---

---

Mark Zuckerberg said this week that Meta, the parent company of Fakebook, Instagam, and Wazzup, has found a way to juice advertising revenues even more than it already had. When you are one of the wealthiest people in human history, naturally, you want more, more, more! His insatiable greed has inspired him to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build a new AI campus he claims will be nearly as big as Manhattan. Hosanna! What a wonderful world it will be; what a glorious time to be free!!

According to The Guardian, the first multi-gigawatt data center will be called Prometheus and is expected to become operational in 2026. A second supercalifragilisticexpialidocious data center will be a 5 gigawatt monstrosity called Hyperion that’s almost as big as Zuckerberg’s ego. According to industry publication SemiAnalysis, Meta was on track to be the first AI lab to bring a gigawatt-plus supercluster online. Oh, the rapture.

What is up with these tech bros? Elon Musk has Colossus, Zuck will have Prometheus and Hyperion. If we didn’t know better, we would say those two and Bezos are locked in little more than a dick-measuring contest. It might be funny if they were not gaming the system to limit their tax liability and supporting members of Congress who want to put disabled people to work picking crops in order to qualify for Medicare. None of them seems to have a shred of human decency or concern for their fellow passengers on Spaceship Earth. A pox on all their houses!

Zuckerberg said the cost of these new data centers would be swiftly offset by increases in advertising revenues. Last year, the company grossed $165 billion. Its newest division, known as Superintelligence Labs, will soak up even more ad revenue from the Meta AI app, image-to-video ad tools, and smart glasses. Of course, we could short circuit those plans by not using the Meta app, image-to-video ad tools, or smart glasses, but that’s not going to happen. We can’t afford groceries or a down payment on a home, but now, thanks to the brain of Zuckerberg, we can shop till we drop 24 hours a day. What a country. What a world.

Meta has already raised its 2025 capital expenditure predictions to as much as $72 billion in order not to be left behind by OpenAI, xAI, and Google.

Who Will Pay For The Energy For Data Centers?

When it comes to deciding who will pay for the grid upgrades needed to power these gigantic data centers, Zuckerberg, of course, has nothing to say. No doubt he thinks a half dozen nuclear or methane-fired power plants will just magically appear when needed — facilities that ordinary utility customers will pay for over the next 30 to 40 years while he continues to funnel billions into his overstuffed pockets.

According to a report released today by MeteoMatics, “the pressure that comes with powering AI is now mixing with pressure from increasing events like heatwaves, causing significant strain from both the business and consumer sector for grids.” The report says 65 percent of energy leaders are concerned about their ability to meet the increase in energy demand.

These data center operators are slick. They are demanding that utility companies and grid operators step up to the plate to meet their expected needs — which could require billions in commitments to new generating facilities and transmission lines — but they want to hedge their bets, in case the AI craze doesn’t happen the way they think it will. It’s a classic “heads we win, tails you lose” situation that could put ratepayers on the hook for tens of billions of dollars worth of new electricity infrastructure upgrades.

Ohio PUC Sets New Policy For Data Centers

This week, the Ohio Public Utilities Commission, in a 99 page unanimous decision. said data enter operators had to commit to paying for at least 85 percent of the upgrades they say they will need, even if the demand they expect doesn’t materialize.

In an email to CleanTechnica, Inside Climate News reported that the case before the Ohio PUC consumed more than a year of hearings and public comment, with American Electric Power, based in Columbus, Ohio, claiming the data center operators like Google and Meta want a get out of jail free card that would allow them to walk away without penalty if they wanted to.

In its decision, the Ohio PUC created a new rate structure for data centers, based on its finding that they “pose a different type of risk,” as well as an increased amount of risk. Dan Gearino of ICN said the new policy “probably is a win for consumers … and it’s a loss for data centers, since the commission rejected an alternative plan from the companies along with the companies’ main arguments.”

The new rate structure applies only to new data centers with a peak demand of at least 25 megawatts. If a data center is already built or already has an agreement with AEP to receive power, this policy doesn’t apply. Under the new rule, data centers will need to pay for at least 85 percent of the energy they sign up to use, even if they end up using less. That provision helps to cover the costs of building infrastructure to serve the new development and protects other ratepayers from having to shoulder an extra burden.

The requirements would last for 12 years in a typical example, which would include a four-year ramp up to full capacity. After that, the contract between AEP and the data center would automatically continue unless either side gives three years’ notice of an intent to terminate. The policy also allows for a data center to immediately end the contract after eight years by paying an exit fee equivalent to three years of electricity use.

“I think this is an improvement on the status quo,” Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, told ICN. But he thinks consumer protections should be even stronger. “My view is that the data centers are underpaying,” he said, because data centers are going to require grid upgrades that are paid for by all of AEP’s Ohio customer base. Many of those costs will be paid by data centers themselves since they will be major electricity consumers, but there is nothing in the new rules specifying that data centers must cover all of the costs needed to serve them.

Ideally, Gearino said, the regulations mean some of the most speculative data center plans will never reach the stage of making a power agreement with the utility. That, in turn, will make it easier for AEP to plan for its future needs.

A Moratorium

AEP put a moratorium on new data center connections in 2023, when companies already in the process of building data centers in its area said they would need 5,000 megawatts of electricity generating capacity by 2030 — more than the current peak demand of the entire Columbus metro area. In addition, the utility says it received inquiries about whether it could provide an additional 30,000 megawatts of electricity — a number larger that the total demand for the entire New England region.

Lucas Fykes, director of energy policy for the Data Center Coalition, a membership organization for the data center industry, told ICN in an email his group was disappointed with the Ohio ruling. “The decision is a stark departure from solutions enacted in other key data center markets and, more consequentially, is a deviation from the long established, sound rate making principles that have carried both Ohio and the nation through periods of electricity demand growth and flat demand,” Ohio has now joined Indiana in having similar approaches to data center policy, and both states did so in response to requests from AEP subsidiaries.

Suzanne Glatz, an energy policy consultant in Pennsylvania, told ICN the Ohio and Indiana policies can be replicated elsewhere because they provide clear consumer benefits but remain within the range of what many businesses would view as reasonable. “The states that are facing [data center development] will be looking at what Ohio has done and what’s happened in Indiana, and will figure out what fits and what elements make the most sense,” she said.

“We could end up all paying an awful lot more for our electricity if it’s not done well, and those costs might be also more unevenly spread,” she said. “The other risk is … reliability, because if we don’t do this right, and we don’t recognize where data centers are going to be developed, we could be facing a mismatch of where the generation and transmission are needed versus where the [demand] is.”

Demand Bigger Than Expected

One of the big questions about the current boom is how large it will be. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory issued a report in December showing huge differences in forecasts for data center electricity demand, which indicates a lot of uncertainty. On the high side, forecasters have said data centers may consume more than 400 terawatt-hours by 2030 — nearly 10 percent of all the electricity generated in the United States last year.

Gearino said the forecasts for data center power keep growing, “which suggests the actual numbers in 2030 may be a lot higher than even the highest forecasts.” And all so Mark Zuckerberg can get richer and richer selling ads for things we don’t need. It is at times like this that we should be paying more attention to the writing of Lloyd Alter and his thoughts on sufficiency. Are there any rational limits on the growth of digital technology? If so, they are not yet apparent.

If somebody said we needed 30,000 megawatts of new generating capacity to charge electric cars, people would be trooping up Main Streets all across America carrying torches pitchforks. But because it is for AI, there is not a peep of protest. I find that curious.