Straining Sust(AI)nability

This Week's Trend In Brief:

• The energy demands of AI are in the spotlight this week at the Gastech conference in Italy, where leaders are touting natural gas and hydrogen as the fuels of choice to power the future.

   

• Tech firms once hoped renewables could carry the load, but geography and intermittency capped their growth, forcing a pivot first toward nuclear – and now, in practice, back to gas to keep servers running.

   

• That shift exposes the growing gap between sustainability pledges and the reality of bringing new energy infrastructure online, an opening that lawmakers and activists are increasingly eager to spotlight.

   

• With the Trump Administration pushing an aggressive AI agenda alongside fossil fuel dominance, scrutiny over technology infrastructure and how it is powered will intensify, giving opponents fresh leverage to challenge new projects on environmental grounds.

   

• For professionals in both energy and tech, building the AI future will require more than new technologies – it will demand a playbook for managing activist campaigns and navigating regulatory fights to meet a demand curve that shows no signs of slowing down.

Digging Deeper:

AI’s energy demands are in the spotlight this week at the annual Gastech conference in Italy, where leaders are touting natural gas and hydrogen as the fuels powering the future. Up to 50,000 energy professionals from 150 countries will be in attendance at the event, which is billed as the world’s “leading event for natural gas, LNG, hydrogen, climate technologies, and AI.” Across more than 150 sessions, officials, CEOs, and investors will debate how to reconcile growing global power demand with decarbonization goals, focusing on the technologies and fuels most likely to scale. The discussions reflect the tension at the heart of today’s energy landscape, where tech’s surging appetite for electricity is colliding with the realities of project development, permitting, and infrastructure. With both the tech and energy industries under pressure to deliver on ambitious sustainability pledges while maintaining operational stability, Gastech highlights how the politics of power and the pace of progress are becoming increasingly intertwined.

While natural gas, hydrogen, and new technologies are taking center stage at the conference, tech companies initially hoped renewable energy could power the AI boom. Intermittency and geography, however, limited their ability to scale, and the global push to cut emissions has collided with the surging electricity needs of data centers. As the development of AI accelerated, power demand quickly began outpacing the available renewable capacity required to meet corporate climate goals and sustainability pledges. Despite early promises that AI would improve efficiency and reduce unnecessary waste, the expansion of AI applications has led to an increase in data centers and, consequently, more strain on an already strained energy system. Some companies are attempting to build their own renewable power, but many are being pushed to look beyond wind and solar to keep pace with AI’s demands and the climate goals they have pledged to uphold. Confronted with the limits of renewables, tech companies began searching for a scalable, carbon-free alternative that could meet soaring demand without compromising their climate commitments.

To keep its sustainability commitments, Big Tech turned to nuclear energy as the next best option, only to encounter regulatory hurdles and scientific constraints that prevent it from coming online quickly enough, leaving natural gas as the fallback to keep servers running. Over the last year, companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft “have sent out a flurry of announcements related to nuclear energy,” ranging from purchase agreements from existing plants to investments to boost nuclear facilities and new nuclear technologies. It would appear to be the logical solution to AI’s growing energy demands, as nuclear is “clean, firm, carbon-free, and can be sited just about anywhere.” However, companies quickly ran into a harder truth – they need massive amounts of power now, while bringing new nuclear online can take close to a decade at best. For an industry built on speed, the prospect of years of permitting, environmental reviews, and regulatory scrutiny is a shock to the system. Projects also face fierce local opposition and mounting pressure from climate activists, many of whom see AI as accelerating the demand for traditional energy rather than advancing decarbonization. The result is a widening gap between nuclear’s promise on paper and the reality of whether it can actually deliver the power AI requires on the timeline tech companies expect.

The push to reconcile AI’s soaring power demand with tech companies’ public climate commitments has opened the door for lawmakers and activists eager to spotlight the gap between rhetoric and reality. As the Trump Administration moves forward with its AI road map, congressional climate hawks are warning of the technology’s environmental costs, concerned that The White House is pushing to accelerate infrastructure “regardless of environmental impacts.” That stance has already rankled long-time climate leaders on Capitol Hill and signals a likely uptick in oversight of both tech companies and their energy partners. At the same time, activists are mobilizing to block AI infrastructure at every level, charging that the Administration’s “AI agenda” is nothing more than “a thinly veiled invitation for the fossil fuel and corporate water industries to ramp up their exploitation of our environment and natural resources.” Having pressed tech firms for years on their sustainability pledges, lawmakers and activists now see a powerful lever to challenge new energy projects they believe will cause lasting harm. Companies hoping to build the AI future must be prepared to navigate the political and activist fights that come with building the energy infrastructure required to power it.

Public affairs professionals in both the energy and tech sectors must be prepared to defend their strategies in the face of activist campaigns and legislative and regulatory battles to meet a rising demand curve that shows no signs of slowing. AI’s surging power demand is forcing companies to confront the gap between their own climate pledges and the reality of what can be built, and that gap is quickly becoming a target for lawmakers and activists. The scrutiny will only intensify as the Trump Administration accelerates its AI agenda, positioning new infrastructure as essential even as opponents mobilize to block it. With natural gas, nuclear, and hydrogen now at the center of debate, companies face not only engineering and permitting hurdles but also a political environment where every sustainability promise is a potential pressure point. Conversations surrounding the Gastech conference in Italy make clear that preparing for the AI future will require more than technology and investment – it will require a playbook to manage the battles over credibility, compliance, and capacity that are only beginning to unfold.

Trends in Energy is your weekly look at key trends affecting the energy industry, brought to you by the competitive intelligence experts at Delve. As the political and regulatory landscape continues to shift, reach out to learn how our insights can help you navigate these challenges.