OPINION:
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Big Tech has spent the past decade vandalizing the electric grid and has returned to the scene of the crime to break the grid altogether. Worse, Big Tech is doing everything possible to avoid any responsibility or financial obligations for its nefarious conduct.
The electric grid structure requires an equal amount of electricity demand and delivery at all times. If demand exceeds supply at any time, the system will fail, and widespread blackouts or brownouts will occur.
Until recently, America’s power grid was supplied primarily by coal, with natural gas and nuclear power as significant contributors. Those conventional energy sources are highly reliable and can produce electricity at near full capacity at any time of day or night. So long as sufficient coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants existed, electricity blackouts and brownouts were rare, even when substantial spikes in power demand occurred. Just a few years ago, blackouts and brownouts were so rare that any such actual or threatened event was a huge and scandalous news story.
For more than a decade, however, Big Tech has waged war on conventional energy in furtherance of its “woke” climate agenda. Big Tech saturated social media with wind and solar power propaganda, censored and stifled the speech of people pointing out flaws in wind and solar power or flaws in alarmist climate change theory, and used its staggering financial resources to pressure political influencers to abandon reliable conventional energy and replace it with intermittent and unreliable wind and solar power.
For example, Big Tech corporations in 2014 threw a public temper tantrum. They withdrew funding for the American Legislative Exchange Council after its policymakers approved model legislation to repeal renewable power mandates and expressed skepticism about alarmist climate change policies.
The chairman of Google at the time, Eric Schmidt, told NPR after withdrawing funding for ALEC, “We funded them as part of a political game,” but then Google decided that “we should not be aligned with such people. They’re just literally lying.” ALEC and other public policy organizations that would not advance Big Tech’s wind and solar climate change agenda risked painful and public consequences of seeing substantial Big Tech funding disappear.
With Big Tech wielding its power and leading the battle, wind and solar have gained substantial grid share and forced reliable coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants to close. Between 2010 and 2023, the share of wind and solar power in the national electric grid increased from a negligible 2% to a substantial 14%. Perfectly operational conventional power plants were dismantled as a result. Also as a result, electricity blackouts and brownouts have become more common as unreliable wind and solar power fail to meet spikes in demand.
Vandalizing the grid in such a manner apparently was not enough for Big Tech. For more than a decade, national electricity demand has remained essentially flat. For example, between 2010 and 2023, electricity demand grew by a total of just 1%. That’s just one-tenth of 1% growth in demand per year.
Now, however, energy experts warn that electricity demand is likely to rise 4.7% over the next five years, which the electric grid cannot currently handle. Moreover, energy experts expect a doubling of electricity demand by 2040. Unless immediate action is taken to restore more on-demand power to the grid, blackouts and brownouts may soon become ordinary events throughout the country.
Experts observe that a primary culprit for such rapidly increased electricity demand is Big Tech and its rapid growth in electricity consumption related to artificial intelligence, new data centers and other operations. NPR reports that Microsoft has increased its greenhouse gas emissions — which are a proxy for its energy use — by a whopping 29% since 2020. Google has increased its greenhouse gas emissions by an even more staggering 48% since 2019, according to NPR.
State policymakers have begun trying to repair the grid that Big Tech previously vandalized and now is breaking. The task of fixing the grid will be difficult and expensive. But Big Tech has a massive lobbying army and is deploying all of its clout and resources to block any repairs that would in any way put Big Tech on the hook for its damage. If Big Tech continues to get its way, taxpayers and electricity ratepayers, rather than Big Tech, will bear the burden. It’s the Big Tech elites vs. everyday ratepayers.
Unfortunately, Big Tech is winning.
• James Taylor (JTaylor@heartland.org) is president of the Heartland Institute.
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