Meeting Demand Follows Biden AI Meeting with Big Tech and Energy Execs
Washington, DC — On Friday, Demand Progress Education Fund, Athena and a coalition of groups advocating for the public good sent a letter to the White House demanding a meeting to discuss the costs of constructing the massive, power and water-sucking data centers needed to power AI companies. The demand follows a White House meeting on the subject earlier this month that included big tech and energy company executives but excluded anyone fighting for environmental justice, American workers and American consumers.
In neighborhoods across the nation, sprawling data centers packed with row upon row of constantly-humming computers guzzling massive amounts of energy and water are being built that threaten to increase our dependence on dirty energy. Big Tech and Big Energy executives who attend the White House meeting stand to profit from this dangerous overconsumption while workers, consumers and environmental advocates are being shut out of the conversation. The public interest groups’ letter notes that many of the companies at the meeting—like Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia—are currently being sued by the Biden administration for harming workers and monopolizing industries.
“This important policy conversation impacts all of us and the American people need to be included, not just big business CEOs,” said Emily Peterson-Cassin, Director of Corporate Power at Demand Progress Education Fund. “The Biden administration’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights showed admirable concern and care about regulating AI. We’re asking them to show the same level of concern and care for the environmental, labor and consumer impacts of building massive data centers across the nation to power AI companies.”
“When Big Tech and utility monopolies collude to set public energy policy, we should all be concerned,” stated Ryan Gerety, Director of the Athena Coalition. “As part of an AI-boom, tech corporations are racing to build energy-hungry data centers with little actual attention paid to consequences for the planet and public. Today, coal plants are staying open so that the richest corporations in the world get the energy they want. Meanwhile, investor-owned utility monopolies are happy to turn a profit. If this continues, the public will pay higher energy costs, and we will have failed to build the clean energy infrastructure we need for the future of people and the planet.”
“Projected energy demand to supply planned AI-related data centers are upending U.S. power markets, straining the grid and exposing American households to higher energy burdens and increased toxic fossil fuel emissions. It is essential that our AI policies prominently feature public interest, consumer and environmental groups at the table to ensure that the perspectives of working families are adequately represented in policy discussions,” said Tyson Slocum, Energy Program Director for Public Citizen.
“Data centers fueled by AI are receiving enormous state and local tax abatements, undermining public budgets and shifting the burden onto homeowners and small businesses,” said Greg LeRoy, Executive Director of Good Jobs First. “Any federal efforts on data centers need to center community benefits and sound budgeting first.”
“The Biden administration is currently allowing data centers to run amok, jumping in line for access to power and allowing investor-owned utilities to soak ratepayers for new construction,” stated Jeff Ordower, North America Director of 350.org. “We need energy policy that transitions us away from fossil fuels, not where big data and utilities collaborate on how to double down on the status quo.”
“This is a marriage of two monopolized industries that will prove extremely costly for American electricity consumers who had no representation at this meeting,” said John Farrell, Co-Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Director of ILSR’s Energy Democracy Initiative. “Data centers have already received as much as $2 million per job in public subsidies, and investor-owned utilities are eagerly offering sweetheart deals to these data centers so they can profit from building the electric grid infrastructure to serve Big Tech’s desires.”
“AI data centers have rapidly become one of the largest threats to affordable, reliable, and clean power in Indiana,” said Ben Inskeep, Program Director at Citizens Action Coalition. “We need our elected leaders to stand up for consumers and protect us from these multi-trillion-dollar Big Tech companies that only care about increasing profit regardless of the consequences to the communities hosting their data centers.”
“We work at Amazon and we see first-hand the many strategies (e.g. PR misdirection and creative accounting) that senior leadership employs to greenwash and mislead the public about the true environmental impact of its data center operations. This is why it is critical that Big Tech and industry groups cannot be the only stakeholders in discussions about the future of AI infrastructure. Workers and civil society must have a seat at the table as well,” stated Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.
###