Artificial intelligence is the talk of the town. Fans are promoting it as a way to achieve a swifter energy. Skeptics are pointing out its massive electricity demand. And some companies active in the wind, solar, and battery storage space are getting excited about possible deals—because these deals would save their bread and butter. One of these already got lucky.
It may do so theoretically, but in reality, powering data centers with battery-stored electricity and wind- and solar-generated electricity around the clock would require such massive investments it could sink the company. So, what Microsoft—and the rest of Big Tech—will actually be doing is what they are already doing, which is buying renewable energy credits from wind, solar, and battery developers and passing these as tokens of low-carbon electricity generation.