In late October 2024, The Heartland Institute released a study I coauthored with Heartland President James Taylor and Robinson Center Research Fellow Linnea Lueken describing the high costs utilities are foisting upon ratepayers and taxpayers in their profiteering quest to replace fossil fuels with unreliable so-called renewables. Utilities embraced renewables because they could reap large profits in the form of fixed costs of construction plus subsidies for operation, but also because virtue-signaling big banks, investment firms, and Big Tech pushed the green energy transition as a way to fight climate change. When it comes to secure, reliable electric power supplies, utilities are no longer on their customers’ sides, choosing increased profits over the public services they were chartered for and charged with providing.

In recent months, as I detailed previously in a Townhall column, under pressure from the attorneys general and legislatures in various states, and with Donald Trump returning as president, big banks, investment houses, and fund managers have begun to see the writing on the wall and have started withdrawing their support for multilateral and domestic climate goals and efforts to end fossil fuel use. Their support for wind and solar continues, but now it’s alongside support for other sources of energy, instead of in lieu of it.

The third private pillar supporting the green new scam, big tech/AI, last year finally began to acknowledge that despite their decades-long support for government-driven green energy mandates and subsidies to reach net zero carbon emissions, their industry can’t rely on the “renewable” wind and solar power they wanted the world to run on. What big tech/AI needs is reliable power, power not dependent on the whims of the weather or the day not turning to night. Heartland policy experts discussed the shift in Big Tech toward demanding increasing amounts of reliable electric power, in an episode of our popular In the Tank livestream, and I discussed model legislation aimed at that goal—reliable energy for all, not just Big Tech—in a column for Real Clear Energy.

What was once a trickle of Big Tech support for reliable energy has become a torrent, at least for nuclear power, with the release of an official statement in support of nuclear, “The Large Energy Users Pledge,” on the World Nuclear Association’s website, signed by Big Tech/AI heavyweights. Among the points the pledge states are these:

• Recognizing that, despite ongoing energy efficiency and optimization efforts, energy demand in many industries is expected to increase significantly in the coming years in order to support growing economies.
• Agree that nuclear energy capacity should at least triple by 2050, from current levels, to help achieve global goals for enhanced energy resiliency and security, and continuous firm clean energy supply.
• Recognizing that large energy users often depend on the availability of abundant energy for their successful and cost-competitive operations, and that nuclear energy can provide round the clock energy independently of the weather, the season or the geographical location.
• Agree that safe, clean, firm energy technologies, including nuclear, play an important role in creating a diversified and reliable grid.
• Agree that a resilient strategy for fostering economic growth should include an increase in the share of electricity provided by nuclear energy and should ensure energy abundance delivered through a diversified and reliable grid infrastructure.

Science writer Jo Nova’s comment on Big Tech’s sharp energy turnabout on her popular blog merits quoting at length:

Just like that—the renewables bubble went phht.

After twenty years of hailing wind and solar, suddenly the world’s tech giants are cheering for nuclear power. Worse—they don’t even mention the words carbon, low emissions or CO2. The new buzzwords are “safe, clean and firm”. They talk about needing energy “round the clock”, and they talk about “energy resilience” — but they don’t say nuclear is “low emissions”. It’s like they want everyone to forget their activism. Did someone say something about climate change?

Meta, Amazon, and Google have flipped like a school of barracuda. Five minutes ago, life on Earth depended on achieving Net-Zero with fleets of wind farms in the sunset, now, they just want energy and lots of it. The big tech fish and their friends have signed a Large Energy Users Pledge admitting that the demand for energy is rising rapidly, that nuclear should triple by 2050 and that large energy users depend on the availability of abundant cheap energy (Small energy users too, Mr Bezos-Zuckerburg-Pichai.) The closest they come to hinting at the ghost of renewables is when they say they want energy that’s not dependent on “the weather, the season, or the geographical location”.

There’s no “Sorry we got it wrong”. There’s no apology for hectoring us, censoring us, or wasting billions of dollars. It’s just Mr Don’t-Look-Over-Here telling us what most engineers knew for 30 years. This is the billionaire club asking the taxpayers to build them more nuclear plants.

Signatories include Siemens Energy, which suffered a 36% share price fall 18 months ago when it admitted it was losing billions trying to maintain wind turbines.

It’s the perfect storm. Just as renewable investments wallow in their failures, the AI race is escalating, and it needs monster data, which means monster energy. As we saw in Texas the new grid entrants are asking for a whole gigawatt of capacity each, and peak demand is expected to rise by a wild 75% in the next five years.

Less than a year ago Microsoft was making the “biggest ever renewable energy agreement” but now it’s resurrecting the old Three Mile Island nuclear plant.

Sadly, the Big Tech giants didn’t boldly go where they should have, to embrace all sources of reliable, affordable electric power, which would have included coal and natural gas, but they have been seen consulting with and publicly embracing President Donald Trump. Perhaps his public pronouncement this week in support of expanding use of coal means Big Tech’s embrace of Old King Coal might not be far behind. After all, it has become apparent that for them what is good is whatever can give them enough electricity to power their desired growth of AI.

Sources: Jo Nova; World Nuclear Association; The Heartland Institute; The Heartland Institute