How big of a deal of energy dependence on technology market?
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How big of a deal of energy dependence on technology market?
Raylinement<br>Jul 17, 2026
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https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49876<br>The main specific problem happening within the technology market is a structural mismatch between accelerating demand from “power hungry ” digital infrastructure and the public ability to fund and sustain that. This is called “carbon lock-in ”, it’s when current investment in fossil fuel based technologies and infrastructure create a path dependent reliance that resists cleaner alternatives.<br>The public unknowingly subsidizes the massive energy bills of Big Tech utilities profit by building new infrastructure for data centers and then socialize these costs by working them into everyday ratepayers with offering discounted rates to tech corporation.<br>These groups often called “sacrifice zones ” near extraction sites or suffer from “energy poverty ” spending a disproportionate amount of the income on energy and tech centers benefit from subsidized power. In china, the lack of adequate transmission for renewable energy centers caused a 17% loss of wind generation (~ 21TWh) in 2012 and renewable curtailment reached 110 TWh by 2016.<br>The world energy demand is expected to grow by 3.5% annually and by more than 200% by the end of the century , it’s require a triple amount of infrastructure investment.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49876<br>When a large scale, capital intensive fossil fuel investments are made they become “lumpy” assets that are difficult to displace. It is estimated that continued investment in conventional technologies through 2020 would increase later low carbon transition costs fourfold.<br>This is a fundamental mismatch between the speed of technology and the pace of governance. We face 21st century problems managed by 19th century government institutions. Incumbent fossil fuel actors improves performance just enough to delay extinction and maintain their “social license” frustrating the transition to a low carbon regime.<br>This kind of dependence began around the time of Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. High labor wages combined with inexpensive, abundant coal reserves created a strong incentive for firm to earn “innovation rents” by switching to capital intensive coal powered technologies like the “spinning jenny” and “stream engine”. It precedent where technology is used to substitute labor with cheaper energy.<br>It has occurred through three main transition, from wood to coal, then coal to oil and then fossil fuels to renewables. The current transition work by the need for decarbonization and growth of digital infrastructure.<br>With the successive technologies that have made energy use more great utilize, this has historically failed to overcome and reduce total consumption. Because of this cheaper energy services stimulate higher overall demand (the rebound effect ) meaning “less causes more”.<br>With the growth of renewable energy subsidies, they have successfully down the cost of wind and solar, but it created “reverse policy outcomes” in liberalized markets. For example in Germany subsidized renewables depressed wholesale prices so much that grid-scale storage (like pumped hydro) become unprofitable and had to be mothballed.<br>It’s create a “S-Shaped Diffusion Curves” . Large energy infrastructure require about 50 to 100 years to reach fall saturation. This “systemic inertia” means that even superior green technologies cannot replace the old methods or techniques overnight.<br>Also its a sailing ship effect which is when incumbent fossil fuel often improve their own ways just enough to delay obsolescence when a new competitor appears much like how sailing chips reached their “golden period” only after steamships invented and popular.
https://dataintelo.com/report/it-spending-in-energy-market<br>According to Resource Dependence Theory (RDT), tech organizations are constrained by their environment and they’re actively working to make sure control to setting up specific arrangements. Some of them are:<br>Interorganizational Arrangement: Companies form interlocks, alliances, joint ventures and mergers to manage resource dependencies.
These arrangement are used to stabilize the supply of important resources (like energy and data) and to make sure these organizational have autonomy (the freedom to make decisions without referring to partners) and legitimacy (the perception that their actions are appropriate)
For example company like Tesla takes first principles thinking in which they deconstruct costs to raw materials (deconstructing battery costs from $600/kWh to $80kWh in raw commodities ), they bypass the inefficient supply chains and build their own “Gig factories” to control the entire ecosystem.
With every technology company having said that it’s for the future, and they gonna work about it to make it better use for humanity but their current takes and...