--- title: "Huge Power Demand for AI Is Keeping Polluting Coal Plants Alive" description: "AI's demand on the US power grid is resulting in changing phase-out deadlines for American coal companies." date: "2024-05-31" modified: "2024-05-31" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-polluting-coal-plants-alive" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai" - "climate change" - "energy" - "the digest" --- # Huge Power Demand for AI Is Keeping Polluting Coal Plants Alive ![AI's demand on the US power grid is resulting in changing phase-out deadlines for American coal companies.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Ripped Out of Retirement AI, which proponents say is humanity's future, is keeping the power infrastructure in the United States woefully in the past. As[ *The Financial Times* reports](), the power demand required to keep [energy-guzzling AI models]() running is moving back the country's plans to retire heavily polluting and non-renewable coal energy. According to the *FT*, major coal producers including AlliantEnergy have already moved sustainability goals by at least a few years. Electric utility company FirstEnergy also scrapped its 2030 goals entirely in February over demand concerns, [as *Bloomberg* reported at the time](). The moving of goalposts comes as a big win for the coal industry — and a loss to national and global climate initiatives, for which [reducing coal use]() is an essential and urgent goal. It also punctuates the desperation with which the US is trying to stay ahead in the ongoing AI race against international rivals. AI is an endless energy pit. How far is the US willing to go, to beat the world to the AI punch? ## Keeping the Factory Lights On To put the urgency of coal reduction into context: in 2022, [according to the World Resource Institute](), coal was the source of 36 percent of all global power. By 2030, to stay on track for the [1.5-degree-Celsius climate threshold](), the world will need to bring that 36 percent figure down to a comparatively meager 4 percent. Between its sheer power demands — one ChatGPT query uses [roughly ten times]() as much energy as a standard Google search — and its [water-guzzling](), AI is incredibly resource-intensive. This seems to be making a measurable dent: per the *FT*, the consultancy firm Grid Strategies predicts a nationwide "demand growth of 4.7 percent over the next five years." This forecast is reportedly double the previous year's figures, and while the number also takes cryptocurrency mining and cloud computing into consideration, AI is widely considered to be a [major driving force]() in these shifting numbers. Rest assured, those who have something to gain from the shift seem absolutely thrilled at the prospect that AI is the coal industry's knight in sooty, [respiratory illness-causing]() armor. "You can't replace the fossil plants fast enough to meet the demand," Alliance Resource Partners CEO Joe Craft, whose company holds rank as one of the US' top coal producers, told the *FT*. "In order to be a first mover on AI, we're going to need to embrace maintaining what we have." "We need more energy, not less," added Indiana governor Eric Holcomb. (Indiana is one of America's top coal-producing states.) "We absolutely as Americans," he continued, "can't afford to lose the AI war." **More on AI and energy:** [*ChatGPT Is Consuming a Staggering Amount of Water*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()