[RetroTechie]

Going by those figures, would mean that AI datacenters built so far, consume enough energy to undo almost a year of solar power buildout. AND growing like crazy. That's running costs. Not energy going into a building's construction or fabrication of the gear going in there.

Does seem like a problem worth worrying about.

[yellowapple]

The obvious solution here is for datacenter buildouts to include the power generation necessary for them to operate. Here in Nevada that's exactly what quite a few of the larger datacenter companies (Switch, Google, Apple, etc.) have been doing, whether by outright building solar farms themselves or by signing PPAs with geothermal companies like Ormat. That's indeed how these companies are able to advertise their datacenters as powered by “100% renewables” despite NV Energy's grid power mix including non-renewables (namely natural gas).