For the past two decades, America has accomplished a minor miracle. Despite growth in our population, the size of our homes, the number of electronic devices we own, and more, electricity demand in the United States has remained stable. That’s a remarkable accomplishment and a testament to the impacts of hard-won gains in energy efficiency. 

In a world of stable electricity demand, the rapid growth of renewable energy technologies lends hope to the idea that wind and solar can replace the dirtiest and most dangerous power plants, giving Americans today, and generations to come, the opportunity to live healthier and more enriching lives.

Unfortunately, there are signs that the nation is about to make a very serious wrong turn.

After nearly two decades of stability, demand for electricity is spiking. In 2023, federal regulators forecast that the demand for electricity will grow nearly 5 percent over the next five years, which is likely an underestimate. A surge in the construction of energy-intensive data centers, along with new manufacturing and industrial facilities, is driving the projected growth.

Energy-hungry data centers are putting America’s renewable energy future at risk

Data centers already make up roughly 2.5 percent of total U.S. electricity demand, according to analysis from Boston Consulting Group — but exploding demand for artificial intelligence (AI) could drive that to 7.5 percent by 2030. This energy growth will likely be concentrated in certain regions. And it comes at a time when we are already using more electricity to replace the use of fossil fuels in our vehicles and homes. 

Power-hungry data centers are being proposed and built at breakneck pace to meet the data processing needs to enable cloud computing, telecommunications, digitization and AI. Already the boom in construction of these facilities has undermined America’s ability to move off dirty and dangerous energy sources, such as coal, gas and nuclear. 

Last week, Constellation Energy announced intentions to reopen a nuclear reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, under an agreement to sell the power to Microsoft, which aims to offset the power use of data centers with zero carbon electricity. 

Some see this as a positive development. If Microsoft or other tech companies can power their data centers without fossil fuels, what’s the problem?

The impending restart of Three Mile Island is, however, an indicator of two big problems. The first is that nuclear energy is an inherently dangerous technology that presents serious environmental and public health risks at all stages of its development. From mining and transporting uranium, to the risk of an accident or terrorist attack on a plant, to the disposal of the radioactive waste that remains hazardous for tens of thousands of years, nuclear poses very real risks to our health and the planet that sustains us. Powering the AI boom with nuclear energy just doesn’t make sense.

The second problem is that it illustrates the extreme lengths to which tech companies, utilities and power generators will go to fuel their ambitions – including expansion of fossil fuel power plants. 

Polluting coal plants are already having their lives extended to fuel AI and cloud computing. PJM, the operator of the mid-Atlantic states’ electric grid, has asked the owner of two coal plants in Maryland to stay open three years longer than had been planned because of rising demand attributed to data centers.

New gas-powered plants are being proposed to meet increased demand as well. Recently, Georgia Power, secured a preliminary settlement plan with state regulators to fast-track 1,400 megawatts of new gas-fired power plants in the next three years, in order to meet new projected demand for electricity. Gas, which often leaks into our air during drilling and transport, consists mostly of methane, a powerful global warming pollutant.

A watershed moment for America’s renewable energy future

The revival of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant is a watershed moment that shows that we’re headed rapidly in the wrong direction. Where we should be limiting energy use and using renewables to replace fossil fuels (which we’ve been doing, though not fast enough, for the last decade), we’re now reviving old nuclear and fossil plants.

Whatever your thoughts on the prospects of AI to solve societal problems, bringing dangerous and dirty nuclear reactors back online, keeping old coal plants open longer, and building new gas plants, is a bad idea.

The record-levels of renewable energy generation coming online today need to replace dirty and dangerous forms of energy, not supplement them. After all, the science is clear: To avert the worst impacts of global warming, the world needs to dramatically curtail fossil fuel use by 2050, and the sooner the better. 

The proposed reopening of Three Mile Island is a clarion call that we must chart a different course. We need to stop accepting increased energy demand as a given and start treating it as a choice. In fact, we need to consume less energy overall. We need more energy conservation. And given that every electron of electricity we produce has some environmental impact, given the challenges our natural world faces, we need to double down on efforts to make sure we use all the energy we produce as wisely as possible. 

Bottom-line, America needs to get to a future powered by 100% renewable energy sources as quickly as possible. We can’t afford to allow Big Tech, the utility companies, or some other new industry and the energy-intensive technology it may invent in the future, to blow us off course.

It’s possible that AI will deliver tremendous societal benefits. It’s just as possible that it will fail to live up to the hype – or even cause societal harm. But while AI brings many questions, one thing we know for certain is that rapidly ramping up energy consumption for AI will make it harder to retire fossil fuels, open the door to dodgy energy sources like nuclear, and threaten our efforts to address climate change. That’s a risk we can’t afford to take.

If data centers are to be part of our energy infrastructure, we must ensure they use energy and water as efficiently as possible, run on renewable energy and are gentle on the overall electric grid. 

But most importantly, we must not allow AI or any other to-be-dreamt-of energy use in the future, to divert us from the most important task of the day, which is getting off of fossil fuels.