AI's Huge Power Needs Give Oil Majors Incentive To Invest in Renewables, Says Adnoc Boss

Surging AI demand could push major oil companies to reinvest in renewable energy [non-paywalled link], Abu Dhabi National Oil Company CEO Sultan al-Jaber said this week. Al-Jaber's comments came as oil executives from Shell, BP and TotalEnergies met with Microsoft and other tech leaders in Abu Dhabi to discuss AI's growing energy needs and its applications across the sector.

ADNOC announced plans to deploy autonomous AI agents across its operations through EnergyAI, developed with Microsoft and UAE's G42. The system will analyze seismic data and model underground carbon storage potential. The state oil giant committed $23 billion to low-carbon technology development using AI. Tech companies have pledged to power their AI data centers with renewable energy to meet climate targets. "We need a model that integrates all forms of energy," said al-Jaber, citing needs for renewable power, battery storage, natural gas, and nuclear energy in some locations.

But but

[rossdee]

Trump doesn't like renewables..

Re: But but

[Fons_de_spons]

Who cares what Trump likes? His staff! Poor sods.

Re:

[dfghjk]

Add this one to the enemies of the people.

Re: But but

[Fons_de_spons]

Do I get a badge?

Reporting an oil rich industry insider

[will4]

Hardly worth being on /. as it's an oil industry leader telling oil companies to invest in renewable energy and also who conveniently has products related to renewable energy.

Nuclear

[atomicalgebra]

We should be publicly investing in nuclear energy. For a fraction of what we burned during Covid we can transition to a nuclear grid which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly.

Re: Nuclear

[Fons_de_spons]

But, those are needed to power electric cars... Makes sense to diversify.

Re:

[XXongo]

We should be publicly investing in nuclear energy. For a fraction of what we burned during Covid we can transition to a nuclear grid which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly.

you will have to learn how to make nuclear power plants cheap. Currently nuclear power plants are very expensive.

With that said, a plausible energy solution would be a mix of power technologies, including nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, with storage technologies.

Re:

[atomicalgebra]

The most expensive part of a nuclear power plant is the interest on the loans. Almost 2/3 of the total cost of recent builds is interest. That's solvable. Second economies of scale and economies of mass production lower costs. First-of-a-kind builds are always slow, so we need to continue to construct. SMR's potentially help with that, but we need to build a lot of them to reduce costs.

Bait 'n' switch

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Why does it feel like there's some kind of bait'n'switch coming? How are they gonna con us this time?

A better idea

[wakeboarder]

Would be to tax AI companies on energy and use that to support renewables, geothermal and fusion research.