AI Lions and Renewable Straw – Watts Up With That?

From the Heart of Liberty Blog.

Don Harrision

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 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat . . . and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.              

Isaiah 11:6

The book of Isaiah, written between the 8^th and 6^th centuries BC, prophesies a utopia where all natural enmities disappear and predators and prey become as one and take the same sustenance.

It is understandable that the Israelites of the time, oppressed by Assyrians and Babylonians, would long for a peaceable kingdom.  Today, however, it is less understandable – in fact downright baffling — that investment managers who pride themselves on their rationality seem to believe that we live in a world in which physics and economics have gone with the wind, and the lions in their portfolios can prosper on a diet of straw.  

The conceit I am referring to concerns the voracious lions of artificial intelligence (AI) and the utopian dream of decarbonization.    The AI revolution needs the red meat of reliable power – in science-fiction-like quantities – while the decarb dreamers’ windmills and solar panels can deliver only unsatisfying amounts of marginally nutritious straw. Many investment managers own shares of AI leaders[1] such 

as Nvidia while simultaneously professing a commitment to net zero CO2.  This is portfolio management animated more by blind faith than by proven, analytical process. Investors would be wise to question whether they wish to invest with organizations which seem almost willfully ignorant of the performance-sapping implications of this conflicted approach.

AI Power Needs — AI’s bottomless appetite for power is no secret.  Google “AI need for power” and you will find that banks, corporations, NGO’s, think tanks and major publications are all on the case: 

• Wells Fargo projects that AI power demand will surge by 8,050% from 2024 to 2030.[2] 
•  NVIDIA, a leading manufacturer of AI equipment, expects to be shipping enough AI server units by 2027 to burden the grid with the equivalent of a small country’s power needs each and every year.[3] 
• One large Meta data center in Iowa burns the same amount of electricity as 7 million laptops running 8 hours a day,[4]  and their new campus outside Salt Lake City is expected to gobble the annual electric output of a large nuclear reactor.[5] 
• Speaking of nuclear, Microsoft has signed an agreement with Constellation Energy to un-mothball its Three Mile Island Unit One to power all their data centers in the 14-state PJM regional transmission area.[6] 
•  According to the International Energy Agency, if you were to use the generative AI application ChatGPT to follow my search instructions about “AI need for power,” you would consume almost 10 times the electricity as you would with a plain-vanilla Google query.[7]   The results of every Google search now feature an AI-generated response. 

These examples are just the tip of the AI power-requirement iceberg.

Investment Companies Are Aware of AI’s Power Appetite — Investment management organizations that own AI leaders[8] are certainly cognizant of this coming tidal wave of energy demand: 

• Blackrock has announced a partnership to invest in new data center infrastructure to meet both AI computing and energy supply needs.[9] 
• According to T. Rowe Price, “the sheer energy demand required to run AI data centers 24 hours a day is putting huge pressure on resources,” and will cause global data center electricity consumption to exceed 1,000 terawatt hours by 2026.” [10] 
• Michael Tucker, Senior Portfolio Manager at Federated Hermes, in a bit of delicious understatement, thinks AI will require a “good deal of energy,” while citing a McKinsey study that predicts that by 2030 AI programs will drive data-center power consumption up by 60 GW. To put that in perspective, the country’s current nuclear power output is 100 GW.[11]   
• Clearbridge portfolio managers, Reed Cassady and Sam Peters, have observed that “innovations like cloud computing have been steadily increasing power demand from data centers, but current high-end estimates for the electricity needed for AI computing is on the order of 30x more per server.”[12]

Unlike those whom Jesus’ castigated in the Gospel of Matthew[13]forhaving eyes but refusing to see, these firms understand AI’s growing hunger for electricity.

Renewable Inconstancy — It is also no secret that the net-zero utopians’ favorite power sources – wind and solar – are unreliable. In fact, an understanding of the capricious nature of the wind and the effect of clouds on sunshine is so ingrained in our experience that generative AI, whose “intelligence” is fueled by millennia of human poetry and prose, can churn out an endless stream of cliches on the subject such as “love as fleeting as the fickle summer wind” and “troubles like a veil of clouds.”   Academics, not satisfied with machine-made similes derived from common knowledge, have felt the need to conduct studies to prove that wind and solar “are inherently highly variable due to volatile weather conditions.”[14]

And if age-old wisdom and academic elucidation of the obvious leave any doubt about renewable instability, the UK and Germany have been kind enough to erase it by inadvertently conducting nationwide demonstration projects.  These two former economic powerhouses currently receive over 40% of their electricity from renewables.[15]   In early November of this year, both countries experienced what the Germans call Dunkelflaute (dark doldrums), which arises when high-pressure systems diminish wind and thicken clouds.[16]   In the UK, this meant its wind farms were able to meet just 3-4% of the countries’ electricity demand, and in Germany theirs operated at only 7% of

capacity.[17]  Of course, grid operators had to call on natural gas and coal to step into the breach.[18]  

Charles Rotter at Watts Up With That? has pointed out that a proposed solution from the UK’s National Energy System Operator to this regular winter issue is “system flexibility”[19] — bureaucratize for public rationing and adjustment of energy usage based on availability.  Cooking your dinner early or reading that bedtime novel at 2 pm in anticipation of a calm evening may seem trivial sacrifices to make for the greater good of saving Gaia, but imagine a world in which Dunkelflaute starves a power-hungry AI tasked with the 24/7 running of cybersecurity, healthcare and energy transmission: millions of credit cards compromised by foreign actors, AI-enabled robotic surgeons unable to perform life-saving operations, and the ironic last straw —  the meager amount of power being generated by these renewables dies on the vine because the grid is managed by AI.  We can’t trust AI with vital, economy-wide duties if it has to rely on gentle breezes and occluded sunshine. 

Investment Companies Are Aware of Renewable Shortcomings— The research teams at AI-invested portfolio managers are just as aware of renewables’ innate limitations as they are of AI’s appetite for electricity:

• Clearbridge — “The intermittent variability of day-to-day and seasonal swings in energy production make renewables poorly suited to flex up with current demand estimates.”[20]
• First Eagle – “Capture and back-up power solutions are still needed to address intermittency—that is, harnessing and storing inconsistent supplies of renewables like sunlight and wind.”[21]
• Goldman Sachs — “Renewables alone can’t satisfy the world’s energy needs due to intermittency issues, hidden costs and potential geopolitical considerations.”[22]
• And in an excellent imitation of Batman’s Two Face, Larry Fink, chairman of Blackrock and the former Finance Minister for the Decarb Crusaders, after years of extolling the glories of wind and solar in the inevitable transition to net-zero, transitioned to the other side of his mouth at the 2024 World Economic Forum and opined: “the world is going to be short power . . . .  And to power these data companies you cannot have this intermittent power like wind and solar.  You need dispatchable power because you cannot turn off and on these data centers.”[23]

Inconsistency, variability, intermittency.  These investment companies’ analyses of the dependability of wind and solar read like indictments drawn up by Roget’s Thesaurus.

Batteries on White Horses — Of course, no investment organizations believe that we can achieve a net zero future that still enables AI with wind and solar alone; as Blackrock has pointed out, these are only a half solution.[24] Continuous dispatchability requires grid-level battery storage.  

Clearbridge thinks batteries will be an integral part of a renewable infrastructure industry that will achieve compound annual growth rates of 10-30% for the next 30 years.[25]  JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Macquarie and Blackrock have all put their money where their mouths are, investing billions in battery storage companies such as Strata Clean Energy, Gridstor, Eku Energy and Waratah.[26]

These investment firms are heeding the call of the International Energy Agency (IEA),[27] one of the high priests of net zero.  For the IAE, grid-level battery storage will ride to renewables’ rescue like a green savior on Revelations’ white horse,[28] and alchemize the benign but capricious production of turbines and solar panels into ever-dispatchable abundance. 

Straw Batteries — But how likely is it that battery storage will be renewable’s salvation, and provide the inexpensive, always-on power needed to sustain the AI industry?

Mark Mills is a distinguished senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a contributing editor at City Journal, a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick school of engineering, director of the National Center for Energy Analytics,  a former senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and the author of numerous books and articles on energy and digital technology.[29]  I have corresponded with Mark and followed his work for almost 25 years and have found him to be insightful, perspicacious and refreshingly thorough on every subject he turns his mind to.  In a rare moment of agreement between Bill Gates and myself, Gates has said that Mark’s book The Bottomless Well “is the only book I’ve ever seen that really explains energy.”[30]

In testimony before the U.S. House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, Mark had this to say about grid-level battery storage:[31]

•  Using wind and solar as the primary source of electricity means that grids will require at least twice today’s installed generating capacity because “far more than normal peak generation would be needed to supply both peak demand when sunlight and wind are available, and to have surplus to simultaneously store in batteries.”

• To build enough batteries to fill the inevitable solar/wind droughts would require spending over $1 trillion.
• The normal drop in prices as new technologies advance along the production curve will not happen with batteries: “mineral commodity inflation will be fueled by the unprecedented increases in mineral demands to build energy systems.”
• The IEA estimates the world needs a 400% to 4,000% increase in the mining of energy-critical minerals in the coming decade or two. This unprecedented increase is currently neither underway nor planned.
• It requires about 50 tons of batteries to hold the amount of energy contained in one ton of oil, and obtaining the minerals to fabricate these 50 tons requires the mining and processing of 25,000 tons of materials.
• “Building enough grid-scale batteries for 12 hours of storage for the U.S. grid . . . would entail mining a quantity of materials equal to that needed to fabricate 100 centuries worth of batteries for all the world’s billions of smartphones.”

Given the almost unfathomable cost and scale of material production required for sufficient grid-level batteries, in all likelihood they are not the magic that will transform wind and solar into the robust energy source AI demands. 

The Last Straw — This past April, a Wall St. Journal piece explored a seemingly redemptive paradox embedded in the nature of AI: at first glance it looks to explode power usage, but at the same time it holds out the promise that it can increase energy efficiency and thereby reduce consumption.[32]  The article focuses on savings in real estate, but the alleged potential is economy-wide.   Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser believes efficiency gains over the past 15 years – before the advent of AI – have reduced energy demand by the equivalent of 90 million barrels of oil a day.[33]  If smart thermostats, electronic sensors in fuel injectors and other relatively crude enhancements have produced this remarkable accomplishment, imagine what the coming AI revolution can achieve through predictive consumption forecasting, renewable energy integration, intelligent grid management and other currently undreamed of wonders!

But does Mr. Nasser’s observation about reduced energy demand mean that the world has reduced its energy consumption over the past 15 years?  Not according to Our World in Data, which shows overall energy consumption growing by 20% during this period:[34]

These last 15 years continue a consistent post-war phenomena: no matter how much we increase vehicle mpg and no matter how many Thermopane windows we install, humanity unfailingly and mysteriously gobbles ever more energy.  Only recessions induce power dieting (gold arrows).

So is the Saudi Aramco CEO a liar or an ignoramus, or perhaps nefariously spinning the facts to benefit the oil industry?  The answer is probably not – on all 3 counts.   Most likely, he is referring to efficiency gains in isolation, and neglecting the further consequences of those efficiencies.  More energy saving devices and processes would reduce energy consumption if all things remained equal, but we live in a dynamic world where changing inputs leads to unexpected outputs. 

Imagine in a previous life that you were a blacksmith who specializes in iron plow shares. You’re a brilliant fellow, and you devise a method that burns less wood to generate the heat needed to forge and shape the iron.  You subsequently reduce your prices, which means poorer peasants can now afford your plowshares.  This leads to more land under cultivation, which creates a burgeoning population, which ignites an ever-greater consumption of the wood needed to meet this expanding market that you and thousands of other imitative smiths are now servicing.  And which – depending on your perspective – makes God’s green earth a little more paradisiacal for you and your fellow man, or eventually transforms it into a Boschian hellhole pocked by the pustules of oil derricks, coal mines and fracking and uranium waste. 

But no matter which way you look at it, your fuel-efficient advancement in metal-working most surely does not reduce energy consumption. 

All of which leads us to the real paradox regarding AI and power: Jevon’s Paradox. 

William Stanley Jevons was a British economist who first described this phenomenon in a paper in 1865.  It is now so widely known and so well documented that Google’s generative AI app has a synopsis, but I prefer the human insight of Mark Mills:

• That paper was focused on the claim, at that time, that England would run out of coal given the demands for that fuel coming from a growing economy, growth that itself was caused by the fuel of industrialization. The solution offered by experts at that time was to make coal engines more efficient.
• Jevons, however, pointed out that improvements in engine efficiency — i.e., using less coal per unit of output — would cause more, not less, overall coal consumption. Thus, the ostensible paradox: “It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the [efficient] use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption …. new modes of [efficiency] will lead to an increase of consumption.” 
• Put differently: the purpose of improved efficiency in the real world, as opposed to the policy world, is to make it possible for the benefits from a machine or a process to become cheaper and available to more people. For nearly all things for all of history, rising demand for the energy-enabled services outstrips the efficiency gains. The result has been a net gain in consumption.[35]

AI will create fuel-usage efficiencies, but it will in turn undoubtedly lead to increased consumption.  The Saudi Aramco exec was probably not trying to hoodwink us.  As radio host Paul Harvey would have put it, he just didn’t consider “the rest of the story.”  Perversely, one man’s energy diet plan begets mankind’s need for an energy feast.

Let Them Eat Straw — In spite of their awareness of both AI power requirements and of the fickle nature of wind and solar, in spite of the well-publicized issues with grid-level battery storage, and in spite of the widespread knowledge of Jevon’s Paradox and its implications for the notion that AI-effectuated efficiencies will reduce energy consumption, many investment management organizations continue to demonstrate a deep commitment to a net-zero future and to its proponent organizations:

• According to T. Rowe Price, the sustainability wave will require trillions of dollars of investment to “eliminate carbon emissions and switch to renewable energy sources.”[36]
• Federated Hermes believes that “if we are to get at least close to 1.5 degrees, we need to considerably amp up spending on clean and renewable energy.” [37] (“1.5 degrees” refers to the goal of keeping global temperatures 1.5 degrees below pre-industrial levels.)
• Clearbridge, in its 2024 Stewardship Report, patted itself on the back for earning 5 Stars from the U.N.-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI).[38] According to PRI, wind and solar are key components of renewable energy.[39] PRI is a major supporter of a host of net zero organizations such as The Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative,[40] whose goal is “net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner.”[41] 

In the investment management community, Clearbridge’s membership in a climate-change organization that promotes decarbonization through wind and solar is not an anomaly.  PRI, Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, Ceres Investor Network and Climate Action 100+ are 5 of the most prominent of these initiatives.  Of the 10 largest fund companies, 9 are signatories to at least one of them, and collectively they hold 31 memberships.[42]

 Blackrock is a member of four of these outfits, and Blackrock International belongs to the fifth.[43]   Blackrock’s Chairman Larry Fink, in a Wall St. Journal op-ed,[44] has called for a capital spending boom to build an “AI transcontinental railroad” that will juice U.S. real economic growth to 3% and increase tax revenues, thereby helping to mitigate the national debt crisis.  But nowhere in this article does Mr. Fink mention that his company funds outfits who long to starve the railroad’s engines of fuel. 

Investment managers’ devotion to decarbonization also manifests itself in their proxy voting records.

Each year, Pension Politics analyzes the proxy voting record of investment management companies, based on their votes on the “Fiduciary Free 50.”[45] These are 50 of the most extreme ESG-oriented proposals, 27 of which in 2023 were climate related. These proposals not only require companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degree target, but to report on how their lobbying, insuring and investing activities, and their involvement in trade associations and other alliances, promote decarbonization.[46] 

At first glance, these proposals appear to be the grassroots efforts of a diverse group of shareholders who are agnostic on the means of achieving net zero (“the strategy on how to achieve this target is entirely up to the Board”).[47]  But in fact they are the handiwork of a small number of progressive non-profits such as Green America, As You Sow and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, all of whom are crusaders for wind and solar.[48] 

Green America does not try to hide its absolutist advocacy of these so-called renewables: “it is critical to the future of the planet that society moves away from all carbon-producing sources of energy and invests heavily in renewables such as wind, solar, geothermal, and second-generation biofuels.”[49]  The other organizations appear to be making a conscious effort to obscure their belief in the role that wind and solar will need to play in the descent to net zero. They use fuzzy, feel-good language, but there can be little doubt that they believe a “just transition to a green economy,” the “phase in of low-carbon energy resources,”[50] and an “equitable energy future” will require an abundance of wind and solar, as evidenced by the many pictures of solar panels and windmills that adorn their web sites.[51] 

Of the 820 investment outfits Pension Politics graded this year, 520 received a D or F for their proxy votes on the “Fiduciary Free 50.”[52] A major contributing factor to these firms’ poor grades was their collusion with these obscure, radical climate-change zealots to force corporate America to decarbonize. 

Supposedly the last French queen, Marie Antoinette, when told that her starving peasants had no bread, advised them to eat cake.  Though there is no historical evidence that she said this, today there is ample evidence that many investment management organizations, through their support of decarbonization and its handmaidens, are effectively telling the AI lions in their portfolios to eat straw. 

A Schizophrenic Vision — All investing involves a vision of the future. That vision may originate from a top-down analysis of the economy in which a portfolio manager buys REITs because money supply growth has recently abated, creating the conditions for a snowballing beneficence: inflation will drop, the Fed will lower rates, REIT interest costs will decline, their earnings will increase and their stock prices will climb. Or it may start with a more humble, bottom-up approach: a second manager buys XYZ company because its new CEO will soon jettison the money-losing companies purchased by his profligate predecessor, and return XYZ to its profitable roots.

In either case, each of them has envisioned a future friendly to particular stocks or industries, and positioned their portfolios accordingly. 

But imagine if the first manager buys REITs because of the scenario outlined above, and then pens an opinion piece in the Wall St. Journal urging the Federal Reserve not to lower rates because that will increase inflation.  Or if number two buys XYZ and tries to talk the new CEO into maintaining his predecessor’s legacy.  A Freudian would call this schizophrenia, while a Christian might invoke the Gospel of Mark to warn that portfolio management divided against itself cannot stand, but they would both probably agree that this is a bizarre, contrary, unworkable approach to making money. 

The promotion of renewables by AI-owning investment firms is similarly confused. Either AI thrives in a world powered by the proven, reliable bounty of fossil fuels and nuclear fission, or it starves on wind, solar and wishful thinking. In addition — though the full exploration of this is a topic for another day — a decarbonized economy will suffer from low productivity and anemic growth because of renewables’ inefficiency and lack of energy density.  This means that nationwide economic growth — the wind at the backs of all companies – will experience its own Dunkelflaute, enfeebling the returns of every investor and every investment organization, not just those that own AI stocks.

AI giants such as Microsoft and Google still publicly cling to the hope that they will be carbon-neutral by 2030, in spite of the recent AI-driven upwelling in their consumption of traditional energy.  Analysts who see things in the harsh light of day, however, call this dream “ridiculous.”[53] 

It is high time that the investment management organizations that own these AI operating companies come to this same clear-eyed understanding, and clarify the conflicted vision that shapes their portfolios.  They need to either divest themselves of AI or cease to worship at the altar of net-zero.  And it is also high time that investors let them know that they will no longer entrust their capital to those who refuse to see that AI lions cannot live on peekaboo sunshine and the whimsy of the wind. 

                                                                                                                                                                   Don Harrison

Every investor’s situation is unique and you should consider your investment goals, risk tolerance, and time horizon before making any investment. Prior to making an investment decision, please consult with your financial advisor about your individual situation. The information contained in this report does not purport to be a complete description of the securities, markets, or developments referred to in this material. Investing involves risk and you may incur a profit or loss regardless of strategy selected, including diversification and asset allocation. 

The foregoing information has been obtained from sources considered to be reliable, but we do not guarantee that it is accurate or complete, it is not a statement of all available data necessary for making an investment decision, and it does not constitute a recommendation. Any opinions are those of Don Harrison and not necessarily those of Raymond James. 

[1] https://www.instagram.com/fastfinance_official/p/C4th4ICANWx/

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bethkindig/2024/06/20/ai-power-consumption-rapidly-becoming-mission-critical/

[3]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ai-boom-could-use-a-shocking-amount-of-electricity/

[4]https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/06/21/artificial-intelligence-nuclear-fusion-climate/

[5] https://sustainability.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Meta-2023-Environmental-Data-Index.pdf

[6] https://dailycaller.com/2024/09/20/microsoft-constellation-energy-three-mile-island-deal/

[7]https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/06/21/artificial-intelligence-nuclear-fusion-climate/

[8]https://fintel.io/i/blackrock, https://fintel.io/i/price-t-rowe-associates-inc-md-, https://fintel.io/i/federated-investors-inc-pa-, https://fintel.io/i/clearbridge-llc

[9] https://www.esgdive.com/news/blackrock-microsoft-gip-mgx-ai-infrastructure-data-center-energy-investment-partnership/727543/#:~:text=BlackRock%20CEO%20Larry%20Fink%20said,Fink%20said%20in%20the%20release.

[10] https://www.troweprice.com/en/nl/insights/ai-health-care-and-energy-transition-three-areas-of-focus-for-impact

[11] https://www.federatedhermes.com/us/insights/article/can-utilities-satisfy-ai-s-growing-appetite-for-energy.do

[12] https://www.franklintempleton.com/articles/2024/clearbridge-investments/the-challenge-of-powering-ai

[13] https://www.bible.com/bible/406/MAT.13.14-38.ERV

[14]https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/23/16317

[15] https://www.cladcodecking.co.uk/blog/post/renewable-energy-percentage-uk; https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/renewables-cover-more-half-germanys-electricity-demand-first-time-year#:~:text=Clean%20Energy%20Wire,-

[16] https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/germany-is-dunkelfked-in-5-charts?utm_campaign=email-post&r=2t59c&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

[17] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/05/dunkelflaute-cut-wind-power-generation-germany-uk/

[18] https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/germany-is-dunkelfked-in-5-charts?utm_campaign=email-post&r=2t59c&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

[19] https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/06/the-dunkelflaute-disaster-what-happens-when-wind-power-goes-silent/

[20] https://www.clearbridgeinvestments.com.au/perspectives/the-challenge-of-powering-ai/

[21]https://www.firsteagle.com/sites/default/files/2024-03/Energy-Transition-Long-Winding-Road-EMEA_E-TL-NPD-ENTRAN-P-LT.pdf

[22]https://houstondaily.com/stories/625951906-goldman-sachs-acknowledges-that-renewables-are-not-a-stand-alone-solution

[23]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoRVYFHNc6k&t=2787s

[24] https://www.blackrock.com/ca/institutional/en/literature/whitepaper/waratah-super-battery.pdf

[25]https://franklintempletonprod.widen.net/s/zwdmnrsjdc/clearbridge_stewardshipreport2024#page=12

[26]https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240221070832/en/Strata-Clean-Energy-Secures-559-Million-Financing-for-1GWh-Battery-Energy-Storage-Project-in-Arizona; https://www.energy-storage.news/goldman-sachs-backed-developer-gridstor-builds-440mwh-texas-bess-project/;https://www.macquarie.com/au/en/insights/accelerating-the-global-deployment-of-energy-storage-solutions.html; https://www.blackrock.com/ca/institutional/en/literature/whitepaper/waratah-super-battery.pdf

[27] https://www.iea.org/reports/batteries-and-secure-energy-transitions

[28] https://biblehub.com/revelation/19-11.htm

[29] https://manhattan.institute/person/mark-p-mills?top=false&limit=10&page-number=8&people%5B%5D=46990&dates=

[30] https://energyanalytics.org/team/mark-mills/

[31]https://docs.house.gov/meetings/CN/CN00/20220215/114399/HHRG-117-CN00-Wstate-MillsM-20220215.pdf

[32]https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/ai-data-centers-energy-savings-d602296e

[33] Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser has also pointed out that efficiencies reduced global energy demand by 90 million barrels of oil equivalent a day over the past 15 years.

[34]https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption

[35] https://dda.ndus.edu/ddreview/ais-energy-appetite-voracious-efficient/

[36] https://www.troweprice.com/personal-investing/resources/insights/prepare-for-the-sustainability-capital-wave.html

[37] https://www.hermes-investment.com/us/en/professional/insights/active-esg/renewables-winds-of-change-2024-outlook/

[38] https://franklintempletonprod.widen.net/s/f9wgvsdjbx/clearbridge_stewardshipreport2024

[39]https://www.unpri.org/thematic-and-impact-investing/impact-investing-market-map-renewable-energy/3541.article

[40] https://www.unpri.org/pri-blog/net-zero-alliances-and-the-way-forward-for-our-industry/11724.article

[41]https://www.netzeroassetmanagers.org/