Many people have talked about how we would power all those AI computers that we will need in the future. Big tech companies are already planning/building large data centers for this foreseeable demand. So, these things need power, and the question is where will they get their power? The grid is already run pretty close to its limits. There isn't extra in the system.
So, where is the extra electricity going to come from?
Nuclear Power
Many are saying nuclear. And i do not know where this push is coming from. So many people believe that we have solved all the problems with making a nuclear thermopile. They say, "It is completely safe, and just look at how energy dense radioactive materials are!" It is like they have forgotten all the dangers and damage caused by nuclear energy.
On nuclear energy, it is the most expensive, most destructive, most dangerous way of boiling water that we have come up with. (and this is if it doesn't melt down) And "science" hasn't even acknowledge what so many psychics see around a nuclear power plant. A swirling vortex of blackness that destroys/sucks in life.
Further, we are only at the level of banging rocks together when it comes to understanding radioactive materials. We currently burn the radioactive elements (just like burning wood) to boil water. In the near future we will see how we can use radioactive materials to spin wheels directly.
I strongly advice that we stay away from nuclear power, at least until we enter grade school on the subject.
Natural Gas
There is a LOT of natural gas in America, and if we built the infrastructure to collect it all, we could have a electric plants powered by one of the cleanest burning fuels we have. It would be far better than burning it off, as we often do.
We could even do LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) and ship it around to where we need it. (and maybe even open some European markets for the stuff.
Bitcoin mining is doing a pretty good job getting at this stuff. Building the infrastructure to tap into these untapped, unused energy sources.
We will see if the AI people will build to take advantage of untapped energy sources.
Free-energy
Of course, the first thing a real AI would do is tell people how to make free-energy so that it will be provided with continuous, clean energy. But, we are probably as close to real free-energy as we are to real AI.
However, there are a lot of continuous, non-polluting energy sources.
The one used all over Eastern is hydroelectric. However, almost all the good rivers are already tapped.
So, we need to go back to 1970s Popular Mechanics and Popular Science and build things like geo-thermal, heat capture solar collectors and wave energy.
We can drill a well 3 miles deep and use a refrigerant like trifluoro-trichloro-ethane to boil at about 150° and spin a turbine. (It is much easier to drill a 3 mile deep well, then a 5 mile deep well. Avoids hot spots and explosive gases.)
We can use the same refrigerant and easily boil it with flat plate solar panels. Cheap to build, easy to maintain. And MUCH more durable for surviving through a hail storm.
We can build a Ferris-wheel sized paddle wheel and place it near the ocean coast where the upswelling starts. Then we would have 24/7 energy, and even more during storms.
These are all easy to build (maybe not cheap, but engineering-wise, these are easy. That we haven't built them yet has more to do with political road blocks, than anything real.
Governor Nuisance could make California a completely green state, but he won't. He is there to destroy the middle class by making them buy expensive electric vehicles and electric garden tools. By destroying tourism by things like mandatory smog testing of RVs coming into the state, and other such stupid and restrictive regulations.
We don't even have trash burning power plants in most of the states.
There is so much that we could do to turn our electric production green, but all the real ways are blocked by congress-critters.
So, we are either going to have to work at voting someone in that could make such huge changes, because they have huge support, or we are going to have to build, small community size power plants ourselves.
And this is what i expect the future to be like. A small community, that is self sufficient, and creates its own electricity. The old grid no longer needed.
And, maybe, just maybe, these AI data centers will use some of these nearly-free-energy ideas to power their servers.
All images in this post are my own original creations.