Ripped Out of Retirement AI, which proponents say is humanity’s future, is keeping the power infrastructure in the United States woefully in the past. As The Financial Times reports, the power demand required to keep energy-guzzling AI models running is moving back the country’s plans to retire heavily polluting and non-renewable coal energy. According to the FT, major coal producers including AlliantEnergy have already moved sustainability goals by at least a few years. Electric utility company FirstEnergy also scrapped its 2030 goals entirely in February over demand concerns, as Bloomberg reported at the time. The moving of goalposts comes as a big win for the coal industry — and a loss to national and global climate initiatives, for which reducing coal use is an essential and urgent goal. It also punctuates the desperation with which the US is trying to stay ahead in the ongoing AI race against international rivals. AI is an endless energy pit. How far is the US willing to go, to beat the world to the AI punch? Keeping the Factory Lights On To put the urgency of coal reduction into context: in 2022, according to the World Resource Institute, coal was the source of 36 percent of all global power. By 2030, to stay on track for the 1.5-degree-Celsius climate threshold, the world will need to bring that 36 percent figure down to a comparatively meager 4 percent. Between its sheer power demands — one ChatGPT query uses roughly ten times as much energy as…Huge Power Demand for AI Is Keeping Polluting Coal Plants Alive