Projected Growth In Electricity Demand

An article in the September 30 edition of the Wall Street Journal goes into some of the generalities of what is likely to be a huge demand crunch in electrical power brought about by the construction of AGI data centers in the US. According to the article Goldman Sachs predicts that 47 gigawatts of power production will be needed just to supply the new data centers expected to be on-line by 2030. Before expanding the infrastructure required to supply the increased demand, power companies want assurance that the volumes and prices thereof will be guaranteed, something the data center mavens don't wish to do. 

The US government, through the Inflation Reduction Act and other programs, is deeply involved in subsidizing future electrical production, especially via tax credits. This is a Whig operation. Just as the early 19th century Whigs and their "American System" used federal income, mostly tariffs and land sales, to reward their cronies, the current federal government is operating in a similar fashion. No one can know or predict if the value produced by the tech business is worth the expense or even necessary at all. Furthermore, if humongous data centers are to be the key to the continued existence of the Yankee culture and economic growth shouldn't it be profitable for them to be privately financed? If a private interest needs huge amounts of power to operate its business shouldn't it also expect to construct a generating station of its own nearby? Regulated utilities aren't meant to feed huge percentages of their output to single customers. Supposedly private solar and wind power facilities are able to sell excess power to the utility that supplies them. Couldn't the data centers do so as well?  

Ultimately, as Paul Feyerabend pointed out:    “In a democracy scientific institutions, research programmes, and suggestions must therefore be subjected to public control, there must be a separation of state and science just as there is a separation between state and religious institutions, and science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality.”

Complicating the situation is the simultaneous effort to eliminate hydrocarbon based power production in favor of "renewables". As projected, all hydrocarbon based generation will be replaced with wind and solar in a relatively short period of time.

As the West slithers toward a socialism run by the elites and financed by the proles, it resembles nothing so much as the great failed Soviet "5 Year Plans" that were so ridiculed by the Cold War Yankees.