For the past two decades, America has accomplished a minor miracle. Despite a growing population, ballooning home sizes, a spike in the number of electronic devices we own, and more, electricity demand has remained largely stable. That’s a testament to the hard-won gains of more efficient lighting and appliances.

In a world of stable electricity demand, the rapid growth of renewable energy lent hope to the idea that wind and solar will replace the dirtiest and most dangerous power plants, a key action to help bring about a livable climate for future generations.

Unfortunately, there are signs that the nation is about to make a very serious wrong turn.

Energy-hungry data centers put renewable energy future at risk

Last year, federal regulators forecast that the demand for electricity will grow nearly 5% over the next five years, which many now say is an underestimate. What’s driving the projected increase? Energy-intensive data centers.

Data centers already make up roughly 2.5% of total U.S. electricity demand, but tech giants such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are proposing to build new data centers at breakneck pace to fuel a range of products, including artificial intelligence.

The boom in data center construction is already undermining America’s ability to move off dirty and dangerous energy sources.

In Maryland, the operator of the mid-Atlantic electric grid, PJM, has asked the owner of two coal plants to stay open for three years longer, citing increased demand from data centers. Georgia Power got permission to fast-track a fleet of new gas-fired power plants in the next three years for the same reason. Gas, which often leaks into our air during drilling and transport, consists mostly of methane, a powerful global warming pollutant.

And in recent weeks, tech giants have proposed some big and unprecedented moves in their race to win AI. Constellation Energy announced intentions to reopen a shuttered nuclear reactor for the first time in history. If they succeed at reviving one of the reactors at the former Three Mile Island nuclear site, they have an agreement to sell the power to Microsoft to offset energy use of its data centers with zero-carbon electricity.

Meanwhile, Google just announced its intention to power data centers with small modular nuclear reactors by 2030, a technology that has not actually been approved, let alone shown to be cost-effective.

Some see these moves as a positive development. If Microsoft, Google or other tech companies can power their data centers without fossil fuels, what’s the problem?

I see a couple. The first is that nuclear energy is an inherently dangerous technology that presents serious environmental and public health risks at all stages of its development. From mining and transporting uranium, to the risk of an accident or terrorist attack on a plant, to the disposal of the radioactive waste that remains hazardous for tens of thousands of years, nuclear poses very real risks to our health and the planet that sustains us. Powering the AI boom with nuclear energy just doesn’t make sense.

The second problem is that these unprecedented nuclear schemes illustrate the extreme lengths to which tech companies, utilities and power generators will go to fuel their ambitions. And if their nuclear dreams fall through, which is entirely possible, it could perpetuate our dependence on fossil fuel power plants exactly at the time when we need to be taking these polluting plants offline.

A watershed moment for America’s renewable energy future

A blind sprint to power AI by any means necessary will rapidly take us in the wrong direction.

Whatever your thoughts on the prospects of AI to solve societal problems, bringing dangerous and dirty nuclear reactors back online, keeping old coal plants open longer, and building new gas plants is a bad idea.

We need to stop accepting increased energy demand as a given and start treating it as a choice. In fact, we need to consume less energy overall. We need more energy conservation and we need to double down on efforts to make sure we use the energy we produce as wisely as possible.

Bottom line: We must not allow AI or any other to-be-dreamt-of energy use in the future to divert us from the most important task of the day, which is getting off of fossil fuels.

Johanna Neumann of Amherst has spent the past two decades working to protect our air, water and open spaces, defend consumers in the marketplace and advance a more sustainable economy and democratic society. She can be reached at columnists@gazettenet.com.