One million Blackwell GPUs would suck down an astonishing 1.875 gigawatts of power. For context, a typical nuclear power plant only produces 1 gigawatt of power.
Fossil fuel-burning plants, whether that’s natural gas, coal, or oil, produce even less. There’s no way to ramp up nuclear capacity in the time it will take to supply these millions of chips, so much, if not all, of that extra power demand is going to come from carbon-emitting sources.
Seems like the smart move would make a mandate that any AI data center that wants to activate needs to provide its own power from wind and solar, or at least build or contribute to an existing wind and solar plant on the same grid to offset their estimated power consumption watt for watt.
Same issue, why shouldn’t we use that to replace fossil fuel elsewhere instead? The land they’re using to produce green energy could be used to do the same but for essential needs instead.