How much energy does your AI prompt use? This question is particularly relevant considering that AI will use up to 12% of U.S. electrical power by 2028, and right now, we don't have the grid capacity to power both AI and non-AI customers
The problem is serious because companies are investing billions of dollars to bring decommissioned nuclear power plants like Three Mile Island (TMI) in Pennsylvania and the Palisades Nuclear Plant (PNP) in Michigan back online. Microsoft purchased TMI in 2024 and plans to use it to power its data centers exclusively.
Joe Dominguez, Constellation Energy Corp. Chief Executive Officer, said in an interview. “There’s no version of the future of this country that doesn’t rely on these nuclear assets.”
“That’s the thing with AI," said James Mathes, "They need a lot of power and as soon as you have it, they want it right away. Right now, it’s like a blank check for AI."
And contemplate this: "By 2034, global energy consumption by data centers is expected to top 1,580 TWh, about as much as is used by all of India," reports Bloomberg.
That's less than a decade away.
For the last 30 years or more, the U.S. has been building wind and solar farms. Those power sources aren't going to cut it. It's no coincidence that Texas and California lead the nation in solar and wind power output while coming in first and second in power outages.
Our electrical grid is failing. The problem is not being addressed adequately because green Luddites are trying to gum up the works.
"The same anti-growth, anti-progress environmentalists that succeeded in halting the growth of the nuclear industry in the wake of Three Mile Island have, in recent months, turned their sights on AI," writes Christian Britschgi in Reason.
"They've labeled the power-hungry industry an 'energy hog and 'a threat to climate change,'" he adds.
Obviously, unless a solution can be found that can bypass the green wackos, we'll be in a world of hurt. Your electric bill will become an object of fear and loathing, and it's not impossible to foresee brownouts and outages in the near future.
Nuclear is the painfully obvious solution. Several companies are working on smaller nuclear reactors that can be used to power data centers and even individual offices. But there has yet to be a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval of a design for commercial use. The Trump administration is trying to streamline the ancient approval process, but you'd never guess who's standing in the way: The same anti-nuclear groups who derailed nuclear power plant projects for the last 50 years.
It becomes a critical problem for the future of AI to find the electricity needed to power data centers. We could learn a lot if we could figure out how much AI usage is currently costing us, but Google, Microsoft, and Meta refuse to share that data.
The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern took a stab at estimating power usage for one AI prompt.
Researchers have stepped in to fill the gap. Sasha Luccioni, the AI and climate lead at open-source AI platform Hugging Face, has run tests to estimate the energy required to generate different types of content. Along with other researchers, she also maintains an AI Energy Score leaderboard. Since the top AI players use their own proprietary models, she relies on open-source alternatives.
The energy required to generate content varies widely depending on the model and GPU setup. Compare Luccioni’s findings with charging a typical smartphone, which uses around 10 watt-hours of energy:
• Text: A lightweight, single-GPU Llama model from Meta used about 0.17 watt-hours, while a larger Llama model running across multiple GPUs used 1.7 watt-hours.
• Images: Generating a single 1024 x 1024 image with one GPU also used 1.7 watt-hours.
• Video: This is the most intensive. Even making 6-second, standard-definition videos used anywhere between 20 and 110 watt-hours.
If that electricity isn't available because a wind farm went limp or because a solar farm can't generate electricity without sunshine, I'll be sure to write my congressman.
In the immortal words of Inspector Harry Callahan, "That's a helluva price to pay for being stylish." Or for feeling proud of yourself for stopping climate change in its tracks... or something.
