Hi community, I recently got into energy primarily because I work in tech and it has been a big topic at work even at events. I saw this guy on LinkedIn sharing his takes on energy and I wanted to get your opinion.

I tried validating the data/numbers he used too, seems valid, but I wanna know what the energy enthusiasts/community thinks about his opinion.

Seems like he’s an AI agents guy.

https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1m0mpcw

by mindlikeher

28 comments

  1. I’m also curious about what he said re Middle East, if they decide to subsidize their AI/energy, they can establish a moat.

  2. While directionally accurate, he has his numbers wrong – China is currently building 27 new nuclear reactors (also not “plants” – most of these are new reactors at existing facilities) [1].

    Nuclear is also the single most expensive way to generate electricity, so any extrapolation from China’s plans to other markets seems misguided.

    [1] https://nnsa.mee.gov.cn/ywdt/hyzx/202501/t20250107_1100142.html

  4. They probably aren’t also wasting as much of it making cat videos or Ghiblifying everything.

  5. I can’t verify the numbers. But I can see the way the AI data centers are driving up energy demand and pricing in my state. When I look at how the big beautiful bill kneecaps new energy generation, I think we are in trouble.

  6. Energy efficiency is going to become much more important, since there won’t be any appreciable new generation capacity coming online in the near/mid future.

    Too bad efficiency is “woke” and the current administration likes to beat on it to generate cheap social media heat.

    I wouldn’t be at all surprised if brownouts / rolling blackouts are on the horizon.

  8. What a funny take from a nukecel, ignoring that China installs about 100x more renewables than nuclear lol.

  9. 32 nuclear plants is nice. I think China installed 93 GW of solar in May.

  10. AI is simply the Dot Com Bubble for the 21 century. Eventually the private funding will dry up and companies will fail as the market will demand results. The only good thing about this ridiculous AI gold rush is that more effort will be spent on building redundancy for electrical grids.

  11. I really, really fucking hate all these tech douches who have no clue what the fuck they’re doing, but are being given serious consideration and authority over the real grownups in these kinds of spaces.

    They’re unserious spoiled brats who have been given Daddy’s credit card, and the freedom to do whatever they want. And it’s only going to get worse I fear.

  12. Im not convinced LLMs/content synthesizers (we dont have functional wide scale actual AI yet) are profitable yet, or will be as transformative as everyone is promising. Follow the incentives……. the people telling you AI is going to change the world are the people who make money from AI.

    China’s energy strategy is entirely about energy independence. This is the big driver of their EV push, renewables push, and for now, oil sourcing from Russia. They want to get to a place where a Strait Of Malacca oil blockade wouldn’t completely shut the country down to get more autonomy to move on Taiwan, as well as not be dependent on the West. This is part of why they’re trying to shift to be a consumer economy vs just an exporter as well.

    Again when you are trying to make sense of an entity’s actions…………… determine the incentives. China’s goals are clear and in that context their actions are pretty rational. It has nothing to do with AI….

  13. What is the deal with AI bros and nuclear?

    China’s nuclear rollout is faltering compared with solar and wind and yet he goes out of his way to not mention those.

  14. Nuclear bros always be ignoring the numbers. Makes a big deal about nuclear, which is about 1% of new capacity China added last year, while Solar was 65% at 277 gigawatts and next was wind for 18%.

    That is the size of Germany’s entire grid that China added in just solar in just last year. The general point is right – industrial power has always correlated with energy production, and Ai is especially power hungry, so the coming robot and Ai revolution will happen where the power is. And that power is Chinese *solar*.

  16. And how many wind, solar and batteries is China building?!?!

    [https://imgflip.com/i/a0d0bh](https://imgflip.com/i/a0d0bh)

    He is a nuclear bro. His opinion is irrelevant. China’s cheap energy comes from poisoning their people and a ridiculous amount of new renewables and batteries. Not nuclear power.

    AI datacenters wont increase the energy demand thaaaaat much:

    It projects that electricity demand from data centres worldwide is set to more than double by 2030 to around 945 terawatt-hours (TWh), slightly more than the entire electricity consumption of Japan today.

    [https://www.iea.org/news/ai-is-set-to-drive-surging-electricity-demand-from-data-centres-while-offering-the-potential-to-transform-how-the-energy-sector-works](https://www.iea.org/news/ai-is-set-to-drive-surging-electricity-demand-from-data-centres-while-offering-the-potential-to-transform-how-the-energy-sector-works)

    Sounds a lot but over the span of 5 years it is on par with the current electricity consumption growth.

  17. I don’t know how much LLMs have to improve further to justify this. I’m running a Qwen 3 30b on my local RX 6000 xt, and it’s a bit slow, but can almost do all the tasks I would want to do with AI, without spending hundreds of dollars on tokens or giving MechaHitler my data

    To me, this cry for more fossil and nuclear energy is to give venture capital a simple to understand reason why they should still throw money into OpenAI and other startups, and opportunists from the fossil fuel industry also cling to it.

  18. Again… true about energy is key for AI. Again false in pricing In Germany companies dont pay 18-22 cents its 3-6 cents.

  19. Yup, AI demand for energy is going to rise prices for us all — especially the GOP/Trump war on cheap renewables.

  20. A bit of a nuclear shill, as the 33 GW of nuclear capacity under construction (say, an average of 6 GW/year coming online as those are multiyear projections) is dwarfed by the 277+ GW of solar they added last year alone. Ignoring that, however, China is targeting a major reduction in their fossil fuel use, as their carbon-free generation is finally starting to outstrip their increase in energy demand. Meanwhile, TFG is allergic to green energy, and is harming the country with his policies. And despite his insistence, gasoline is no cheaper now than it was on Inauguration Day.

  21. I’m old enough to remember when crypto and AI only screwed up graphics card prices.

    If it’s energy, then it is everything.

  22. It is categorically untrue that only China is expecting increased electricity demand in the future.

    The electrification of combustion energy consumption (road transport, industrial heat, residential gas) has been a key variable in pretty much any country’s modelling for a long time. That involves widespread expectations of grid demand doubling or tripling.

    Against that backdrop of anticipated demand growth, data centre demand is an extra variable (as both demand, and potentially a load management tool) but it’s not exactly a unique out of the blue event.

  23. China is advancing into a type 1 civilization while the US enslaves itself.

  26. I can see the potential for AI to produce value enough to justify the energy consumption, but crypto to me just seems like a total waste of resources 🤷‍♂️

  27. So makes sense that US AI leaders want to put data centers in the Middle East

  28. Yes it’s way too funny listening to the US talking about A.I plants when they don’t have the power to run the country now and plants take decades 😂😂😂😂😂 90 deals in 90 days

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