It's [00:34:15] Alix: almost two and a half order magnitude jump from the next largest- Wow. [00:34:21] Ketan Joshi: That is the plan, right? Like, that is the intention. Uh, and that is, uh... SoftBank, you know, is like this massive, like, investment firm, right? Um, but now the-- You go to the website for that project, and it is barely about the data center. [00:34:35] Ketan Joshi: It's mostly about this gas-fired power station. It is the biggest piece of infrastructure. Nvidia is supplying the chips, um, for that facility and, you know, at some point it becomes really hard to come up with metaphors or comparisons because it's just like, like that is-- like the grid emissions from that facility is Nigeria's entire power grid emissions, right? [00:34:58] Ketan Joshi: Like country of how many [00:35:00] m- many million people. It's not just that they're becoming energy companies, they're becoming almost like a new form of energy company that has this kind of like filthy impatience that's not part of like, you know, a grid or a project or a mission that society agrees with. Not that energy companies have traditionally always been like that, but at least they've kind of been limited by regula- like a utility, for instance, has been limited by regulation and has to generally at least somewhat serve, you know, the needs of people in their homes and the, and the society like industry. [00:35:34] Ketan Joshi: Whereas these are kind of just becoming like this weird new type of energy company that is doing this very weird new type of thing [00:35:43] Alix: Filthy impatience. This is such a good expression. Um, I, yeah, I love that. I mean, that makes me wonder too about, um... I know you have thoughts on the role of climate orgs right now, so like nonprofits that have been focused for years on, [00:36:00] you know, supporting renewables, supporting a green transition, um, advocating against fossil fuel companies and these kinds of things. [00:36:07] Alix: Are, are they adapting in this moment to engage in this tech world, um, these new types of companies? Like, how are they engaging vis-à-vis AI, and do you think they're doing the right thing? [00:36:20] Ketan Joshi: There is actually quite a, quite a mix of views, right? Uh, and I think that there has been an instinct, particularly since 2024, to downplay or dismiss the threat here. [00:36:30] Ketan Joshi: And, uh, particularly because data centers are not fossil fuel infrastructure inherently, they're just, uh, machines that consume electricity. And so there was a kind of a feeling of like, well, this is just electric infrastructure, you know. It's stuff that can run on renewable energy hypothetically, you know, what's the problem? [00:36:46] Ketan Joshi: There's also a lot of headspace around that sort of says renewables are cheap, and because they're cheap, we don't have to act to ensure that they're the thing that gets built because the default from a capitalist, you know, who is deciding what to build will choose the [00:37:00] cheapest thing. And of course, in reality, they're not rational. [00:37:03] Ketan Joshi: Like, they don't re- even really care that much about, like, money, like, having the lowest costs because they see the profitability of a data center is so absurdly high. Who gives a crap what the cheapest, uh, energy source is, right? Like, you can just build whatever the hell you want, and you could build, like, expensive stuff. [00:37:17] Ketan Joshi: And so da- data centers as a threat butts up against some parts of belief in the climate movement, right? Because, you know, this feeling of like, things are just getting better and, and technology is really solving the day, then why should data centers be a threat if renewable energy is kind of the cheap default now in per- perpetuity? [00:37:38] Ketan Joshi: And that is just not what's happening. And I think something that has really changed in the past half year or kind of, I guess, in 2026, has been the gas build-out specifically, which I think is just a really stark, direct, clear illustration that, like, a lot of these companies just do not give a crap about- Mm-hmm [00:37:54] Ketan Joshi: what they build or, or what... Just whatever gets them built fastest is what they're gonna build, and a lot of that [00:38:00] in, in, a lot of instances of that is gas. And so I think that has convinced a lot of people to worry a bit more about this- Yeah ... which I really love, and I f- felt, I would say, uh, a lot more support, um, for the position of like treat this as a rising problem to prevent. [00:38:16] Ketan Joshi: I think a lot of people, you know, campaigners in particular who work on very unloved issues like plastics and like the water consumption of the fossil fuel industry or like logging and nature protection have felt frustration in the past sort of few months. Uh, they feel like data centers and AI are sucking the oxygen from, um, the attention that is being paid to their campaigns And I think they're absolutely right. [00:38:39] Ketan Joshi: Like, it has... I- it's, it's just one of those things where, you know, the, the, the thing people focus on ebbs and flows and fluctuates, and we just came out of, like, the 2019, 2021 era of, like, everything was about climate and people cared so much about climate, and then it just popped. You know, it just, like, disappeared. [00:38:55] Ketan Joshi: Yeah. And it was a very jarring and surprising feeling. And, [00:39:00] you know, you would've noticed, I mean, I guess throughout this conversation but also, you know, through my work, uh, I really work hard to link it always back to climate as a threat, um, and a lot of the stories that have been ongoing in climate for many, many years. [00:39:14] Ketan Joshi: And I think I see it all pa- as part of a project to bring people back to being concerned about the atmosphere and our safety and the safety of the energy system and, you know, protecting the people around us. You probably won't see me talk a lot about, like- You know, data centers should be powered by renewables because it's cheap. [00:39:34] Ketan Joshi: Because I don't care, like, about the finances of Microsoft and, like, I, I care about having a safe world, you know, like having a, uh, having a situation where I can experience climate impacts that are less bad than they, than they could be. Um, and so this is really how I put it when I talk to my friends and colleagues in the climate movement who I've been working with for, for a long time. [00:39:58] Ketan Joshi: And I think many of them are starting to really come [00:40:00] around, not to, like, hating data centers per se. It's still a really nuanced set of views around, like, oh, you know, we should have regulation, we should have a moratorium. People have really different positions. But a lot of them are coming around to, I think, feeling a more innate sense of distrust when a company says, "Oh, no, we're promising to build a solar farm in two years." [00:40:19] Ketan Joshi: I feel, like, this flinch, you know, when I see people respond to that, and I'm just like, "Great. That's a good flinch." You know? "I think you should keep that." [00:40:29] Alix: Is there, like, a juicy fact figure kind of thing that you feel like people should take away from this so when they're talking to friends or they're- Hmm [00:40:38] Alix: like, trying to have a conversation about this, um, that they can use it to sort of crack open good conversation about what we're facing? [00:40:45] Ketan Joshi: Yeah. The one, the one that I always c- go back to, and I mentioned it just before, is that power station that has Nigeria-sized emissions because this is a weird, absurd new thing. [00:40:58] Ketan Joshi: Netflix never [00:41:00] required Nigeria-sized power stations to run, nor did, like, my online gaming, you know, nor did, like, the video calls that we did during COVID. Data centers and infrastructure used to be criticizable but not an entirely weird, absurd, new threat the size of countries. And I think that really lands it for people because they know... [00:41:24] Ketan Joshi: That, that tells you not just the scale of the threat and why it's a threat, but also it's new, it's weird, and we're all very surprised and scared by, like, at the scale of, of what is being proposed, and that really tells people there's something strange about making your kid's birthday party flyer with this software. [00:41:46] Ketan Joshi: It doesn't feel strange at the time. It feels fine. Like, it feels like any other website that you, that you prompt and get, get something back from. But the infrastructure underlying it is, is very, very unusual. And I think feel that [00:42:00] weirdness and connect with it because it's, it's, it's, it's the thing that they hide, right? [00:42:03] Ketan Joshi: Which is why Apple or, you know, or Microsoft or who- whomever are burying the real numbers right in the back of the footnotes of the other report because the realness of it is they... something they don't want you to know. So there's lots of like little, you know, numbers that you can kind of have of like, okay, prompting this much does X, Y, and Z. [00:42:21] Ketan Joshi: But I always just go straight back to the infrastructure and just go, okay, well these things just didn't exist for the way that we used to live on the digital... in, in, like have digital existences, and it feels gross and bad to have our digital existence suddenly become reliant on something so harmful. I like the internet. [00:42:39] Ketan Joshi: I like technology quite a lot. Um, I always have, you know, since I was a little kid, and I want it to, I want it to run on stuff that isn't harmful. I want it to run on things that I can know at least is, you know, has been minimized or has been built in a smart way and in an efficient way, and that is just so the exact opposite of what's happening. [00:42:58] Ketan Joshi: So yeah, [00:43:00] I, you know, I... if you follow me online, you can find plenty of those little statistics that I, that I share quite regularly, or you can contact me and, and, and get, um... I will happily provide you with little bits and pieces you can talk about. There's a great researcher, um, Zeke Hausfather. He's like a climate, climate, um, researcher, and he's like a heavy Claude user. [00:43:20] Ketan Joshi: You know, he sort of uses it for like coding his websites and creating data visualizations and stuff like that. And he put it... He did this really great post where he's, he's like, "I wonder how much energy this consumes." And what he found is that it's the equivalent of having two refrigerators' worth of energy consumption extra per year. [00:43:38] Ketan Joshi: So his use of like a software program is the same in terms of new additional energy as him buying two extra household fridges and running them constantly for the year. Now, imagine that you had to purchase Claude as a single unit, right? So you had to buy two fridges, two fridge-sized [00:44:00] units, Claude boxes in your home that consumed that much energy You would feel so weird and absurd about it. [00:44:07] Ketan Joshi: You would be like, "I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna buy that so I can, you know, make my websites quicker." And that is just like the difference between physicality and our own disconnection because I strongly suspect that most people aren't savvy enough to do the calculations that Zeke did and find out about the energy consumption. [00:44:26] Ketan Joshi: Anthropic, for instance, discloses nothing, right? Like, it does not tell you how much the entire kind of company consumes in terms of energy. It doesn't tell you how much energy you use during a single session, doesn't put it in context. So they hide all these things for a reason. [00:44:43] Alix: Thanks so much to Ketan for helping us see through the fog on this one. It's wild how these companies keep telling us it's just temporary or that AI will help solve the very problem it's causing when the numbers clearly show these data centers are doing more harm than good. Ketan said we need to [00:45:00] demand more from these companies, and as data centers continue to show up in politicians' talking points this November, the polls are one place we can have a say. [00:45:08] Alix: But this relentless push for inevitability paired with promises that don't hold up is a breeding ground for distrust. But what happens when that distrust turns into anger? And what does it look like when people start pushing back? Next week, we'll meet Anthony Ralphs, a San Diego resident who went viral after showing up at a city council meeting in a full-on Darth Vader costume to mock Flock, the surveillance camera company his city relies on. [00:45:36] Alix: We'll hear what led him to take this pretty unconventional approach and where it's gotten him. We then talk to Sarah Hamid of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who helps communities push their local governments to cancel surveillance contracts. Together, they'll show us how backlash is starting to shape local races and why everyone has a techno politics when the technology in our pockets, homes, and communities serves [00:46:00] those in power more than it serves us. [00:46:03] Alix: We're spending all of October on who gets to shape the future, and that conversation keeps going in the Maybe Collective, where you can stay in conversation with other listeners of the podcast. Uh, the link to join is in our show notes. As always, you can catch up on this month's episodes wherever you get your podcasts or watch full episodes on our YouTube channel. [00:46:21] Alix: Thanks to the podcast team, Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout, for all their work making this podcast happen every week, and we will see you next time.