I think people misunderstand the energy usage of ai. It uses electricity which is one of the easiest, cheapest, and most environmentally friendly forms of energy.

Renewables electricity is already the most economic form of electricity. Increased demand will only drive further investment according to the economic incentives that already exist.

Think of the grid like a giant pool of water all the energy sources put water into the pool. Heigh efficiency sources can efficiently dump a large amount of water into the pool but have a lead time of hours. Renewables dump a variable amount of water depending on all sorts of things. Usage is also dependant and fluctuates. An easily shedable load such as ai training or crypto mining act as a large and quick valve to let water out of the pool. The level of the pool must remain exactly the same otherwise shit blows up. This means u can have input sources that are heigh efficiency or unpredictable filling the pool faster than regular usage the compute workload can then use the excess when needed. It effectively acts as a mechanism for stabilising the grid which is the primary issue of most renewables.