Modern civilization requires large amounts of affordable, reliable power
For years, America’s largest technology companies were among the loudest corporate voices calling for the green energy transition.
Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and others made sweeping climate commitments, purchased renewable energy credits and pledged to dramatically reduce or eliminate their carbon emissions.
Then the artificial intelligence revolution began.
Suddenly, the companies promising to build the technologies of the future discovered something that energy realists have understood for decades: Modern civilization runs on enormous quantities of affordable, reliable energy.
The result has been one of the more remarkable corporate reversals of modern industry. Big Tech is rediscovering nuclear power, embracing natural gas and scrambling to secure dependable electricity wherever it can find it. This may prove good news for society.
Big Tech, big green
Major tech companies’ corporate climate commitments came on the heels of a political movement seeking to move the United States away from fossil fuels and toward wind, solar and other politically favored energy sources.
Google announced an ambitious goal of operating entirely on carbon-free energy by 2030, while Microsoft pledged to become carbon negative by 2030 and Amazon committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Although the explosive growth of AI has forced all three to acknowledge rising emissions and refine their implementation timelines, these long-term climate targets remain central to their corporate branding.
Of course, these companies had every right to pursue these goals. The problem arose when corporate climate activism reinforced a broader political agenda that treated reliable conventional energy as something America could simply phase out, as if it were a fleeting fashion trend.
Yet electricity is different from many other services. A modern economy cannot simply wait for favorable weather before factories operate, hospitals treat patients, families heat their homes or entrepreneurs run their businesses.
Energy realists warned that affordability and reliability could not be relegated to secondary considerations in pursuit of political climate targets.
Now, some of America’s largest technology companies are learning that lesson firsthand.
Energy, the foundation of modern prosperity
Affordable, dependable energy is one of the fundamental building blocks of human prosperity. It is the master resource on which nearly everything that makes modern life comfortable, productive and safe depends.
Energy is used to grow and transport food. It heats and cools homes, provides power to factories, hospitals, schools, communication networks, transportation systems, water infrastructure and essentially every business in the country. The price of energy is embedded in the price of everything consumers buy.
When energy becomes more expensive and less reliable, society becomes poorer, families pay higher utility bills and transportation and manufacturing costs increase. Food prices rise. Energy unreliability and scarcity are like a hidden tax.
Read the rest at The Washington Times.
Donald Kendal is Director of The Heartland Institute’s Socialism Research Center. Kendal is also the host of Heartland’s In the Tank Podcast.
