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energy
DeepSeek Gives the Lie to the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Latest Stalling Tactic
The industry holds that we will need so much electricity for the data centers to keep this technology running that we’ll have to give up on dealing with climate change for now. A new, more efficient AI challenges that.
Jan 31, 2025
Cince we’ve all been weathering the head-spinning assault on the Constitution by the new administration (and, at Third Act and elsewhere, trying to do something about it), I thought it might make sense to provide you with one interesting piece of good news.
It concerns this DeepSeek Chinese AI program that you’ve doubtless been reading about in recent days. I’m the last person to turn to for an analysis of its virtues (I remain fully dependent on my highly-developed Natural Cluelessness), but I am very clear that it complicates the main current task of the fossil fuel industry: glomming onto AI as the latest excuse for building out a bunch of gas-fired power plants.
That narrative—which has been building for a year or so—holds that we will need so much electricity for the data centers to keep this technology running that we’ll have to give up on dealing with climate change for now. It reached its zenith last week when the new administration announced something called Stargate, a $500 billion plan that, as U.S. President Donald Trump put it, would be “the largest AI infrastructure project in history.” This was the moment when he declared an “energy emergency” so that we could build more power plants (but not, of course, the solar or battery parks that Silicon Valley experts have testified would be the most efficient way to power these megacenters).
The increasingly gloomy idea that there was no possible way we could every deal with climate because AI would soak up every new electron that sun and wind could ever provide, may not be quite as true as it seemed to some a week ago.
I would venture to say, given Trump’s predilections, that he neither understands nor cares much about the AI part of all of this, but he completely groks it as a way to pay back Big Oil for the $445 million they invested in the last election. (Political donations come in millions with an M, and the paybacks come in billions with a B—of our money). As Bloombergreported, the whole DeepSeek incident shows how dependent on this AI story the fossil fuel industry is as an excuse for expansion (just as a couple of years ago it was dependent on the Ukraine war story):
In one brutal blow, DeepSeek has revealed just how many energy-related businesses in the U.S. have been banking on an artificial intelligence boom—and the surge in power demand it was supposed to bring.
For the past year, their growth expectations and share prices were boosted by the belief that AI would require an unprecedented wave of data center construction, with some centers needing as much electricity as entire cities. Utilities and power plant operators benefited, too, but the effect went far wider than such obvious industries, touching an astonishing array of companies.
That became clear the moment China’s DeepSeek unveiled a chatbot that could rival the best American AI programs while using just a fraction of the electricity, perhaps as little as 10%. DeepSeek’s announcement hammered the shares of uranium producers and natural gas pipeline operators alike. Companies that supply power plant equipment and data center cooling systems suffered as well in Monday’s big selloff.
I don’t think we know enough yet to know if that claim—”rival the best American AI programs while using just a fraction of the electricity, perhaps as little as 10%”—is actually true. There are voices in the U.S. today beginning to claim that DeepSeek plundered American code to make its breakthroughs (which is truly funny, since American AI merrily plundered everything everyone has ever written, to make its breakthroughs). And there are others saying that DeepSeek, by making AI more affordable, will actually increase the amount that it is used.
But it does seem as if something new is afoot—the search for efficiency, instead of just massive brute force—in constructing artificial intelligence. As the investment gurus Dylan Lewis and Tim Beyers at The Motley Foolput it:
One of the main things that has popped up a lot in the reporting on this is that the compute necessary for what is running on DeepSeek is a fraction of the compute for some of the other systems. Watching the way that the market is processing this, we are seeing Big Tech companies take a hit. We are seeing some of the chip companies take a hit. We're also seeing energy companies take a hit because there is this feeling that maybe as we get a little bit more technologically advanced as other players start coming into the space, some of the energy demands for this technology won't be as big as people have maybe originally thought.
and
There is no way we are going to be building out the amount of energy infrastructure required to service all this at the level we are talking about in the timeframe we were talking about. Then what happens? You have a constraint. Do you keep doing what you're doing and overwhelm the energy infrastructure, knowing full well you can't build it out at the level that you want to, in the timeframe you want to, or do you do what the industry always does, which is find areas of efficiency to scale in a better, more economical way? That's what always happens.
I’m not beginning to tell you how all this comes out. All I’m saying is, the increasingly gloomy idea that there was no possible way we could every deal with climate because AI would soak up every new electron that sun and wind could ever provide, may not be quite as true as it seemed to some a week ago. (It would be awfully nice if this kind of move toward computing efficiency catches on—here’s another story from this week, about new software fixes that seem capable of reducing power demand at these data centers by 30%.)
You could, I think, even draw a crude analogy between DeepSeek and solar power, in that it seems to be producing the same thing that OpenAI and Meta are producing for a fraction of the cost, the same way that photovoltaics produce power more cheaply than Exxon. And since it’s open source, it undercuts them in another way too: Anyone can get their hands on this and work with it. (“Anyone” meaning anyone who knows what they’re doing—not me, obviously). The advantage of hoarding chips, which has been Big Tech’s strategy, may turn out to be kind of like the advantage of hoarding “reserves” of hydrocarbons—less solid than might have been expected. To complete this imperfect analogy, AI, like the solar cell, may have been invented in the U.S., but it’s China who may figure out how to make the most of it.
It was only two (very long) weeks ago that former President Joe Biden, in his farewell address, warned us against the “tech-industrial complex.” Some youngsters, working around the constraints imposed by the U.S., seem to have struck a blow in that direction. It’s obviously far too much to hope that the U.S. and China might cooperate to develop this new technology in some rational way—the best we can hope for, I think, is that they won’t actually destroy the planet en route to whatever nirvana these new intelligences have in mind for us.
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'A Disastrous Mistake': Trump Taps Fracking CEO Chris Wright for Energy Secretary
"This is going to be the oiliest administration since George W. Bush," lamented one environmental campaigner.
Nov 16, 2024
In a move that alarmed green groups, Republican President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday tapped Chris Wright—the CEO of a fracking company who denies the climate emergency—as his energy secretary.
Wright, who leads the Denver-based oil services company Liberty Energy, is a Republican donor whose nomination to head the Department of Energy is backed by powerful fossil fuel boosters including oil and gas tycoon and Trump adviser Harold Hamm.
"Chris has been a leading technologist and entrepreneur in Energy. He has worked in Nuclear, Solar, Geothermal, and Oil and Gas," Trump said in a statement announcing his choice. "Most significantly, Chris was one of the pioneers who helped launch the American Shale Revolution that fueled American Energy Independence, and transformed the Global Energy Markets and Geopolitics."
"Not surprising but still appalling that Trump's pick for Energy Secretary is a Big Oil CEO."
Trump—who has promised to increase fossil fuel production beyond the record-setting levels of the Biden administration—also said Wright would serve on a new Council of National Energy led by Doug Burgum, his pick to run the Interior Department.
In a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Wright said that he is "honored and grateful for the opportunity" to be nominated by Trump.
"My dedication to bettering human lives remains steadfast, with a focus on making American energy more affordable, reliable, and secure," he added. "Energy is the lifeblood that makes everything in life possible. Energy matters. I am looking forward to getting to work."
Wright calls himself "a lifelong environmentalist" and said last year that "climate change is a real problem." However, he also said in 2023 that "there is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy" and that "there is no climate crisis and we're not in the midst of an energy transition either."
While fossil fuel proponents cheered Wright's nomination, climate and environmental defenders voiced alarm over the pick.
"Not surprising but still appalling that Trump's pick for Energy Secretary is a Big Oil CEO," League of Conservation Voters senior vice president for government affairs Tiernan Sittenfeld wrote on X.
Natural Resources Defense Council senior vice president for climate and energy Jackie Wong blasted Wright as "a champion of fossil fuels" whose nomination was "a disastrous mistake."
"The Energy Department should be doing all it can to develop and expand the energy sources of the 21st century, not trying to promote the dirty fuels of the last century," Wong said in a statement reported by The Associated Press. "Given the devastating impacts of climate-fueled disasters, DOE's core mission of researching and promoting cleaner energy solutions is more important now than ever."
Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, lamented that "this is going to be the oiliest administration since George W. Bush."
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Advocates Urge Biden to 'Secure His Climate Legacy' by Acting on LNG Before Trump Takes Office
"The clock is ticking—for the Biden administration and our planet," one campaigner asserted.
Nov 07, 2024
With just 75 days left before climate-denying Republican President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House to pursue his "Drill, Baby, Drill" energy agenda, clean energy advocates in the United States on Wednesday urged President Joe Biden to take "bold action" to move toward a fossil fuel phaseout and a sustainable future for the world's people and the planet they all share.
"Although millions of Americans voted to reject Trump's dangerous agenda, we face another four years of a Trump presidency," said Oil Change International executive director Elizabeth Bast. "Trump has promised to double down on oil and gas production, accelerating climate catastrophe while continuing to enable violence against vulnerable communities—from environmental defenders to Palestinians facing genocide. His policies will compound environmental racism and human rights abuses, with Black, Brown, Indigenous, and frontline communities in the U.S. and around the world bearing the heaviest burden."
"Movements for change have won important victories under the toughest conditions," Bast added. "It would take more than a Trump presidency to change that. Every pipeline, every fossil fuel export terminal, and every fracking well we can stop matters."
To that end, Oil Change International U.S. program manager Collin Rees asserted that "in his final months in office, President Biden has the opportunity to secure his climate legacy by taking bold action to phase out fossil fuels and protect our climate and communities."
"We are calling on Biden to immediately end fossil fuel expansion, make permanent his January pause on new [liquefied natural gas] exports, shut down the disastrous Dakota Access Pipeline, and fulfill the U.S.' commitment to stop financing international fossil fuel projects," he continued.
Looking forward to this month's United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29)—which is set to begin next week in Baku, the capital of petrostate Azerbaijan—Rees said that "Biden must seize his final moment at COP29 in Azerbaijan this November to cement real climate action before Trump takes office."
"After pledging to move away from fossil fuels at COP28, Biden needs to deliver by championing a bold new $1 trillion annual climate finance package and putting forth a plan for a fast, fair, forever, funded, fossil fuel phaseout," he argued. "This funding will transform last year's fossil fuel promises into genuine support for adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage—but only if Biden acts now."
"The clock is ticking—for the Biden administration and our planet," Rees stressed. "What Biden does now will determine whether he'll be remembered as the leader who did his utmost to limit the Trump administration's damage and keep the world from hurtling towards climate chaos."
Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media echoed the demand, calling on Biden to "make a mountain of progress for Trump to try to undo."
Bloombergreported Thursday that the Biden administration is "racing" to complete a study examining the climate, economic, and national security implications of increased LNG exports. While Trump has vowed to end Biden's LNG export pause on his first day in office, any adverse findings in the study could be used to launch legal challenges to the new administration's project approvals.
Despite campaign promises to take bold climate action—including by banning new fossil fuel drilling on public lands—Biden oversaw the approval of more new permits for drilling on public land during his first two years in office than Trump did in 2017 and 2018.
During Biden's tenure, the United States became the
world's leading LNG exporter. The president has overseen what climate defenders have called a "staggering" LNG expansion, including Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, and more than a dozen other projects that, if all completed, would make U.S. exported LNG emissions higher than the European Union's combined greenhouse gas footprint.
The Biden administration has also held fossil fuel lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and has approved the highly controversial Willow project and Mountain Valley Pipelinedespite warnings from climate scientists that continued fossil fuel extraction has no place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating and meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement.
On a positive note, the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by Biden contains unprecedented investments in the clean energy sector, including solar, wind, and battery storage.
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