The massive data center buildout happening across the country is driving up energy prices for local communities, creating shortages and strains as AI companies hammer the grid with demand. To solve that without telling tech companies to get bent (not that we should dismiss that option), we need to rapidly increase the available energy supply, and Donald Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright has just the way to do it, according to a report from Bloomberg: use backup generators from Walmart.
Speaking Tuesday at the North American Gas Forum in Washington, Wright suggested that running existing generators available at big-box stores, data centers, and other industrial facilities could add up to 35 nuclear power plants’ worth of electricity. “We’re going to unleash that 35 gigawatts of capacity that sits there today,” he told the audience of likely extremely excited executives who had their eyes turn to dollar signs at the thought of filling up these typically gas-powered generators and running them 24/7.
In Wright’s telling, the energy demands of the ongoing AI data center expansion can be met with already existing generators. That solution, which hadn’t been pursued in the past for a multitude of reasons that would ultimately lead a person to conclude that it’s a bad idea, would have run into obstacles in the past, like emissions standards and environmental concerns. But that’s not really a thing under the Trump administration, which has cut the red tape on rules that keep communities safe from pollution, so why not just run a gas-guzzling generator for months on end? Sure, they emit dangerously high levels of particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and other contaminants linked to respiratory issues, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer risk. But if you just choose to ignore it, then it’s not really a hurdle.
“When people say, ‘AI is going to drive up my price of electricity,’ it’s actually the opposite,” Wright said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “The way to get electricity prices down is to produce more electricity,” apparently unaware that you can do that simply out of obligation to your citizenry to provide cheap and reliable energy, rather than waiting for multibillion-dollar corporations to come and squeeze you for every drop of electricity you have while leaving others with the bill.
This whole generator idea has apparently been on Wright’s mind for a bit. Last month, he appeared on Fox News and floated the same idea of tapping into Walmart’s backup systems to quickly ramp up electricity production. “We will take backup generators already at data centers or behind the back of a Walmart and bring those on when we need extra electricity production,” he told host Bret Baier.
No word on whether Walmart or anyone else has volunteered to give up their emergency backup generators to run full-time so a bunch of GPUs can spit out a 10-second clip of Mario throwing a banana peel at a cop.
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