Gotta love how all the companies' platitudes about sustainability become ludicrous as they begin burning natural gas at prodigious scales. But don't worry, "AI will solve climate change" so we can just pump extra CO2 now, right guys?
I am deeply, deeply cynical and honestly angry about these companies and their self-righteous protestations of being ethical, or public benefit corporations or whatever. Anthropic is benefiting from xAI's Memphis data center that is violating (previous, not anymore!) EPA standards, causing disproportionate impacts to nearby African-American communities. All the while, Ants appear to be floating on some higher effective altruist / B-corp plane. The little people and their petty concerns are just bumps on the road to RSI and ASI after all.
I think your anger would be better placed with the institutional barriers to building clean energy in America that prevent these infrastructure companies from doing the right thing
transmission via HVDC is extremely difficult to build due to land permitting and right of way laws
grid interconnections take 5+ years just to get approved, let alone built
only 2 nuclear power plants have been built since 1978, each taking over 10 years
As much as I wish it were different I think this would be the outcome under any administration. Natural gas in the USA is just stupidly cheap inflation adjusted, is energy dense, power plants require few land resources, pipeline infrastructure exists, robust and deep supply chain, etc. I don't hold much hope of the USA kicking the habit as it is such a competitive advantage. If we don't burn it locally it will be exported at a huge margin for geopolitical advantage. 1/3 of the CO2 reductions in the US power sector are due to renewables, 2/3 are from natural gas. Renewables would need to be backed up by additional gas capacity, although the average capacity factor would be reduced with a more robust renewable build out.
The whole idea that a solar panel needs to be backed up by gas is absolutely asinine. We live in a capitalist society if there is so much excess power in the day and little power during the night then that means there is money to be made by storing that energy then doing arbitrage with daytime vs nighttime rates.
Build the solar panels and the battery will come because there is serious money to be made as the differential increases.
Are these companies expending any of their lobbying efforts or funds on this problem? Or are they just going to the easiest option? I'm not shedding any tears for the AI companies and their infra challenges. They're the ones driving a huge delta increase in energy use and emissions this coming decade, so their actions merit scrutiny and they are responsible for their actions and the resulting emissions that we will all suffer from. If I had my way, we'd stack an enormous carbon tax on all of them to force their hand.
Look, these companies are the ones selling a story of being benevolent (notwithstanding AI killing us all or putting everyone out of a job). And Anthropic is explicitly a B-corp. How does any of that square with taking any compute they can at any environmental cost?
> transmission via HVDC is extremely difficult to build due to land permitting and right of way laws
It’s also really expensive due to the equipment that needs to be in place at either end of the HVDC link. Switching HVDC current is challenging and expensive, the stations at each end are hundreds of millions of dollars and around an order of magnitude more expensive than AC transmission stations. If you’re operating on the same grid frequency, it’s almost invariably more economic to run AC transmission lines. Voltage drop can be dealt with by transformers stepping up the dropped voltage periodically.
Ah yes, institutional barriers like the federal government paying companies to cancel their existing renewable projects that are fully funded and investing in fossil fuels instead…
Even the Chinese take several years to put up a nuclear plant. Nuclear is simply financially unsustainable especially in this era of high interest rates when solar, wind and natural gas plants can be brought up in a matter of months.
People like Zuckerberg, Brin, Page and Musk have majority voting control of these companies.
They have amassed incredible power and vast fortunes in a time and era when doing so could only be done with great damage to the environment. Despite years of talk and superficial motions towards climate efforts these people have completely pivoted that signalling and have doubled down on endeavours that cause even more ecological destruction.
They have the power and means to do the right thing.
since 2016 ish, big tech has measured infrastructure efficiency in watts, not dollars. that's because they made multiple long term deals for power that came up short
they want to build more power of any kind, ideally renewables. but the past decade has shown time and again that they can't build enough by any means
This is a collection of "OpenAI will boldly act in the abstract to provide air coverage for Texas leadership." With data centers under construction one would think they would have examples of successes or projects in progress available for reference. They'd claim credit if they had it so the silence is telling.
Big tech has consistently valued profit and growth above good stewardship; the onus is entirely on OpenAI to demonstrate that any of these claims aren't fluff with the projects that are already greenlit. When OpenAI presents plans to the communities prior to/alongside city counsels and drops the NDAs then there will be merit to this but our expectations should be somewhere between "super deep kola borehole" and "upper mantle".
I've been to one EA meetup and it wasn't my thing but this seems nothing like the discussions I had. It's where I found out about GiveDirectly.
The biggest issue for me was the AGI/ASI doomerism. But then again, fast-forward five or six years and we've got "unaligned" AI agents blindly following reward functions...
Hey buddy, you're up against people who've only "learned about EA" as a third- or fourth-hand vibecloud around FTX.
Don't bring any of that firsthand knowledge here. You're also not allowed to reference any of the actual writing or pledges or organizations actually in the EA ecosystem. It's Twitter vibes or nothing, mmkay?
I noticed the same thing about effective altruism. Its fans are really good at convincing themselves the most self-serving action amd goals are noble pursuits.
It suffers from an ends-justify-the-means trap where bad actions in the short term with the long term goal of good actions are justified by the fact that you, the actor, know your philosophy is the best way to enact positive change.
I'm happy to try and get already wealthy individuals on the train of effective altruism but it has been used to justify wealth concentration far too much and, to be honest, spreading money around is one of the most effective ways to enact real positive changes in the world since individuals know their own situations the best.
I think that's the point. No one wants to be the villain in their own story. We all tell ourselves stories to paint ourselves as good. I don't think most people are evil, but I think most evil is created by people who have convinced themselves they are good.
So I see EA as a popular one of those stories. One that people can reinforce. Makes the world simpler than it actually is: climb the ladder, make money at whatever cost, there's no harm that you can do that can't be offset by giving it all away at the end. It is a vast over simplification and is inconsistent logic. If they used their own logic then they'd recognize helping people now also results in compounding effects. You fix the problems now, while they are small and manageable, rather than kicking the can down the road. Maintenance is a lot easier and cheaper than repair. But it also requires us to be nuanced and reflect on ourselves [0]
[0] there seems to be a great irony that those leading these big AI companies are not themselves able to deeply reflect on their own actions, yet ask the AI to. How can you design something that you aren't intimately familiar with?
The 2018 Senate race had a Democratic candidate lose by 2.6% while the economy for everyday Americans was doing much better. O'Rourke wasn't as good of a candidate as Talarico, and Cruz is a much better candidate than Paxton. That's not saying Cruz is good, just Paxton has almost as much baggage as Trump without the TV personality to whitewash it away. Republican strategists are expecting over 150 million to be spent on this race.
They will take anything they can possibly get at this point.
Building stuff is good stewardship. We complain about NIMBYs. But with a few relatively modest regulations data centers can be quite friendly. They don’t generate traffic, congestion, etc. They don’t strain school or police infrastructure. Basically need some noise regulations. But the NIMBYs will kill it.
Not all things built are positive, so it can't be good stewardship just to build. And is the reason they don't strain infra because they don't meaningfully improve the community or its economy?
They need more than "we will prioritize". They need to act. They need to source power _today_, not just promise at some point in the future they'll probably fund a power plant, while raising rates for human consumers in the short, medium, and long term, for example.
Factories were originally located near housing (or vice versa) because the factories needed lots of workers. This doesn't apply to data centres. They don't need to be near anybody's home, so why should anyone be obliged to suffer their externalities? Just build your data centre somewhere else.
This seems like an entirely predictable outcome of data center builders and operators behaving like anti-social neighbors with noise just because no law prevented them from doing so.
Building a data center near homes and running your incredibly loud gas turbine generators 24/7 for months, destroying the property values and quality of life for the people living there, is a giant middle finger to the community they've moved into. I'm not saying the backlash banning them entirely rather than adding some additional regulations is entirely logical, but it's very understandable. And should have been eminently predictable.
> This seems like an entirely predictable outcome of data center builders and operators behaving like anti-social neighbors with noise just because no law prevented them from doing so.
The vast, overwhelming majority of data centers source power from the grid rather than continuously operating gas turbines, and the obvious response to the ones that do is to have a moratorium on gas turbines rather than data centers.
The ability of citizens to restrict or prohibit building in their jurisdiction is extremely strong, basically everywhere in the developed world[1]. There's not much they can do to affirmatively cause things to be built - that still takes capital and expertise - but local controls have stifled many, many, many parts of economic development and greatly skewed the economy.
Citizens having a say in what is going on in their neighborhood is why housing in the bay area isn't expensive, they use that say to prevent the construction of new housing.
Data centers would be a benefit if my power bill and property taxes didn’t jump to subsidize the tax breaks my city gave them. I don’t want to pay for infrastructure multi-billion dollar companies should be funding.
Can you name any place where property tax rates on other residents were increased as a result of a tax break to a data center compared to the baseline of the data center not being there?
NIMBY is largely used for housing development discussions and to contort it in support of developing data centers is incredibly intellectually dishonest.
If we're going to rebrand things to blur lines, I propose rebranding data centers to pedophile content hubs.
The rest of your argument is full of similar cherry-picking for dishonest discourse.
>NIMBY is largely used for housing development discussions and to contort it in support of developing data centers is incredibly intellectually dishonest.
No, it's frequently used in infrastructure discussions as well, eg. high speed rail or power transmission lines.
Opposing new housing construction is bad in basically the same way that opposing data center construction is bad; and I'm happy to use the same word to describe both groups of people.
There is a much stronger argument for why housing should be built near existing housing than for why data centers need to be built near existing housing. Housing NIMBYs are being unreasonable because if they got their way the only new housing would be built in the middle of nowhere, which is clearly unworkable. Data center NIMBYs are arguing for much the same thing, but focusing on building data centers a good distance away from housing seems pretty reasonable.
Why is opposing data center construction bad? People need housing, if there isn't enough affordable housing around, then opposing it can be bad. But also people who live there should have a say in what gets built near them, since they have to live with it.
An extremely large dark black box. A haunted house on steroids. Not so quietly humming 24/7. Polluting the air from the large scale mobile gensets. Sucking in all the water and electric power so that the residential rates are going up and up.
I'm all for the datacenters, the more the better, it is the great race of acceleration of our civilization. Yet, it is pretty clear, and with history being the witness, that the tech-bros and MBAs will build it without any regard for the well-being of impacted communities. Thus we have the game of what communities will [be forced to] take a one for the team.
And this is why space base datacenters will be a thing :)
https://texas-connects.com/ is also running lots of commercials locally. But both this open letter _and_ the commercials intentionally skate around the resource needs.
> OpenAI will pay our own way and protect residential and small-business customers [...] OpenAI will work to support new power generation in Texas
Notice how this very intentionally doesn't say they will work to support generating as much or more power than they will use? Because if they could do that, they would just generate their own power. It doesn't matter if they "pay their own way", they are now competing with households.
Same with water, all of these projects want to leech on existing systems because they don't even want to entertain developing their own systems.
However, having worked inside Texas DCs for a long time now, I think it's just the burst that's the issue, not the concepts. Sadly they'll share our resources, but I think they should pay a premium on their energy compared to residential (but it's hard to reconcile this with other commercial ventures that do not).
The AI companies are spending close to a trillion dollars building data centers. On top of that, they’re now promising they’ll handle all environmental and power needs. I believe them, they probably will do that, thats not even too expensive. They need to however recoup this investment somehow, which is the fundamental problem with a technology like AI.
The only plausible way to recoup 1T is to automate large swaths of human jobs so that the companies stop spending money on humans, and instead give money to them. This is probably why the public doesn’t want AI, because AI in the rules of current society is perfectly designed to disempower and ruin humans, but is not actually capable enough to ruin humans in a state of nature.
Large massive data-centers that makes this economics work is not actually a fact of life, in a less stable country they’re actually a liability. If a countries technical prowess comes from a data center then an adversary just needs to bomb it to knee cap that country. On the other hand, if a companies technical prowess comes from a thousands of well trained humans, well that’s actually not easy to get rid of. They’re not stationary, they’re adaptable, they can pick up new skills quicker and cheaper. Any king would much rather invest in humans and not AI.
But in a country like US, where it’s hard to even imagine such instability, AI is perfect at outcompeting humans and ruining them short term, and ruining the country long term. No wonder, this seems to be turning out to become the most negative reaction the public has ever had to the advent of new transformative technology. Unfortunately I don’t think it will work, the AI companies are just going to steamroll them, steal their jobs and dignity and then put them on UBI and pay themselves on the back as if they did a good thing.
Never, ever will they do that. It’s the same bullshit like Musk telling people not to save for retirement. He can distribute his stock by now but instead he is grabbing on to more money.
If there will be UBI, it will be the absolute minimum to not starve. Basically the same as welfare now. No way they are going to share the wealth.
> If there will be UBI, it will be the absolute minimum to not starve. Basically the same as welfare now.
Well yeah. Realistically how much money do you think is available to hand out to every single person? Not enough for everyone to live comfortably. And if there was enough, you'd get large swathes of otherwise economically productive groups (aka the tax cattle schemes like this require) just deciding to drop out of the workforce.
Every single investment aimed at deploying labor-saving innovation has the impact of reducing the number of workers you need per unit of output.
That does not mean fewer jobs, it means that jobs graduate to higher order ones that produce more, and it means more goods/services chasing the fixed supply of workers, translating to deflation (higher real wages / more purchasing power).
There's no end, because AI is deliberately not given full human capabilities. Human beings are dangerous, and no company wants to create AI that can pose the same danger. But those same capabilities that make humans dangerous also let them do tasks that AI cannot.
If Virginia or Louisiana should profit by this then so be it. Californian land-use laws will have a net effect of -8 house seats against Texas. That is good. It should happen. If Texans will be poorer so Virginians will be richer, that is also good. May the American federal system reign forever. Allowing for states as experiments and letting them suffer their consequences is good. It is a machine for us to iterate on our present and future prosperity.
Side note: Now's a fantastic time get into industrial processes or oil & gas since all of the fake propaganda against buildings with computers in them has distracted people from facilities built on a daily basis that cause 1000x the pollution and noise of a datacenter.
You think the folks who are successfully organizing against datacenters can’t use the same techniques and support networks to do the same thing against other nuisance uses?
Well yeah nobody wants their local water supply to be either disintegrated into subatomic particles or polluted with every harmful substance known to man (whichever one they're supposed to do changes from day to day).
It's not just about water. It's about the noise, little to no benefit to the community besides a handful of jobs, air pollution where they're colocated gas turbines for power, and pushing up electricity prices. They are a net negative for most communities.
"Winning" in this context is simply slowing down permitting and construction until the capital bubble pops, at which point a great deal of these projects simply evaporate. And the bubble will pop eventually.
> This paper quantifies the environmental externalities associated with electricity consumption by data centers in the United States, focusing on damages from local air pollution and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Using facility-level data for approximately 2,800 operational data centers in 2025, combined with electricity grid characteristics and emissions data, the analysis estimates pollution impacts through the AP4 integrated assessment model and applies the social cost of carbon for GHG valuation. Results indicate that data centers consume roughly 250 TWh of electricity—about 5–6% of U.S. generation—and generate approximately $25 billion in gross external damages (GED), with a range of $10–$33 billion. These damages are highly geographically concentrated, with Texas and Virginia accounting for 30% of the national total. While GED comprises about 5% of industry GDP, this ratio varies widely across states, exceeding GDP in some regions. Planned data center expansion could increase electricity demand and associated damages by up to 85% in the near term. Despite these environmental costs, preliminary comparisons suggest that the damages attributable to AI-related energy use are small relative to potential productivity gains. [My note: potential gains]
Has no one heard of the concept of industrial zoning? When you live next to an industrial zone you get all the consequences. I love how literally all these projects are on shuttered sites of various plants that were presumably louder and more polluting than these new data centers.
> When experiments fail the constituents pay the price, not the experimenters.
Are you arguing that the leaders of a state, who were elected by the constituents, should not experiment and try make things better? By definition, some experiments will fail.
Virginia has more power infrastructure in place but said infrastructure is already seeing significant DC build out; I know little about power distribution in Louisiana but would be surprised if there was extensive spare capacity in the transmission lines and generation facilities. I'm surprised that the rust belt hasn't seen more uptake since they had all that manufacturing capacity but the backing power generation/distribution may have atrophied in the intervening years.
> I'm surprised that the rust belt hasn't seen more uptake
Oracle's doing something just outside the Milwaukee metro. I'd imagine there are others. Datacenter buildout is wildly unpopular around the Great Lakes, and that's not new. For Wisconsinites specifically, the whole thing has a whiff of Foxconn about it.
Some of the largest proposed data centers in the US are in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. The electricity infrastructure is important so is cheap natural gas from the Marcellus shale, natural gas pipeline infrastructure and relaxed regulations.
The problem is that the costs of Texas blowing natural gas carbon into the air are largely paid by wildfires in California, so we are going to need another mechanism to make sure that is felt in Texas as well.
How much does OpenAI actually control the way the data centers are built and deployed?
I don’t know much about the impact of their data centers compared to others, but there weren’t many (if any) concrete commitments in this letter. The promises all seem like areas that even an evil corporation could pay lip service to.
Major tenants like OAI have near total control. These GW-class datacenters are built to spec for the tenant. Construction doesn't start until all the details are signed off.
If you are just paying the bills and leasing the space, is it really your fault a datacenter some other entity built is sucking the water table of Levelland dry?
If I just use and don't own the data center, then how can I be held accountable for it's impact others?
With the amount of cash OpenAI is splashing around they could easily write it into the contracts, but the current incentive structure prioritizes time between ground breaking and powered GPUs in racks. OpenAI has shown complete disinterest in the impact of AI writ large and will only reduce their community/infra impact to optimize that time to racked GPU along the Pareto frontier.
Commit to 117% of your datacenter power demand to be supplied by nuclear, wind, and solar, so it arrives the same day (or sooner) than your demand starts.
Because all these things require a grid, unlike on-site generators. Most grid equipment (specially high voltage transformers) are backordered and all companies have empty inventories. Unlike traditional companies these AI companies are deathly afraid of not getting to AGI first, so they can't wait.
Why can’t these idiots just mandate that you have to build out clean energy to power the data centers. It’s such a simple bit of legislation that they just will not do.
"Abbott is asking the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to ensure data center developers provide information on tax breaks they will receive; power use and generation; water use and cooling operations; efforts to reduce impacts on local communities; and ownership of the facility. Any projects that fail Abbott’s ordered “comprehensive verification and audit” should be denied connection to the grid, the governor said."
"“Our top priority is to protect Texans’ safety and quality of life,” said Governor Abbott. “Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by the PUCT and ERCOT, and by state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid. Simply put, Texans must come first.”"
While I would like this, my guess is it is hard to reconcile with all the other commercial ventures in the state (including datacenters) that aren't subject to such a requirement.
Because up until recently all the big hyperscalars were already committed to buying or building renewables to meet their energy demand. Then AI happened and they all collectively realized they needed to build as many datacenters as possible to fit as many GPUs as possible to chase the bubble. All those clean energy commitments got tossed by the wayside. Hell, half the time these companies fire people just to free up cashflow to buy more GPUs!
It's more time consuming, expensive, politically fraught, logistically difficult, and hard to acquire land + permits for, than new gas generators and maintaining coal plants. Renewables are a worse idea in the short term, and all they want is short term solutions. They're on a half-trillion-dollar clock.
Honestly, that sounds kind of arbitrary. Why should companies that use electricity be required to also produce electricity? This is what the market is for, so other Companies can produce electricity for money and other Companies buy that electricity.
And to which companies would this apply? Only Datacenters? There are other energy intensive industries too, should this also apply to them? And what is the cutoff for that? Does every bigger 21st century company also need to be an electricity company?
It would be less arbitrary if all negative externalities would be taxed (for example, carbon tax or noise pollution tax) and maybe prioritize households on the public grid.
why are arbitrary rules a problem? if some company starts opening steel mills and its causing problems for the grid then the state can make all new steel mills build power generation. right now the problem is data centers so new rules are aimed at data centers.
carbon taxes dont work because all they do is make production more expensive, and businesses are always happy to pass on any extra costs to their customers. its the same with noise pollution and water use. the only way to actually stop them is direct regulation.
buying land does not give you the right to do whatever you want with it. stop worshipping property and markets and focus on real problems like limited number of business licenses, exclusivity contracts, long or lifetime post employment terms, weak competition rules and long waiting times at government offices. all of them go against the right to buy what you want, work for anyone who wants to take you or to start a business. thats the real economic freedom that is in danger today.
I'm not in the know on Texas politics, so I'm curious. Do Texas politicians publicly support clean energy? Or do they just keep their mouths shut and let it happen? Given that the current head of the Republican party seems completely against it and how rabid some of his followers are, I'm just wondering how they thread that needle?
Texas politicians never run with clean energy as part of their platforms. They still run with oil as their main shtick. That doesn't mean that they don't let clean energy operate in their state, because they'd be silly to completely turn down money. But they can't openly announce it as a point of pride because it'll anger their base.
I’m pretty sure the GP knows that Texas does a lot of renewable energy. It’s just that you can’t talk about it or run on that platform as soon as you run on it people think you’re some woke liberal America destroyer.
Pretty much. When the Texas grid was failing during ice storms they were trying to blame wind farms IIRC.
I suspect the success of renewables in Texas has more to do with the bottom line than anything else. They certainly get a lot of badmouthing from people in rural areas. And honestly this is the best possible outcome. The impact of good intentions wavers along with cultural evolution, but it's hard to stop something that just makes financial sense.
Since the GOP is already trying to paint Talarico that way, he might as well add it to his campaign if he hasn't already. He can mix it in with God wanting humans to take care of the Earth religious message. It's crazy how much the right has co-opted religion in American politics.
You don't seem to realize Texas has huge number clean energy build outs and has been for quite a few years. They lead in wind generation and commercial solar generation.
I very much realize it. I know companies are doing it. But the angry responses to my comment shows that literacy is lacking in Texas because I said it's political suicide to run on it as a platform.
I will repeat: it's political suicide to run on a platform of clean energy or education in Texas. That does not mean companies are not building clean energy. But politicians will not make it part of their platform during elections.
> But the angry responses to my comment shows that literacy is lacking in Texas because I said it's political suicide to run on it as a platform.
If you really think Republican voters in Texas care so much about it, wouldn't the obvious play for Democrats be pointing out how much green energy these Republican politicians have allowed to be built under their watch? I think you're painting Republican voters with an extremely broad brush here and honestly, fail to understand what exactly they object to in the first place regards to green energy. Their main objection is being _forced_ to use it (or being chided by ivory tower know-it-alls) in contexts where they have certain preferences (like driving a big ass truck).
Not a single one is going to object to cheap energy so long as it doesn't degrade their current lifestyle. That's the point people like you forget when you're creating Republican straw men.
People will run to point to the spate of new nuclear plans, but the point be made here is that nuclear regulation is so suffocating and costs so extreme that it's "effectively illegal" to build reactors.
The US has long gone in the direction of abject mistrust in government agencies, which means large projects are just not feasible. Companies can't pick up the slack either; if they can't build out a new shopping mall without falling over themselves and cutting extreme corners then we shouldn't expect them to handle nuclear power either.
I can tell you from second hand direct experience that the regulations are absolutely over the top, and then doubled for good measure. It almost makes aviation look like running a lemonade stand.
Plenty of solar and wind with batteries are available. Data centers and renewable energy are a match made in heaven. They can be in the middle of nowhere where land is cheap.
pittsburgh has many old power plants that are perfect for data center converts
when i go home and hear about this i'm conflicted. it brings short term economic prosperity. what's the cost if there's no commitment to clean energy in reality
the developers on these projects will do whatever it takes to simply get the project done
Not to mention that there's plenty of room to build them well outside of developed areas altogether. Sure, there will be some logistical challenges wrt utilities, but nothing that can't be overcome - just call it a compromise.
I wonder if AI will be the thing that gets Texas to finally connect to the rest of the country’s regional power grids rather than being isolated to one state.
I dunno. Everything's Bigger, Better, Whatever. I don't wish for anyone to suffer, but I did think it was funny when they lost power in a winter storm and I did think it was funny when Ted Cruz tried to abandon them and was caught.
This reminds of the times when companies made large public statements on clean energy and going carbon free during the Obama (and partially Biden) eras. The only difference here is now is a letter to a governor, which is signaling 1) companies believe the way to solve data centers is on a state basis and 2) if they don't do it, they can perhaps blame a lack of "guidance from local officials" versus any part on their own, they have done their due dilligence. I am curious to more see what states don't get any personal mailings, I think that's a better indication than anything actually written.
Yeah but how often does the governor brag about that? Using renewable energy and championing the use of renewable energy are different things in the political world. One reduces costs, one invites the crazies.
I only have one question is this legally binding in US in any way if not what's the point virtue signalling? Can openai make it's books public to ensure that it has the money to fulfill it's extra commitments.
Not legally binding, no. This is more of a lobbying attempt, Abbott just paused all new data center development in Texas until the state can audit them, they have an interconnection queue of about 474GW, ERCOT can't handle it that's more than 5x Texas's peak electricity demand.
It is amazing seeing how openly corrupt red states are in recent years. At least blue states still attempt to maintain a fig leaf. Has it always been this way with the red states or have things legitimately gotten worse?
How is this corruption? There is a very real fear that electricity and water prices will increase for the average person due to AI data centers. Trying to protect the interests of the common man over that of billionaires seems like the exact opposite of corruption.
Smells like the governor who is a known sycophant to capital has gotten some heat among the public on data center roll out, so in comes industry seeking to self regulate itself no doubt in such a way that pulls up the ladder behind it while also not stymieing its own operations with any regulation that might actually have some teeth that might affect profitability. This is Texas after all, this is what the state seems to be for. Abbot knows his role.
Abbot may very well be corrupt, but this letter does nothing to show that. The last thing I saw is ERCOT and PUCT will be involved with the auditing of the electricity and water usage [1] which would seem to indicate that it won't be the AI industry regulating itself. It seems like OpenAI wants to regulate itself, but Abbot is currently opposed to it. Could he change his mind? Of course, but the current situation appears to be the exact opposite of what you are thinking is happening.
The main issue with wanting to block data centers in any specific location, is the hyperscalers will just move to building them wherever politics are most favorable. If protesters in your blue state block construction, they'll just build more in red states, giving the red states more leverage in how AI progress continues. If they are blocked across the board in the US, more will be build abroad, in countries that would never give credence to anti-datacenter movements that would stall economic growth.
The best option is to get everyone on the same page about AI benefits and hazards, and not be unrealistic about the way AI could shape up as a transformative element of human society.
I'm guessing the people who successfully block construction will be happy the data centers are built elsewhere. I doubt they care that much about AI progress, given the goals of those building the data centers.
Gotta love how all the companies' platitudes about sustainability become ludicrous as they begin burning natural gas at prodigious scales. But don't worry, "AI will solve climate change" so we can just pump extra CO2 now, right guys?
I am deeply, deeply cynical and honestly angry about these companies and their self-righteous protestations of being ethical, or public benefit corporations or whatever. Anthropic is benefiting from xAI's Memphis data center that is violating (previous, not anymore!) EPA standards, causing disproportionate impacts to nearby African-American communities. All the while, Ants appear to be floating on some higher effective altruist / B-corp plane. The little people and their petty concerns are just bumps on the road to RSI and ASI after all.
I think your anger would be better placed with the institutional barriers to building clean energy in America that prevent these infrastructure companies from doing the right thing
transmission via HVDC is extremely difficult to build due to land permitting and right of way laws
grid interconnections take 5+ years just to get approved, let alone built
only 2 nuclear power plants have been built since 1978, each taking over 10 years
Well, there's an admin killing clean energy so I think we know where that anger belongs. Dems suck too, but what can you do. One is worse, clearly.
As much as I wish it were different I think this would be the outcome under any administration. Natural gas in the USA is just stupidly cheap inflation adjusted, is energy dense, power plants require few land resources, pipeline infrastructure exists, robust and deep supply chain, etc. I don't hold much hope of the USA kicking the habit as it is such a competitive advantage. If we don't burn it locally it will be exported at a huge margin for geopolitical advantage. 1/3 of the CO2 reductions in the US power sector are due to renewables, 2/3 are from natural gas. Renewables would need to be backed up by additional gas capacity, although the average capacity factor would be reduced with a more robust renewable build out.
Biden was not paying companies to NOT build windplants.
No, the result would not be the same. Provably so.
Also, in fact, companies turned to Trump because democrats started to be serious about anti trust actions.
The whole idea that a solar panel needs to be backed up by gas is absolutely asinine. We live in a capitalist society if there is so much excess power in the day and little power during the night then that means there is money to be made by storing that energy then doing arbitrage with daytime vs nighttime rates.
Build the solar panels and the battery will come because there is serious money to be made as the differential increases.
Are these companies expending any of their lobbying efforts or funds on this problem? Or are they just going to the easiest option? I'm not shedding any tears for the AI companies and their infra challenges. They're the ones driving a huge delta increase in energy use and emissions this coming decade, so their actions merit scrutiny and they are responsible for their actions and the resulting emissions that we will all suffer from. If I had my way, we'd stack an enormous carbon tax on all of them to force their hand.
Look, these companies are the ones selling a story of being benevolent (notwithstanding AI killing us all or putting everyone out of a job). And Anthropic is explicitly a B-corp. How does any of that square with taking any compute they can at any environmental cost?
The Memphis case to me is very illuminating: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260811-memphis-ai-da...
But it's ok, they're EAs and gave $1M to a Memphis nonprofit on 'AI education', while spending a $1B/ month renting Colossus:
https://www.fox13memphis.com/news/anthropic-gifts-memphis-no...
yes, they are. they are hugely concerned that China has loads of power, and the US is incapable of keeping up
the biggest limiting factors for AI labs scaling are silicon, then electricity. they are acutely aware of this
> transmission via HVDC is extremely difficult to build due to land permitting and right of way laws
It’s also really expensive due to the equipment that needs to be in place at either end of the HVDC link. Switching HVDC current is challenging and expensive, the stations at each end are hundreds of millions of dollars and around an order of magnitude more expensive than AC transmission stations. If you’re operating on the same grid frequency, it’s almost invariably more economic to run AC transmission lines. Voltage drop can be dealt with by transformers stepping up the dropped voltage periodically.
Ah yes, institutional barriers like the federal government paying companies to cancel their existing renewable projects that are fully funded and investing in fossil fuels instead…
Even the Chinese take several years to put up a nuclear plant. Nuclear is simply financially unsustainable especially in this era of high interest rates when solar, wind and natural gas plants can be brought up in a matter of months.
People like Zuckerberg, Brin, Page and Musk have majority voting control of these companies.
They have amassed incredible power and vast fortunes in a time and era when doing so could only be done with great damage to the environment. Despite years of talk and superficial motions towards climate efforts these people have completely pivoted that signalling and have doubled down on endeavours that cause even more ecological destruction.
They have the power and means to do the right thing.
They chose not to.
since 2016 ish, big tech has measured infrastructure efficiency in watts, not dollars. that's because they made multiple long term deals for power that came up short
they want to build more power of any kind, ideally renewables. but the past decade has shown time and again that they can't build enough by any means
Their SWEs will all have Repetitive Strain Injuries long before they hit Recursive Self Improvement, I'm sure.
This is a collection of "OpenAI will boldly act in the abstract to provide air coverage for Texas leadership." With data centers under construction one would think they would have examples of successes or projects in progress available for reference. They'd claim credit if they had it so the silence is telling.
Big tech has consistently valued profit and growth above good stewardship; the onus is entirely on OpenAI to demonstrate that any of these claims aren't fluff with the projects that are already greenlit. When OpenAI presents plans to the communities prior to/alongside city counsels and drops the NDAs then there will be merit to this but our expectations should be somewhere between "super deep kola borehole" and "upper mantle".
Yeah if they were so committed to doing good, you'd think the billions of dollars they have spent would bear some evidence of that by now.
They must be "effective" "altruists".
The only way to do good is to first do all the bad and consolidate power, so you can then use all that power to do good, pinkie promise!
I've been to one EA meetup and it wasn't my thing but this seems nothing like the discussions I had. It's where I found out about GiveDirectly.
The biggest issue for me was the AGI/ASI doomerism. But then again, fast-forward five or six years and we've got "unaligned" AI agents blindly following reward functions...
Hey buddy, you're up against people who've only "learned about EA" as a third- or fourth-hand vibecloud around FTX.
Don't bring any of that firsthand knowledge here. You're also not allowed to reference any of the actual writing or pledges or organizations actually in the EA ecosystem. It's Twitter vibes or nothing, mmkay?
Seems you’ve rustled some jimmies. I’ve always thought effective altruism was a nice way to rationalize insatiable greed.
It has the exact same appeal and pitfalls as utilitarianism
Avoid taxes and make some good nerd PR with fancy cult speak!
I noticed the same thing about effective altruism. Its fans are really good at convincing themselves the most self-serving action amd goals are noble pursuits.
It suffers from an ends-justify-the-means trap where bad actions in the short term with the long term goal of good actions are justified by the fact that you, the actor, know your philosophy is the best way to enact positive change.
I'm happy to try and get already wealthy individuals on the train of effective altruism but it has been used to justify wealth concentration far too much and, to be honest, spreading money around is one of the most effective ways to enact real positive changes in the world since individuals know their own situations the best.
I think that's the point. No one wants to be the villain in their own story. We all tell ourselves stories to paint ourselves as good. I don't think most people are evil, but I think most evil is created by people who have convinced themselves they are good.
So I see EA as a popular one of those stories. One that people can reinforce. Makes the world simpler than it actually is: climb the ladder, make money at whatever cost, there's no harm that you can do that can't be offset by giving it all away at the end. It is a vast over simplification and is inconsistent logic. If they used their own logic then they'd recognize helping people now also results in compounding effects. You fix the problems now, while they are small and manageable, rather than kicking the can down the road. Maintenance is a lot easier and cheaper than repair. But it also requires us to be nuanced and reflect on ourselves [0]
[0] there seems to be a great irony that those leading these big AI companies are not themselves able to deeply reflect on their own actions, yet ask the AI to. How can you design something that you aren't intimately familiar with?
I’ve yet to hear of effective altruism from anyone less wealthy me. Seems to be weirdly lumped among the rich.
Effective Altruism isn't very different from Randian objectivism.
What do you mean by this? The two ideas/groups/perspectives seem completely unrelated.
Yeah, just like Stalin!
...provide air coverage for Texas leadership.
The GOP runs Texas. The governor, sec of state, AG, and both houses are republican. Since when have they ever wanted or needed air coverage?
All major cities in Texas are democratic powerhouses, the margin has been closing year on year
The 2018 Senate race had a Democratic candidate lose by 2.6% while the economy for everyday Americans was doing much better. O'Rourke wasn't as good of a candidate as Talarico, and Cruz is a much better candidate than Paxton. That's not saying Cruz is good, just Paxton has almost as much baggage as Trump without the TV personality to whitewash it away. Republican strategists are expecting over 150 million to be spent on this race.
They will take anything they can possibly get at this point.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/28/republicans-texas-m...
> Republican strategists are expecting over 150 million to be spent on this race
Imagine the assurances that are made to convince donors it's worth it. Who exactly bears the cost of unpopularity?...
:waves: from California
Building stuff is good stewardship. We complain about NIMBYs. But with a few relatively modest regulations data centers can be quite friendly. They don’t generate traffic, congestion, etc. They don’t strain school or police infrastructure. Basically need some noise regulations. But the NIMBYs will kill it.
Not all things built are positive, so it can't be good stewardship just to build. And is the reason they don't strain infra because they don't meaningfully improve the community or its economy?
They need more than "we will prioritize". They need to act. They need to source power _today_, not just promise at some point in the future they'll probably fund a power plant, while raising rates for human consumers in the short, medium, and long term, for example.
Factories were originally located near housing (or vice versa) because the factories needed lots of workers. This doesn't apply to data centres. They don't need to be near anybody's home, so why should anyone be obliged to suffer their externalities? Just build your data centre somewhere else.
This seems like an entirely predictable outcome of data center builders and operators behaving like anti-social neighbors with noise just because no law prevented them from doing so.
Building a data center near homes and running your incredibly loud gas turbine generators 24/7 for months, destroying the property values and quality of life for the people living there, is a giant middle finger to the community they've moved into. I'm not saying the backlash banning them entirely rather than adding some additional regulations is entirely logical, but it's very understandable. And should have been eminently predictable.
> This seems like an entirely predictable outcome of data center builders and operators behaving like anti-social neighbors with noise just because no law prevented them from doing so.
The vast, overwhelming majority of data centers source power from the grid rather than continuously operating gas turbines, and the obvious response to the ones that do is to have a moratorium on gas turbines rather than data centers.
Citizens having a say in what is going on in their neighborhood is now controversial. Big brother knows best.
The ability of citizens to restrict or prohibit building in their jurisdiction is extremely strong, basically everywhere in the developed world[1]. There's not much they can do to affirmatively cause things to be built - that still takes capital and expertise - but local controls have stifled many, many, many parts of economic development and greatly skewed the economy.
[1] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-great-downzoning/
Citizens having a say in what is going on in their neighborhood is why housing in the bay area isn't expensive, they use that say to prevent the construction of new housing.
Prop 13 is why housing is expensive in California. Full stop. It was a bandaid over a wound and now the body has sepsis.
Data centers would be a benefit if my power bill and property taxes didn’t jump to subsidize the tax breaks my city gave them. I don’t want to pay for infrastructure multi-billion dollar companies should be funding.
Can you name any place where property tax rates on other residents were increased as a result of a tax break to a data center compared to the baseline of the data center not being there?
NIMBY is largely used for housing development discussions and to contort it in support of developing data centers is incredibly intellectually dishonest.
If we're going to rebrand things to blur lines, I propose rebranding data centers to pedophile content hubs.
The rest of your argument is full of similar cherry-picking for dishonest discourse.
>NIMBY is largely used for housing development discussions and to contort it in support of developing data centers is incredibly intellectually dishonest.
No, it's frequently used in infrastructure discussions as well, eg. high speed rail or power transmission lines.
Or like property on the Texas Mexico border through which a wall is being built sealing off acres of private land from the owner.
CSAM Factory rolls off the tongue a bit better
Opposing new housing construction is bad in basically the same way that opposing data center construction is bad; and I'm happy to use the same word to describe both groups of people.
There is a much stronger argument for why housing should be built near existing housing than for why data centers need to be built near existing housing. Housing NIMBYs are being unreasonable because if they got their way the only new housing would be built in the middle of nowhere, which is clearly unworkable. Data center NIMBYs are arguing for much the same thing, but focusing on building data centers a good distance away from housing seems pretty reasonable.
Why is opposing data center construction bad? People need housing, if there isn't enough affordable housing around, then opposing it can be bad. But also people who live there should have a say in what gets built near them, since they have to live with it.
Just the worst take I've seen all day.
They don’t generate any value for local communities either!
So you'd be ok with a data center across the street from your house?
An extremely large dark black box. A haunted house on steroids. Not so quietly humming 24/7. Polluting the air from the large scale mobile gensets. Sucking in all the water and electric power so that the residential rates are going up and up.
I'm all for the datacenters, the more the better, it is the great race of acceleration of our civilization. Yet, it is pretty clear, and with history being the witness, that the tech-bros and MBAs will build it without any regard for the well-being of impacted communities. Thus we have the game of what communities will [be forced to] take a one for the team.
And this is why space base datacenters will be a thing :)
https://texas-connects.com/ is also running lots of commercials locally. But both this open letter _and_ the commercials intentionally skate around the resource needs.
> OpenAI will pay our own way and protect residential and small-business customers [...] OpenAI will work to support new power generation in Texas
Notice how this very intentionally doesn't say they will work to support generating as much or more power than they will use? Because if they could do that, they would just generate their own power. It doesn't matter if they "pay their own way", they are now competing with households.
Same with water, all of these projects want to leech on existing systems because they don't even want to entertain developing their own systems.
However, having worked inside Texas DCs for a long time now, I think it's just the burst that's the issue, not the concepts. Sadly they'll share our resources, but I think they should pay a premium on their energy compared to residential (but it's hard to reconcile this with other commercial ventures that do not).
This is a play to say something without putting down the ink that binds them.
> We will minimize water consumption and prioritize efficient cooling technologies, including closed-loop systems.
> We will work with local communities and water providers to ensure our projects are responsibly planned around available resources
I can promise you that I'll do everything to consider the needs and wants of others.
But I won't promise to take actions that take those wants or needs into account, much less even actually consider them.
The AI companies are spending close to a trillion dollars building data centers. On top of that, they’re now promising they’ll handle all environmental and power needs. I believe them, they probably will do that, thats not even too expensive. They need to however recoup this investment somehow, which is the fundamental problem with a technology like AI.
The only plausible way to recoup 1T is to automate large swaths of human jobs so that the companies stop spending money on humans, and instead give money to them. This is probably why the public doesn’t want AI, because AI in the rules of current society is perfectly designed to disempower and ruin humans, but is not actually capable enough to ruin humans in a state of nature.
Large massive data-centers that makes this economics work is not actually a fact of life, in a less stable country they’re actually a liability. If a countries technical prowess comes from a data center then an adversary just needs to bomb it to knee cap that country. On the other hand, if a companies technical prowess comes from a thousands of well trained humans, well that’s actually not easy to get rid of. They’re not stationary, they’re adaptable, they can pick up new skills quicker and cheaper. Any king would much rather invest in humans and not AI.
But in a country like US, where it’s hard to even imagine such instability, AI is perfect at outcompeting humans and ruining them short term, and ruining the country long term. No wonder, this seems to be turning out to become the most negative reaction the public has ever had to the advent of new transformative technology. Unfortunately I don’t think it will work, the AI companies are just going to steamroll them, steal their jobs and dignity and then put them on UBI and pay themselves on the back as if they did a good thing.
> then put them on UBI
You may be too optimistic.
“ put them on UBI”
Never, ever will they do that. It’s the same bullshit like Musk telling people not to save for retirement. He can distribute his stock by now but instead he is grabbing on to more money.
If there will be UBI, it will be the absolute minimum to not starve. Basically the same as welfare now. No way they are going to share the wealth.
> If there will be UBI, it will be the absolute minimum to not starve. Basically the same as welfare now.
Well yeah. Realistically how much money do you think is available to hand out to every single person? Not enough for everyone to live comfortably. And if there was enough, you'd get large swathes of otherwise economically productive groups (aka the tax cattle schemes like this require) just deciding to drop out of the workforce.
Every single investment aimed at deploying labor-saving innovation has the impact of reducing the number of workers you need per unit of output.
That does not mean fewer jobs, it means that jobs graduate to higher order ones that produce more, and it means more goods/services chasing the fixed supply of workers, translating to deflation (higher real wages / more purchasing power).
Assuming there's no end to productive uses for labor, of course.
There's no end, because AI is deliberately not given full human capabilities. Human beings are dangerous, and no company wants to create AI that can pose the same danger. But those same capabilities that make humans dangerous also let them do tasks that AI cannot.
If Virginia or Louisiana should profit by this then so be it. Californian land-use laws will have a net effect of -8 house seats against Texas. That is good. It should happen. If Texans will be poorer so Virginians will be richer, that is also good. May the American federal system reign forever. Allowing for states as experiments and letting them suffer their consequences is good. It is a machine for us to iterate on our present and future prosperity.
Polling shows a fairly bipartisan opposition to data centers, so it could encourage more states to join in with pauses of their own.
Tracking at:
https://aidatacentermap.org/
https://www.datacenterbans.com/
https://www.datacenterwatch.org/
https://www.brockovichdatacenter.com/
Side note: Now's a fantastic time get into industrial processes or oil & gas since all of the fake propaganda against buildings with computers in them has distracted people from facilities built on a daily basis that cause 1000x the pollution and noise of a datacenter.
You think the folks who are successfully organizing against datacenters can’t use the same techniques and support networks to do the same thing against other nuisance uses?
Well yeah nobody wants their local water supply to be either disintegrated into subatomic particles or polluted with every harmful substance known to man (whichever one they're supposed to do changes from day to day).
It's not just about water. It's about the noise, little to no benefit to the community besides a handful of jobs, air pollution where they're colocated gas turbines for power, and pushing up electricity prices. They are a net negative for most communities.
"Winning" in this context is simply slowing down permitting and construction until the capital bubble pops, at which point a great deal of these projects simply evaporate. And the bubble will pop eventually.
'Living in Hell': Data Center Neighbors Grapple With Noise, Air Pollution - https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2026-04-2... - April 28th, 2026
Measuring the Impact of Data Centers in the United States Economy: Monetary Damage from Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gas Emissions - https://www.nber.org/papers/w35100 | https://doi.org/10.3386/w35100
> This paper quantifies the environmental externalities associated with electricity consumption by data centers in the United States, focusing on damages from local air pollution and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Using facility-level data for approximately 2,800 operational data centers in 2025, combined with electricity grid characteristics and emissions data, the analysis estimates pollution impacts through the AP4 integrated assessment model and applies the social cost of carbon for GHG valuation. Results indicate that data centers consume roughly 250 TWh of electricity—about 5–6% of U.S. generation—and generate approximately $25 billion in gross external damages (GED), with a range of $10–$33 billion. These damages are highly geographically concentrated, with Texas and Virginia accounting for 30% of the national total. While GED comprises about 5% of industry GDP, this ratio varies widely across states, exceeding GDP in some regions. Planned data center expansion could increase electricity demand and associated damages by up to 85% in the near term. Despite these environmental costs, preliminary comparisons suggest that the damages attributable to AI-related energy use are small relative to potential productivity gains. [My note: potential gains]
Health implications of the rapid rise of data centers in Virginia: an exploratory assessment - https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/climate/articles/10.338... | https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2026.1648912
Has no one heard of the concept of industrial zoning? When you live next to an industrial zone you get all the consequences. I love how literally all these projects are on shuttered sites of various plants that were presumably louder and more polluting than these new data centers.
> little to no benefit to the community besides a handful of jobs
NBER w35194 (Alvarez et al., May 2026) instruments for siting and finds the opposite: +6.2% establishments and +8.2% AGI at 25 years.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35194/w351...
When experiments fail the constituents pay the price, not the experimenters.
> When experiments fail the constituents pay the price, not the experimenters.
Are you arguing that the leaders of a state, who were elected by the constituents, should not experiment and try make things better? By definition, some experiments will fail.
Can you name a politician who's been elected based on their promise to put datacenter in their community?
> Can you name a politician who's been elected based on their promise to put datacenter in their community?
That's not a useful question. What's the point you're trying to make?
Nevertheless, experiments are necessary. Political entrepreneurialism is necessary if you want anything to improve.
You can experiment on everyone, or you can experiment at the local level. One is obviously preferable over the other.
Nobody has all the answers.
The constituents elect the experimenters, and generally become the experimenters thereby.
Maybe they should consider voting.
[dead]
I don't think these data centres bring that much money locally.
Beyond the construction they employ very little people and bring very little taxes at a gargantuan cost in resources.
This letter says nothing about Louisiana or Virginia, what exactly are you talking about?
I believe they're implying that if the data centers don't get built in Texas they will be built in Louisiana and Virginia.
Virginia has more power infrastructure in place but said infrastructure is already seeing significant DC build out; I know little about power distribution in Louisiana but would be surprised if there was extensive spare capacity in the transmission lines and generation facilities. I'm surprised that the rust belt hasn't seen more uptake since they had all that manufacturing capacity but the backing power generation/distribution may have atrophied in the intervening years.
> I'm surprised that the rust belt hasn't seen more uptake
Oracle's doing something just outside the Milwaukee metro. I'd imagine there are others. Datacenter buildout is wildly unpopular around the Great Lakes, and that's not new. For Wisconsinites specifically, the whole thing has a whiff of Foxconn about it.
For the uninitiated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconn_Valley_Science_and_Tec...
Drove past it a few times this summer. Wrecked the nice drive.
Also Port Washington…
Some of the largest proposed data centers in the US are in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. The electricity infrastructure is important so is cheap natural gas from the Marcellus shale, natural gas pipeline infrastructure and relaxed regulations.
How is Louisiana going to profit by it besides selling hot plates to the construction workers?
This is delicious comedy.
> It is a machine for us to iterate on our present and future prosperity.
The former middle class has entered the chat.
The problem is that the costs of Texas blowing natural gas carbon into the air are largely paid by wildfires in California, so we are going to need another mechanism to make sure that is felt in Texas as well.
How much does OpenAI actually control the way the data centers are built and deployed?
I don’t know much about the impact of their data centers compared to others, but there weren’t many (if any) concrete commitments in this letter. The promises all seem like areas that even an evil corporation could pay lip service to.
Major tenants like OAI have near total control. These GW-class datacenters are built to spec for the tenant. Construction doesn't start until all the details are signed off.
It is setting up the classic liability shift.
If you are just paying the bills and leasing the space, is it really your fault a datacenter some other entity built is sucking the water table of Levelland dry?
If I just use and don't own the data center, then how can I be held accountable for it's impact others?
> How much does OpenAI actually control the way the data centers are built and deployed?
Assuming OAI is the sole tenant in these facilities, I'd say we are approaching 100% control.
OpenAI et al can establish a Data Center PAC or contribute to one then lobby our political leaders like citizens (see Citzens United)
With the amount of cash OpenAI is splashing around they could easily write it into the contracts, but the current incentive structure prioritizes time between ground breaking and powered GPUs in racks. OpenAI has shown complete disinterest in the impact of AI writ large and will only reduce their community/infra impact to optimize that time to racked GPU along the Pareto frontier.
OpenAI:
Commit to 117% of your datacenter power demand to be supplied by nuclear, wind, and solar, so it arrives the same day (or sooner) than your demand starts.
This isn't that hard.
it is not only "that hard", it is impossible
1/ deploying solar takes years to go through multiple layers of environmental review at municipal, state and federal levels
2/ the generator interconnection queue takes 5+ years just to permit new grid connections
3/ building new HVDC has been blocked by permits and right of way laws, which is another barrier to effective solar deployment
4/ there are only two commercial nuclear reactors built in America since 1978, and they each took 10+ years to build
Because all these things require a grid, unlike on-site generators. Most grid equipment (specially high voltage transformers) are backordered and all companies have empty inventories. Unlike traditional companies these AI companies are deathly afraid of not getting to AGI first, so they can't wait.
Why can’t these idiots just mandate that you have to build out clean energy to power the data centers. It’s such a simple bit of legislation that they just will not do.
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/03/texas-data-center-pr...
"Abbott is asking the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to ensure data center developers provide information on tax breaks they will receive; power use and generation; water use and cooling operations; efforts to reduce impacts on local communities; and ownership of the facility. Any projects that fail Abbott’s ordered “comprehensive verification and audit” should be denied connection to the grid, the governor said."
https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-comp...
"“Our top priority is to protect Texans’ safety and quality of life,” said Governor Abbott. “Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by the PUCT and ERCOT, and by state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid. Simply put, Texans must come first.”"
https://environmentamerica.org/texas/center/media-center/new...
"The Lone Star State generated the equivalent of 37% of its electricity from solar, wind and geothermal power in 2025"
While I would like this, my guess is it is hard to reconcile with all the other commercial ventures in the state (including datacenters) that aren't subject to such a requirement.
Oil companies squash all kinds of clean energy regulation.
Because up until recently all the big hyperscalars were already committed to buying or building renewables to meet their energy demand. Then AI happened and they all collectively realized they needed to build as many datacenters as possible to fit as many GPUs as possible to chase the bubble. All those clean energy commitments got tossed by the wayside. Hell, half the time these companies fire people just to free up cashflow to buy more GPUs!
It's more time consuming, expensive, politically fraught, logistically difficult, and hard to acquire land + permits for, than new gas generators and maintaining coal plants. Renewables are a worse idea in the short term, and all they want is short term solutions. They're on a half-trillion-dollar clock.
This seems like a good idea to me. I wonder what the hold up is.
Honestly, that sounds kind of arbitrary. Why should companies that use electricity be required to also produce electricity? This is what the market is for, so other Companies can produce electricity for money and other Companies buy that electricity.
And to which companies would this apply? Only Datacenters? There are other energy intensive industries too, should this also apply to them? And what is the cutoff for that? Does every bigger 21st century company also need to be an electricity company?
It would be less arbitrary if all negative externalities would be taxed (for example, carbon tax or noise pollution tax) and maybe prioritize households on the public grid.
why are arbitrary rules a problem? if some company starts opening steel mills and its causing problems for the grid then the state can make all new steel mills build power generation. right now the problem is data centers so new rules are aimed at data centers.
carbon taxes dont work because all they do is make production more expensive, and businesses are always happy to pass on any extra costs to their customers. its the same with noise pollution and water use. the only way to actually stop them is direct regulation.
buying land does not give you the right to do whatever you want with it. stop worshipping property and markets and focus on real problems like limited number of business licenses, exclusivity contracts, long or lifetime post employment terms, weak competition rules and long waiting times at government offices. all of them go against the right to buy what you want, work for anyone who wants to take you or to start a business. thats the real economic freedom that is in danger today.
Who cares how it works out as long as they come to the table with funded power generation for their constituent centers.
To answer your question: Texas. Running on a platform of clean energy is political suicide in half of America, particularly in the south.
Texas leads the nation in raw renewable energy production. Solar, wind, and nuclear are hardly maligned there.
I'm not in the know on Texas politics, so I'm curious. Do Texas politicians publicly support clean energy? Or do they just keep their mouths shut and let it happen? Given that the current head of the Republican party seems completely against it and how rabid some of his followers are, I'm just wondering how they thread that needle?
Texas politicians never run with clean energy as part of their platforms. They still run with oil as their main shtick. That doesn't mean that they don't let clean energy operate in their state, because they'd be silly to completely turn down money. But they can't openly announce it as a point of pride because it'll anger their base.
I’m pretty sure the GP knows that Texas does a lot of renewable energy. It’s just that you can’t talk about it or run on that platform as soon as you run on it people think you’re some woke liberal America destroyer.
Pretty much. When the Texas grid was failing during ice storms they were trying to blame wind farms IIRC.
I suspect the success of renewables in Texas has more to do with the bottom line than anything else. They certainly get a lot of badmouthing from people in rural areas. And honestly this is the best possible outcome. The impact of good intentions wavers along with cultural evolution, but it's hard to stop something that just makes financial sense.
Since the GOP is already trying to paint Talarico that way, he might as well add it to his campaign if he hasn't already. He can mix it in with God wanting humans to take care of the Earth religious message. It's crazy how much the right has co-opted religion in American politics.
Clean energy development was doing well, was powering more than half our needs, and was creating more jobs than oil. Guess that wasn’t good enough.
Oh and it reduced our green house gas emissions. That was the catch.
(I got coal rolled just yesterday, in Tahoe. Who knew that was still a thing…)
You don't seem to realize Texas has huge number clean energy build outs and has been for quite a few years. They lead in wind generation and commercial solar generation.
I very much realize it. I know companies are doing it. But the angry responses to my comment shows that literacy is lacking in Texas because I said it's political suicide to run on it as a platform.
Ken Paxton, who is running for Senate and currently serves as attorney general, proudly announced cracking down on "solar scams": https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-...
Plus his campaign site makes no mention of supporting clean energy: https://www.kenpaxton.com/
I will repeat: it's political suicide to run on a platform of clean energy or education in Texas. That does not mean companies are not building clean energy. But politicians will not make it part of their platform during elections.
> But the angry responses to my comment shows that literacy is lacking in Texas because I said it's political suicide to run on it as a platform.
If you really think Republican voters in Texas care so much about it, wouldn't the obvious play for Democrats be pointing out how much green energy these Republican politicians have allowed to be built under their watch? I think you're painting Republican voters with an extremely broad brush here and honestly, fail to understand what exactly they object to in the first place regards to green energy. Their main objection is being _forced_ to use it (or being chided by ivory tower know-it-alls) in contexts where they have certain preferences (like driving a big ass truck).
Not a single one is going to object to cheap energy so long as it doesn't degrade their current lifestyle. That's the point people like you forget when you're creating Republican straw men.
I think he’s more like a broken clock that is still right twice a day…
I’ve seen too many solar panels installed on the north side of a house, under a tree.
Counterpoint: you're wrong
https://texas2036.org/news-analysis/gale-force-growth-texas-...
I'm not. Business operate in Texas. I never said that they don't. But major politicians are not making it part of their platform.
Because the federal government made it effectively illegal to build nuclear reactors, and there are no more rivers to be dammed.
People will run to point to the spate of new nuclear plans, but the point be made here is that nuclear regulation is so suffocating and costs so extreme that it's "effectively illegal" to build reactors.
Is it safety regulation that makes nuclear so hard, or is it just that we can't seem to do large projects of any kind any more?
The US has long gone in the direction of abject mistrust in government agencies, which means large projects are just not feasible. Companies can't pick up the slack either; if they can't build out a new shopping mall without falling over themselves and cutting extreme corners then we shouldn't expect them to handle nuclear power either.
Musk can. Everyone else? Not so much.
I can tell you from second hand direct experience that the regulations are absolutely over the top, and then doubled for good measure. It almost makes aviation look like running a lemonade stand.
Plenty of solar and wind with batteries are available. Data centers and renewable energy are a match made in heaven. They can be in the middle of nowhere where land is cheap.
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> OpenAI supports transparency and accountability
Just like it supported 'Open AI'?
As someone who lived in TX through the winter storm power crisis in 2021, I approve of the pause.
pittsburgh has many old power plants that are perfect for data center converts
when i go home and hear about this i'm conflicted. it brings short term economic prosperity. what's the cost if there's no commitment to clean energy in reality
the developers on these projects will do whatever it takes to simply get the project done
Data centers belong in "industrial areas", ignore the snarky jokes about them being as bad as the coal plants they are replacing.
People have legitimate complaints when they are built within audible distance of housing.
Not to mention that there's plenty of room to build them well outside of developed areas altogether. Sure, there will be some logistical challenges wrt utilities, but nothing that can't be overcome - just call it a compromise.
Anyone can access the letter PDF? I've been trying this link and it only timeout https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/oai_abbot-texas-letter_8-7-26.pdf
I wonder if AI will be the thing that gets Texas to finally connect to the rest of the country’s regional power grids rather than being isolated to one state.
I dunno. Everything's Bigger, Better, Whatever. I don't wish for anyone to suffer, but I did think it was funny when they lost power in a winter storm and I did think it was funny when Ted Cruz tried to abandon them and was caught.
This reminds of the times when companies made large public statements on clean energy and going carbon free during the Obama (and partially Biden) eras. The only difference here is now is a letter to a governor, which is signaling 1) companies believe the way to solve data centers is on a state basis and 2) if they don't do it, they can perhaps blame a lack of "guidance from local officials" versus any part on their own, they have done their due dilligence. I am curious to more see what states don't get any personal mailings, I think that's a better indication than anything actually written.
Zero commitment to clean power.
I feel your concern/doom, but...
It's a letter to texas... Know your audience and all that...
I know it’s cool with the kids to talk down Texas and its folks, but you might be surprised that Texas…
- produces more electricity from wind generation than any other US state.
- consumes more electricity from wind generation than any other US state (3x the next biggest, Iowa).
- has more installed wind generation capacity than any other state.
- energy usage leads all other US states by being comprised of 22% wind generation sources.
Yeah but how often does the governor brag about that? Using renewable energy and championing the use of renewable energy are different things in the political world. One reduces costs, one invites the crazies.
This letter clearly wasn’t written by AI.
I'm always surprised by how cynical the comments on the internet are about America's technology leaders and U.S. industrial expansion.
I only have one question is this legally binding in US in any way if not what's the point virtue signalling? Can openai make it's books public to ensure that it has the money to fulfill it's extra commitments.
Not legally binding, no. This is more of a lobbying attempt, Abbott just paused all new data center development in Texas until the state can audit them, they have an interconnection queue of about 474GW, ERCOT can't handle it that's more than 5x Texas's peak electricity demand.
That would be more half the entire grid load of the USA
Yes, the cheque's in the post.
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Alternatively, AI datacenters are just broadly unpopular across political lines.
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They’d do better with a bribe, Texas runs on corruption. I’m sure the campaign contribution checks are already written though
That's probably already happened. This is smoke and mirrors. Monorail...MoNoRail...MONORAIL!!!!!
It is amazing seeing how openly corrupt red states are in recent years. At least blue states still attempt to maintain a fig leaf. Has it always been this way with the red states or have things legitimately gotten worse?
This is a strange reaction to a (admittedly horrible) red state governor halting construction of data centers due to public objections.
Just the idea of companies fleeing to places like texas to do things they could not get away with elsewhere seems pretty routine at this point
How is this corruption? There is a very real fear that electricity and water prices will increase for the average person due to AI data centers. Trying to protect the interests of the common man over that of billionaires seems like the exact opposite of corruption.
Smells like the governor who is a known sycophant to capital has gotten some heat among the public on data center roll out, so in comes industry seeking to self regulate itself no doubt in such a way that pulls up the ladder behind it while also not stymieing its own operations with any regulation that might actually have some teeth that might affect profitability. This is Texas after all, this is what the state seems to be for. Abbot knows his role.
Abbot may very well be corrupt, but this letter does nothing to show that. The last thing I saw is ERCOT and PUCT will be involved with the auditing of the electricity and water usage [1] which would seem to indicate that it won't be the AI industry regulating itself. It seems like OpenAI wants to regulate itself, but Abbot is currently opposed to it. Could he change his mind? Of course, but the current situation appears to be the exact opposite of what you are thinking is happening.
[1] https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-comp...
The main issue with wanting to block data centers in any specific location, is the hyperscalers will just move to building them wherever politics are most favorable. If protesters in your blue state block construction, they'll just build more in red states, giving the red states more leverage in how AI progress continues. If they are blocked across the board in the US, more will be build abroad, in countries that would never give credence to anti-datacenter movements that would stall economic growth.
The best option is to get everyone on the same page about AI benefits and hazards, and not be unrealistic about the way AI could shape up as a transformative element of human society.
I'm guessing the people who successfully block construction will be happy the data centers are built elsewhere. I doubt they care that much about AI progress, given the goals of those building the data centers.
> I'm guessing the people who successfully block construction will be happy the data centers are built elsewhere.
Depends on their goals. Do they want to slow down AI altogether, or just hate the concept of the building itself?