Managing Data Center Uncertainty Part II — Phantom Data Centers: How Strategic Opacity Drives Overbuild
AI developers are inflating power demand with phantom data centers—projects that exist on paper but never connect. Utilities build for the illusion, regulators approve the excess, and ratepayers bear the cost. Increased transparency can break the cycle.
The Prompt Box Is Part of the Energy System: Why Sustainable AI Is Not Just a Data Center Problem
AI’s environmental impact depends not only on data centers, chips, and power supply, but on how people use it. Sustainable AI requires purposeful prompting, right-sized models, less low-value output, and better “demand architecture” for computation.
Ian Todreas
The New Geography of AI Infrastructure
AI is making computation physical again: global AI capacity will follow not just chips and fiber, but power, water, cooling, permits, grid reliability, and the emerging Shadow Grid that turns energy infrastructure into the new map of AI advantage.
Brandon Owens