The CEO of Marathon Digital talks about the cryptocurrency market and mining practices in an exclusive interview with FOX Business.
of Artificial intelligence (AI) A boom, increased clean technology manufacturing, and cryptocurrency mining are straining the U.S. energy supply as energy sources struggle to keep up with rising demand.
Rising industrial demand from technology companies operating data centers and training AI models, electric vehicles, manufacturers, and emerging technologies such as cryptocurrencies has significantly increased the demand for energy generation. The abolition of fossil fuels and nuclear power plants electricity demand Rising prices are increasing the burden on the country’s energy supply.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) is a nonprofit regulatory agency dedicated to ensuring reliable and efficient energy access in the United States, Canada, and parts of the Baja region of Mexico; We are preparing a report on suitability. Summer and winter seasonal and long-term reliability evaluation.
The latest long-term reliability assessment conducted by NERC in 2023 found a significant upward shift in energy demand from the winter of 2020 to 2023. He also predicts that summer demand in 2024 will reach its highest level since 2016, and winter demand will reach its highest level since at least 2015.
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Power grids are facing increasing demands from technology companies for AI model training, cloud data centers, increased use of EVs, the retirement of fossil fuel power plants, and crypto mining. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images)
The report also points to several risks to reliable energy supplies in various transmission regions, with much of the region stretching from Canada near the Great Lakes and Mississippi River south to the Gulf of Mexico Marked as high-risk areas for lack of transmission capacity. Four years. Additionally, most states west of the Mississippi River and in the Northeast region were flagged as high-risk areas.
” [Bulk Power System] “Demand and energy growth rates are now projected to be the highest since 2014, driven primarily by electrification and projected growth in electric vehicles over this assessment period,” NERC wrote.
NERC says resource growth is “becoming more difficult” as fossil fuel power generation sources are phased out, adding: “More than 83GW of generators are planned to be retired by 2033, and even more generation is expected to be phased out.” It is expected that many aircraft will be phased out, and power generation plans will need to take into account growing energy demand and grid stability.”
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The proliferation of EVs is placing new burdens on the power grid. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
Andy Kubengros, managing director of the data center market at commercial real estate firm JLL, told the Washington Post that “utilities across the board are saying, ‘We don’t know if we can handle this, we need to audit this.’ I see them saying that,” he said. Our system has never dealt with this kind of influx before. ”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at the World Economic Forum in January that energy breakthroughs, such as widespread adoption of nuclear fusion, are needed for AI to reach its full potential. said.Large-scale language models that empower you AI tools like ChatGPT is trained on large amounts of data in large data centers that consume large amounts of energy.
“There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough,” Altman said. “That motivates us to invest more in fusion.”
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Employees repair servers at the Facebook data center in Prineville, Oregon. Data centers like those that service the cloud and AI consume large amounts of energy. (Meg Roussos/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
Mr. Altman has personally invested $375 million. Nuclear fusion The company then signed an agreement to supply energy to Microsoft, OpenAI’s major financial backer and partner.
Other emerging Technology like cryptocurrency This contributes to the strain on the power grid. Cryptocurrency mining is an energy-intensive activity, and the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) is seeking to collect data from cryptocurrency miners to better understand their power consumption.
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Last week, the EIA withdrew its original data collection plan following backlash from the cryptocurrency industry on the grounds that such data is proprietary. The agency said it will publish the new proposal and go through a federal rulemaking process with a public comment period before moving forward.
