05.11.2025, Moscow.
The environmental concern of the previous decade and the focus on humanity’s carbon footprint have proven to be hypocritical, as these priorities have completely faded into the background in light of the enormous energy demands required to power artificial intelligence systems, Rossa Primavera News Agency IT Desk wrote on October 31.
On October 27, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that the company had submitted a report to the White House justifying the need to create 100 gigawatts of new power capacity annually. The report states that China added 429 GW of new capacity in 2024, while the United States added only 51 GW. OpenAI believes that this gap poses a risk of the US falling behind in the field of AI.
In previous decades a global environmental agenda was being imposed, requiring every individual and enterprise to reduce their carbon footprint to lessen the burden on the planet. The so-called fight for environmental preservation reached the point where, for instance, in the United Kingdom, NatWest Bank began notifying its customers about the carbon footprint of their purchases by analyzing their receipts, thus intruding into private life. Here, the gradual creation of a digital concentration camp was justified under the pretext of caring for nature.
However, concerns about nature have suddenly taken a back seat amid the rapid development of artificial intelligence systems, which require massive amounts of power for training and operation. In June 2025, the hosting provider KnownHost estimated that operating the ChatGPT service with 164 million monthly users generated nearly 261 tons of carbon dioxide during that period. Other AI services have an even larger footprint. OpenAI’s own reports now cite 800 million weekly users.
On October 26, the portal Seeking Alpha reported on a study by the Bank of America Institute, which found that while AI has had little measurable impact on job reductions, there has been a clear increase in energy prices, particularly in US regions with high demand for data centers. Experts continue to predict a further rise in electricity costs.
Altman’s call for the creation of 100 GW of new capacity every year would require energy equivalent to that consumed by 80 million households in the United States, and this growth would have to continue indefinitely. This represents a large-scale restructuring of the energy infrastructure in the name of AI development. The discussion is no longer about “sustainable development,” which for years Washington promoted globally as a justification for reducing production and consumption.
Altman’s demand for new energy capacity demonstrates that the much-advertised environmental agenda is abandoned the moment it interferes with the United States’ ability to compete effectively with China.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
