8 comments
“Listen, we understand that you are working on a regulation with some teeth which will have an actual impact on what we do. Couldn’t we instead waste a decade compiling useless data before passing a useless law.”
I think I will use my usual assessment criteria on this one. If the industry you are regulating lobbies are unhappy about your law project, you are probably doing something very right.
The bit about smaller facilities being exempted in the current proposals does seem like a genuine issue and a great way to end up with hundreds of unregulated inefficient small data centers exploiting loopholes and causing all sorts of issues.
> Wasting no time, the Pact makes sure to get the point across in its introduction that energy demand from air conditioning and cooling systems is rising faster than that from AI, but claims the sheer speed of datacenter growth and the difficulty in obtaining robust data is "troubling policy makers and leading to unhelpful speculation."
Air conditioning keeps people from dying of heat stroke and AI lets people generate pictures of Garfield with big naturals holding an AR-15.
As they say there isn’t a single civilisation that has prospered by spending less energy.
Who is "they"?
In the EU, total energy consumption peaked ~20 years ago and has steadily fallen since then.
In the US, total energy consumption plateaued ~20 years ago. Per-capita it has fallen.
In Japan total energy consumption peaked, you guessed it, ~20 years ago.
I assert that for India and China as their per-capita consumption reaches a level somewhere between that of the US and EU, total energy consumption will plateau. China is almost there; India has some time yet to go.
So civilisations that are in decline had a peak of energy consumption a couple of decades ago? Whilst civilisations that are progressing keep using more energy? Are you sure this helps your argument?
I think there also isn't a single (known) civilization that has used this much either.
IMO we're in uncharted territory.
That was true of every single civilisation before ours.