Ballooning energy prices are placing a major strain on households across the United States. The spike in energy costs is largely thanks to the rapid spread of AI integration. The huge boom in AI infrastructure is causing national energy demand to rise at a rapid clip, and its average consumers who are now paying the price.
In a 2024 survey, one in three households in the United States reported forgoing necessities, including food and medicine, in order to pay their energy bills. Now, even more U.S. families are at risk of sliding into energy poverty as utility bills skyrocket around the country. An August Consumer Price Index report determined that electricity prices are rising at double the rate of inflation, and are currently 5.5 percent higher than this time last year.
The issue could soon turn into a political boondoggle for the Trump administration, though they are quick to point the finger at Biden-era policies. "In the last couple of years, different items that have gone up in price have become media concerns. They become very visible, people get very angry - and I think electric rates are heading in that direction," Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association, recently told The Hill. Wolfe said that if price rises are not quickly contained, "it'll become a political issue."
But regardless of who is responsible for the price hikes, consumers are bearing the burden. Whether or not we benefit from artificial intelligence in our daily lives, we are funding its development and indiscriminate integration in the tech sector and beyond. Indeed, even our AI queries are not meaningfully contributing to AI's ballooning energy use - the issue is integration into all manners of systems.
"We are witnessing a massive transfer of wealth from residential utility customers to large corporations-data centers and large utilities and their corporate parents, which profit from building additional energy infrastructure," Maryland People's Counsel David Lapp recently told Business Insider. "Utility regulation is failing to protect residential customers, contributing to an energy affordability crisis."
Unfortunately, the spread of technology is largely out of our hands - letters to your senator and public protest notwithstanding. While you could cut down on your own AI usage, your chats with ChatGPT are a drop in the proverbial bucket. But there are other things that we can do to significantly lower our household energy use to make monthly bills sting a little less. Your TV and internet streaming, for example, are eating up a lot more energy than your AI queries are.
Another one of the primary ways of becoming more energy efficient in the home is by cutting out a phenomenon known as phantom energy. Also called vampire energy, this refers to the energy that is sapped through your appliances when they are left plugged in, even when they are not in use. Everything in your home can be turned off, but still consumes enough energy to make a real difference in your bottom line. According to reporting from CBS News Money Watch, phantom energy use can account for as much as 5 to 10 percent of home energy use - a staggering figure when you consider that this energy is being used to power nothing at all.
An increase in phantom energy is also directly related to the ever-increasing integration of the internet into our everyday devices. Televisions are one of the primary vampires - especially newer smart models that are connected to the internet and other home devices. These kinds of televisions can consume as much as 40 watts of energy per day while they're not in use. According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, that's nearly 40 times greater than a traditional television.
Luckily, the fix is simple - unplug your devices when you're not using them. While it may be an inconvenient extra step, it will make a difference in your monthly expenses. Of course, in the grand scheme, our own energy efficiency gains are far less important than gains on the part of the tech sector. But luckily, we can expect to see some major efficiency gains soon on the part of large language models. While AI is a messy, complicated energy vortex today, it will soon be used to increase efficiency in a broad array of systems, ultimately offsetting the sector's own consumption and resultant emissions. But then, as now, there's no reason not to unplug that television when you leave the house.
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com
Haley Zaremba is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City. She has extensive experience writing and editing environmental features, travel pieces, local news in the… More