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Journalist Markham Hislop interviews leading energy experts from around the world about the energy transition and climate change.
Welcome to episode 330 of the Energy Talks Podcast. I'm energy and climate journalist, Mark Hislop. Will the massive electricity requirements of creating terrible art on chat GPT 4 break our power grids? Or might artificial intelligence create so many efficiencies that in that in the system that grid strain is actually lowered? 1 thing we know for sure is that electricity demand is going to rise a great deal over the next few decades as economies are electrified.
Markham:Whether AI will be a help or hindrance is the subject of a new report from the conference board, smart power, will AI spike electricity demand or reduce it through efficiencies? Alex Heil, who is the senior economist at the conference board, joins me on today's episode. Welcome to energy talks, Alex.
Alex:Thanks for having me, Malcolm. It's a pleasure to be here.
Markham:Well, it's good to have you back. This, I think, is a topic that's very timely. Artificial intelligence, I can't tell you how many, how many, stories and analyses pop up in my, inbox and and on my social media timelines. So we're we'll get into the the nuts and bolts of the report in just a moment, but maybe for our listeners, if you were a betting man, would you bet that in the next decade, AI is going to spike demand, or is it going to lead to greater efficiencies? That's
Alex:a good question, and I think my paper asked that question in the very beginning. I think if I had to put money on it, I would be on the side that the the demand, put on the system by AI in its various permutations is is gonna be driven up. So I would be on the, you know, demand spike side of the of the argument.
Markham:I I can see why that would be the case, but here's a question for you, and I I didn't see this, addressed, is why would data centers not self generate, primarily using solar and batteries, and just use the grid as a as a backup?
Alex:Yeah. I think that's that's a possibility. I think, you know, when I started doing this research, there were some some analysts that were starting to talk about this. I mean, I think it is it is and this, I think, goes to your initial opening question. This this this this this this conflict right now in terms of how much this is gonna be a doomsday scenario versus how much this is going to follow a similar path to what we had a couple decades ago when everybody was sort of freaked out about, you know, the iPhone smart devices, data centers, what this all means in terms of the Internet, everybody being on broadband.
Alex:The the spike did not materialize back then. This time might be different. In terms of the self generation, I think there are huge opportunities in terms of certainly solar. Solar has gotten so cheap that especially if if data centers are built in parts of of the US or part in countries where solar is advantageous in terms of power generation, that could be 1 way that could overcome this. It's just we're at the very early early, you know, side of this trend, so maybe that's something that we need to emphasize more going forward.
Markham:1 of the reasons I asked that is because, as you can imagine, data centers are, the companies that that that plan to build data centers are looking around for sources of clean, abundant, low cost electricity, and 1 of those, is happens to be Alberta. And, an acquaintance of mine, James Van Lewen, lives in a little town called Pincher Creek. It's about 3, 000 people down in the southwest part of Alberta. It's beautiful down there, mountains and and very, very windy, very windy. So that has you know, if you drive through Pincher Creek through the Crowsnest Pass, you see all these giant wind turbines.
Markham:And, and so James logically asked the question, well, look. We we have this source of a very low cost abundant electricity, and as it turns out, right by Pincher Creek is running a major data trunk line. Mhmm. And he said, well, if data centers need, you know, clean electricity at a low cost and they need access to data trunk lines, why wouldn't we locate it here and basically, you know, you don't need the grid per se. You'd basically, need to, create either a a microgrid or anyway, there's there's not a lot of strain on transmission when all of the generation is, you know, within a short distance from from this little town.
Markham:And so they're gonna try to attract data centers there, because it just makes sense. Is that what we're talking about, or really are we you know, our data center is gonna be located in places outside places like Los Angeles?
Alex:No. I think data centers I mean, the exact location you this is is comes down to being an engineering question and also probably, you know, it's a backup redundancy question. So you don't want to locate them all in the same place just because if there are outages, if there are concerns, if there are issues, right, they all go down at the same time. That's probably, you know, disadvantageous in terms of their operations because then they can't perform their service. So you do want to spread them around, and, you know, the access to the the data trunk lines is 1 issue.
Alex:The access to clean, abundant, you know, cheap energy sources is another. So, you know, what I'm foreseeing is in a in a perfect world, you will find locations like the 1 that you're describing, locate data centers there, do this in several places around the country in a way that you can minimize the the strain. I mean, there's different strains we're talking about. Right? There's the strain on the generation side, and there's the strain on the on the grid transmission and transportation of electricity side.
Alex:And so if you locate them in where in places where there is abundant electricity available, you can avoid some of the the massive transmission investments that some analysts are now projecting. And I think I think that's a very good point. So these, you know, the location of data centers, they become they may this may become a location advantage for some communities that have all the features above that you're describing.
Markham:Yes. And I I could see where, rural, economies, rural communities that are located, say, in very sunny places that have easy access to a data a data line, that could be a major economic development tool. Does a data center, though, require a resident, staff of technicians, you know, like a large number of engineers and and other kinds of technicians? And does that become a a limiting factor as to whether a data center can be built in a town like Pincher Creek?
Alex:Yeah. That's an interesting point. The employment effects are or the employment requirements rather. I have not studied those, you know, myself, comprehensively. My my sense is that especially in the design construction startup phase, there probably is gonna be greater employment demand and and specialized expertise that is required to get a data center off the ground once it's up and running.
Alex:There's certainly staff that is going to be required. It might you might be in a position to manage this with a lower, you know, sort of workload essentially that that you can do. But, you know, there are also other demands, and I'm sure we're gonna get to those. There's cooling demand. There's water.
Alex:This this especially some of the, communities that are very advantageous for solar, for instance, in, let's say, the American West and Southwest, you have this vast water shortages. There's resources that are under a lot of pressure. And if you consider how much water might be required also just for cooling purposes, that's sort of a whole another set of constraints that, you know, an operator of the data center needs to be aware of.
Markham:Sure. I can see where that would be a problem in southwest southwestern Alberta where they're already, suffering from some, water shortages. So
Alex:Yeah. Drought's a drought's a real problem. Absolutely.
Markham:Another question I have for you, and and you may or may not be able to address this, but it seems to me that artificial intelligence has become a a geopolitical and military issue and we're talking about, it's a it's a a big deal, but for the Americans not wanting to become dependent on, China, or other, you know, Russia, but also, making sure that they, the US is further ahead in AI, than, than its competitors. What role might that play, in the the issues that you addressed in your report?
Alex:I think there's an issue certainly of shared resources. When you read some of the literature in terms of, you know, some of the efficiencies, that's on the side of, oh, maybe maybe we can we can make this all operational in a way that it's not gonna create a massive energy spike going forward. And 1 of the arguments is then, well, what about what about using resources jointly? What about some of these sort of, collaboration effects? What about, you know, conglomeration of resources in that sense?
Alex:Now from that that might work, theoretically, but even on a competitive level be between firms, it's hard to see that that's necessarily, you know, from an intellectual property perspective, that that is desirable by by market participants. I could see that that's even gonna be more problematic when you're talking about AI developed in various parts of the globe in different countries and the extent to which there are rivalries and just just issues of of protecting a a AI as a as a national security argument.
Markham:What about I mean, let's let's talk about, numbers here, because, your report says there are more than 88 sorry. 8, 000 data centers, in operation globally. A 3rd of them are in the US, and the what are the water and critical infrastructure demands of those data centers?
Alex:Yeah. So I think if you're talking about so first of all, it's it's, you know, so clean electricity question. I mean, there's there's there's some examples now that 1 can can find in terms of, you know, the the the billion, 2, 000, 000, 000, investment volume for a large data center that is then going to have an electricity demand that basically is almost as significant as the electricity generated by a small nuclear power plant. So we're talking in terms of the dimensions of of some of the immediate demands power demands from such a site. They are certainly they are certainly tremendous.
Alex:And then on the more on the resource side, the, we're really talking about, you know, quantities of water that are equivalent to the consumption levels of entire communities. So, my report cites, you know, large data center uses between a 1, 000, 000, 5, 000, 000 gallons of water per day. That's equivalent to the demand of, you know, 10000 to 50, 000 residents in a community. So if you look at this in terms of what this means, especially in water constrained communities where there's, you know, groundwater being pumped and there's agriculture demands and there's just drinking water demands, I think 1 can easily see that this is not just turning into a power problem, but the water, from a cooling perspective is going to be an whole another issue that needs to be considered there.
Markham:Sure. And certainly within the context of climate change and and, and continuing growths in various parts of the of the I
Alex:think the problem is gonna get worse over time. Right? It's already an it's already a constraint and a consideration now. But if you go ahead another you know, jump ahead another couple decades, these problems are not gonna resolve themselves.
Markham:Well, that brings us to the question of long term planning, which you say is critical to addressing this issue. And I gather that the federal Energy Regulatory Commission has just put out an order that addresses this. Maybe you could tell us about that.
Alex:Yeah. The, it's order number 1920 in FERC that just came out as as part of its latest rulemaking. And, basically, it it, it it addresses some of the long term, you know, 20 year year, planning periods, for transmission infrastructure. So it's 1 of these issues that, you know, surprisingly, the long term planning, historically, has not always happened comprehensively. So this is actually an initiative that is now emphasizing this and that 1 needs to now as a utility, as a as as someone with a stake in the energy system applicable to the US needs to now engage in this long term planning effort.
Alex:So I think the you know, these these long term studies, you know, they are very important to get a better sense. It's also important to understand what some of the drivers are of the demand. I think I mentioned before that, you know, in in the 2 in the mid 2000, there were studies that looked at what the impacts were going to be of expanding the Internet to pretty much everybody and have, you know, broadband access and and, data intensive uses that are now being widely used by end consumers, and there was there was essentially an understanding at the time that that's going to spike electricity demand. Now, you know, the efficiencies at the time that were created in the couple decades after that, you know, smart, smarter devices, even though everybody has more of them, more efficient devices rather, LED lighting, you have appliances that are more energy, efficient. They they were able to offset some of the demand in, essentially electricity that comes from data use.
Alex:But, you know, there's there's maybe diminishing ways that this can if it's already implemented in many households that, you know, we already have some of the energy efficiencies in our daily lives, then if there's a further spike, that's might not be able to offset this, and there might be then demands as a result coming back to the FERC issue. There might be additional demands on the long term, you know, transmission, planning in this country. That's absolutely true.
Markham:1 of the issues that's coming up is the ability of grid planners, to actually get the equipment that's required to to modernize or upgrade their grid. And, you mentioned transformers in your report, which is I I it was about 8 or 9 months ago, I interviewed, an American expert who said that this is a huge issue. And as we build out, the distribution networks that are required, this the, transformer shortage is going to become more and more acute. What's your take on that?
Alex:That's absolutely true. A colleague of mine here at the conference board did, research on the transformer shortage and and wrote a paper this, that can be looked up in our website as well, and that really outlines that some of those shortages, you know, they really started, you know, materializing much more directly during the COVID pandemic. And then now since have, you know, there remained issues, especially when 1 looks at, energy demands and and how energy markets operate. So I think, transformer shortage is absolutely critical. There are other constraints in the energy industry certainly, but this is 1 of them that is very acute.
Markham:1 of the, bits of data that caught really caught my eye is, the expansion of data centers, since, you know, the last 3, 4 years, but it's not happening in isolation. The in in variety of of pieces of legislation at the federal level, such as the infrastructure act and chips and, science and chips acts and and but particular, the inflation reduction act has set off a a binge of investment in manufacturing facilities. There's a big emphasis now in North America on reshoring manufacturing. And, of course, all of that is in, electricity intensive as a rule.
Alex:Yep.
Markham:And what how will that interact with this expansion of of AI? Will it just exacerbate things, or are there some efficiencies to be found?
Alex:That's a very good question, and I you know, I'm alluding to this in the paper in terms of, you know, this this this reassuring trend that is real is is really supported now by by you can see it in the data. You can see it how it's how it's being, you know, incentivized by the most recent, you know, legislature legislative, implementation in this in in US. So I think, ultimately, at least in the near term, it seems like this is going to add to the pressures. And once we get into this entire process of greater AI use, more construction of data centers, and added reshoring, there might be some efficiencies to that can be identified going forward operationally. It's just hard to see what exactly those might be.
Alex:And and, you know, probably people that are more on the technical side of things, maybe they can already point to some of those, but at this point, from my perspective, it's my, it's my understanding that in the energy sector, efficiencies have always materialized over time, and that certainly happened. It's this seems like a case in which there's a lot of things pile on all all at the same time.
Markham:Yes. And in that vein, here is an eye popping number, frankly. Nationwide, electricity demand is now expected to grow 4.7% per year over the next 5 years, nearly double the previous forecast of 2.6 percent annual growth. And just for context, I remember in the glory days before the the the financial collapse in 2008, here in British Columbia, the province I live in, which is almost entirely, hydroelectric power, They were, 2% growth per year was a lot of growth that that, you know, that was a a fairly significant, challenge, for the provincial utility DC hydro. So now if we're talking about 4.7% per year, My goodness gracious.
Markham:That is some serious growth.
Alex:That that's very true. And, you know, this goes along with the projections of how much of the total electricity load is going to be taken up by data centers, similar, you know, crypto, various, you know, technologies along those ways, along those lines, in in just a few years. I find it fascinating how quickly this all has really happened. If you look at the projections by the Energy Information Agency that just came out last year, essentially. Some of these projections, they really exclude some of the the data center trend, and they are, you know, if you look at their forecast, still just projecting, you know, less than a percent growth on average per year between now and 2050.
Alex:And it this this conversation has happened so fast, so quickly. So it it's now all of a sudden on everybody's mind. Now the day goes by that there isn't a, you know, article in a major paper that talks about the strand. So, there might be, you know, a part of this that is over overreacting and overresponding to the to this dramatic increase, but it's clearly, as, you know, with the current data that we have available, that these relatively modest growth rates, the ones that you already just, you know, alluded to as well, they seem to be a thing of the past if if everything that is likely to happen is going to happen over the next, you know, decade or 2.
Markham:Well, if we talk about the increase in, factory, manufacturing in the US, the onshoring trend, Now we throw on AI data centers, but we need to see this within the larger context of the global energy transition where we are essentially electrifying economies. So we're talking about electrifying our transportation, electrifying our home, heating and and cooling, and electrifying, other sectors, you know, like industrial processes, maybe steel making, that sort of thing. It add it all together, and I can see why, you know, there's a bit of panic in the United States.
Alex:There there's no question about that. You know, as a personal anecdote, what we try to do with in my own household is we went from, you know, the low hanging fruit, and we did installation of a house, you know, the house is from 18/97, so there's a lot of insulation insulating to be done. And then installed solar panels, hence, have now have a heat pump. We drive an EV. And if I just look at our statistics in terms of our, you know, electric demand that we've placed on the system, just as 1 household.
Alex:I mean, this is dramatic growth over the last 5 years alone, and if you extrapolate from that to larger populations, that there is the electrification, you know, strategy is gonna bring with it much greater demand. And in addition to that, you know, we are, you know, in the US, just under 10%, 9.1, I think it was in the last month, of, you know, new sales of vehicles that are electric or plug in hybrid, but that's projected to grow further. You know, globally, this is even you know, this is a higher rate. There's much more growth than other parts of the world, particularly China. And in addition to that, you just talk if you can talk about infrastructure in general, take a place like New York City, 60% of all emissions in a place like New York City come from the building sector.
Alex:And if you electrify buildings, then, yeah, that's going to be as long as you're talking about clean electricity, that's gonna be good for the climate. But you at the same time, you need to be able to serve those buildings, those stakeholders with the adequate amount of power.
Markham:I I have a couple of experts, that I see regularly on Twitter discussing this issue, and I I respect their opinion. They're they're smart folks. And their 1 of their arguments is that the technology is so much more efficient that if we think about it and they're usually arguing about it in terms of, that electricity versus and what it'll do to primary energy demand. And and we shouldn't think that that, a unit of, primary energy that's normally satisfied with fossil fuels will require an equivalent unit of electricity because, you know, heat pumps are 400% efficient and and EVs are, you know, so much more efficient than internal combustion engines. And and I I, you know, use the example of your home.
Markham:Well, recently in our 1300 square foot bungalow, we we work from home. So as you can imagine, my both my my wife, Joanna, is a partner in the business, so she's on her computer all day. I'm on computers all day doing my work. We have a heat pump. We have an electric water heater.
Markham:The only thing we have you know, the next thing and the only thing really left is to electrify our our vehicles, which will probably take another 3 or 4 years. But the the the point I wanna get to is that I track our, electricity demand, our consumption. It really hasn't gone up that much. I'm, frankly, I'm astonished at at how it has remained. It has gone up a little bit, but nowhere near what I expected, and the tremendous savings, for, our energy consumption, our energy costs has been remarkable.
Markham:And I so when I look at this, I go, wow. You know, if we're if we're a, an example of what might happen, a very small 1, maybe it won't be as bad because, you know, all of this, switch to electric technologies will just be so much more efficient. Yeah. And so I know you addressed some of this, but I didn't have any any what's your take on that kind of rosy hued view?
Alex:No. I I think that's a very good point. I think the efficiencies and and what we've just seen over the last few decades in terms of the efficiencies that we are now, you know, benefiting from, that that's those are real. There's no question about that. You know, examples for this are, you know, the the range of electric vehicles has gone up significantly.
Alex:You can actually now use an electric vehicle in in that in a way that is that is comparable to a fossil fuel vehicle as long as they have a home charger. And all of a sudden, we are talking about, you know, sort of similar similar similar ways of operating that vehicle, that is really not gonna affect your lifestyle anything any any different way. I mean, I think that if you and that comes back to my own example. If it's a rapid transition and you're changing a lot of infrastructure quickly, then what you probably find is that, you know, just by shifting transportation in rapid fashion, shift shift shifting cooking, heating, everything to, you know, into electrification. You might still see a bump up in demand, but I do think that it is fair to say that efficiencies do go the wrong way of of coloring some of those effects.
Alex:I mean, I'm not I don't think I'm necessarily, you know, gonna think about this as, yeah, efficiencies is gonna they're gonna solve the entire problem, but there's also a lot of a lot of, you know, innovations that we're probably not aware of. You take similar transmission lines, and recently, there's all this coverage now about reconductor and transmission lines, and that's going to create all this additional, capacity in that sector alone. And, you know, few years ago, except for engineers that worked in that space, nobody necessarily was really aware of it. And now you can you can add capacity without having to put up additional holes. That's great.
Alex:I mean, I think that's fabulous, and and 1 can, 1 should be optimistic that that's the way we're we we're hopefully gonna go as a as a country, as a society, as a as a planet, essentially, because that's going to be, allowing us to reduce emissions and not sacrificing certain lifestyles that people have accustomed to.
Markham:Yeah. It seems like the, my the technology that's transforming the power sector is, is not well known. I mean, reconductoring, it is sort of popped up on the agenda 2, 3 months ago, 6 months ago, and I see that in my own circles. We're talking about it now. But there's so much more, so much more.
Markham:I mean, digital controls and power electronics and demand response and, you know, and and various iterations of AI as applied to well, it's just it's mind boggling for a nontechnical person like myself. But then I talk to grid planners, you know, and they're struggling with it. You know how because it's all fairly new. And so, you know, there are a few experts. I I interviewed, Gerhard Schlage, who's the chief technology officer for Hitachi Energy, and he made the argument that all of those technologies together, with a switch to intermittent low emission or 0 emission supply like wind and and and solar will actually lead to a lower cost, more reliable, and more flexible power grid than we've ever imagined.
Markham:It's just we have to get from here to there, and a lot of the the path to from here to there is not obvious. And so, yeah, you're right. I mean, it it this could break either way. It it you know, innovations could come on stream and utilities could implement them, and we could do all sorts of things like, like, I don't understand why we don't go to big industrial operations and say, you know what? We'll subsidize you to adopt solar or wind, or even, you know, advanced geothermal maybe and and batteries, and you just unplug from the grid or you use the grid as a backup, but you self generate.
Markham:And and so we take a big load off the grid right there, and you do that enough times. Maybe we can avoid a big strain on the grid, which by thinking outside the box.
Alex:True. I agree with that, especially if you consider, you know, how much and we and we actually talked about this in our last in our last meeting here when we when we covered solar, in more detail. But the cost of solar have fallen so dramatically and so have the cost of storage that if you combine this and you add wind to create, you know, a different, you know, an energy source that peaks at different times, you can really create a supply pattern that is is much more sustainable and certainly, able to to meet all of these capacity requirements. And we're seeing this in some parts of the world where solar is taken, you know, is now generating vast tiers of electricity demand and then can also do this for longer periods of time when when matched up with with storage. I think there's there is huge opportunities with that.
Alex:So, absolutely, that's I think that's 1 1 should certainly be hopeful that that those techno technological obstacles can be overcome in the near future because I think, ultimately, if we're jumping forward and, you know, we're at the relative endpoint of this transition. 1 can imagine a future where, you know, this actually is a relatively smoothly functioning, electric system.
Markham:I I wonder if the United States, which generally has more market oriented, electricity systems, compared to Canada where we really only have 1, which is in Alberta. And the other 9 provinces are with the exception of Ontario, so we'll call it 8a half. But they're basically little islands. I mean, you know, the the provinces have the constitutional jurisdiction over energy of all kinds, including the power grids. And so they've created little you know, the grids are con mostly constrained to the provincial borders.
Markham:And, usually, there's a government owned, utility that manages all of that, and the government controls the regulator. And and and, you know, government sets the the, legislation and regulations that that govern that, that industry. So that's can be a very inflexible kind of and and doesn't seem to doesn't seem to be responding quickly to the challenges of electrification and and gen you know, doubling or tripling the electricity, generation and and and supply. Whereas the American system seems to be much more market oriented and but the thing that where I'm getting with this, Alex, is is that planning. You've got FERC.
Markham:So we have a national regulatory agency, which Canada does not have. You've got regional transmission organizations. You've got, state governments. You've got so many layers. And then there are organizations which I really don't understand.
Markham:Like, in the Pacific Northwest, there's a couple of organizations that somehow participate in planning that are seem to be, like, almost like nonprofits. So there just seems to be a lot more planning and thinking about this at that level than there is in Canada. And if you if you're if you argue that long term planning is critical to the response, then the US seems to be well suited, to doing that.
Alex:Well, the US certainly has a lot of the components in place. Right? I think if you have larger grid areas, you can you can offset some of the the spikes in different markets against each other. You can smooth the grid. You can you can align your portfolio generation in a way that you can meet your your low profile, essentially.
Alex:So that's that's great from an operations point of view. And I think, you know, historically, the planning hasn't always happened the way that 1 would would wish, but with you know, I think there's a growing awareness that this is a challenge of national and global proportion, so we need to really think about what this electric, you know, grid system is going to look like. And just falling back on fossil fuel power sources because we're now anticipating a spike in demand is not the right answer. I do think that we need to really think about, let's take advantage of some of the new technologies, and new technologies are not new anymore. Right?
Alex:Solar is hardly new, but certainly those kind of, you know, generation possibilities match them up with storage, match them up with with other, non, emitting, you know, generating sources, and as a result of that, manage the system much better going forward at a time when, at least in the near term, we're going to be generating a lot of additional demand.
Markham:Many of my listeners will be familiar with the tremendous expansion of of solar, renewables in general, but a lot of it is solar. It's taken place in China over the last, few years. And I ran across a graph, I think Bloomberg NEF produced it, that was just mind blowing, and that is half of that new generation is not utility scale. It's rooftop.
Alex:Wow. That's okay.
Markham:I did not know that, and and I would not have expected that, to be honest. I I was really kinda taken aback that that, basically, Chinese homes are are sticking, you know, solar panels on their on their roofs. So if that's the case, then another way to relieve pressure on the grids, and you see this debate being playing out in California currently, you know, is how much rooftop, solar panels plus batteries and plus virtual power plants and some of the other, you know, microgrids and other technologies can we deploy to, again, relieve potential strain on the on the, the bigger power grid?
Alex:Oh, absolutely. And in some communities in the US, it's already being done in a community solar installations where even if you don't have space on the roof and you may not live in a place where that's that's technically feasible, then you can participate in a community in a largest in a smaller scale operation, and you buy a certain share, and that's going to guarantee that you that you use clean power. And certainly for other households, it may make, you know, perfect sense to add solar panels to their roof. I think, if if that is paired with solar, if that is paired with, you know, ultimately, you know, any any kind of sort of storage capacity, that that's there's there's there's a lot of upside there.
Markham:So to wrap up our our conversation, Alex, my takeaway on this is that there the expansion in electricity demand associated with artificial intelligence and data centers is probably a given. That's a a pretty good guess. And there's the potential for all sorts of responses to that, from planning to to self generation of for industrial, you know, big sources of of, demand to rooftop solar paired with battery to on and on and on and on, that is not a given. That's a policy response. That's a market response that so on the 1 hand, we know the challenge is coming.
Markham:It's gonna be big. On the other hand, we have lots of tools to respond to it. Whether we will or not is another question. So where would you fall down? Will will the US respond or, adequately, or will it not?
Markham:What do you think?
Alex:Well, I think you this is a good way that you portrayed it because I think, ultimately, there's other 2 sides of the coin. Right? There is the there will be an increase in demand, and I think most people agree with that. And may that demand come from data centers or from electrification of buildings or from electrification of transport. It doesn't exactly matter.
Alex:Right? There's gonna be additional demand in the pipeline. I think that's probably true in in sort of the medium term. And then there are lots of components of strategy that can be employed to address those demand spikes. I think that's also true.
Alex:And they range from transmission lines to grid management to, solar installations and, AI driven operations off the grid and generation and so forth. So I think that, what we're probably gonna see is is in the near term, all kinds of, you know, cases in which, for instance, certain, you know, power plants that were scheduled to be taken off with already retired. They are gonna stick around for longer because local communities just didn't have any other source of providing electricity for for some of that increases in demand. I am hoping that, you know, with a little time passing and with just a little bit more data on the books, a little bit more clarity on some of these trends, that the perspective of planning is going to win out, and that we actually can think about some of the coordinating factors that could be used here to make to make better use of some of that technology that already exists. And like I mentioned before, I also would hate for this to turn into well, we manage the electricity system well, but now we have all these other environmental impacts that, you know, we really forgot about, and that's the water and that's the, you know, these these data servers that are in the data center, they turn over quite quickly.
Alex:There's going to be a lot of electronic waste. You need to have whole conversation about recycling, what are you gonna do with those. And I think there's this this this you know, you're sort of additional extensions of this conversation that should not be forgotten because they're going to be affecting communities quite directly.
Markham:Before I let you go, 1 more question. And are we having the nest, I guess, is when I say we, I mean, the United States. Is the United States having the conversations it needs both in the public and in at the industry level, at the planning level, and at the government level? Are they having the conversations that will lead to, a recognition of these these issues and solutions being put in place?
Alex:Yeah. It's a good question. I'm not sure I'm the best person to judge that, but I'm sure there are and I know of you know, there are conversations going on, certainly in industry, because they're gonna be responding to this. There are, you know, as we just learned, at the government level, there are conversations there going on. There's different stakeholder groups have conversations.
Alex:I think now the challenge is how do you bring people together for an overall coordinated approach, and that's that's really the problem.
Markham:Yeah. I I can see. I think that's a good way to put it. And and on that note, Alex, pleasure to see you again, and it's been a very interesting conversation. Thank you very much.
Alex:Thanks so much for having me. Welcome. Till next time.