Chapter 1: What is Microsoft's commitment regarding AI data center costs?
Microsoft says it will foot the bill for extra data center electricity costs. From Marketplace, I'm Sabri Beneshour, in for David Brancaccio. The data centers needed to power AI are controversial in many communities. People are worried that the extra demand will drive up their electricity bills, which already are up 7% in a year on average, according to yesterday's inflation report.
In response to this backlash, Microsoft is pledging to pay extra for electricity to power its data centers so regular people's electric bills don't get driven up. The tech giant also says it'll work to prevent water resources from being drained by giant server farms. Marketplace's Nova Sappho has more.
Microsoft's announcement comes amid growing public backlash against data centers. That backlash has led to tens of billions of dollars in projects being delayed or canceled in recent months.
Communities are asking us hard and pointed questions about the impact of data centers.
Rima El-Aili heads Microsoft's infrastructure legal affairs team.
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Chapter 2: Why are communities concerned about data centers and electricity prices?
Data centers are growing at a rapid scale, and it's something that is really new for communities to have to grapple with.
The biggest concerns have been rising electricity costs and the large amounts of water many data centers consume for cooling. Microsoft is promising, among other things, to pay the full cost of the electricity it consumes and to replenish more water than it uses.
And when I look at the Microsoft plan, it almost aligns perfectly with the arguments that are often made against data centers in communities in Pennsylvania.
Chris Borick has seen the angry town hall meetings in his state from his perch as director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.
If there's one particular aspect right now of where the issue is connecting to individuals, it's through their electricity prices.
President Trump highlighted Microsoft's electricity commitment and said his administration is talking to other data center builders to do the same. I'm Neva Safo for Marketplace.
Congress, under the Constitution, has the power to control the country's finances. And some lawmakers are trying to use that power to prevent the Trump administration from invading Greenland. Democratic Senator Gene Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said
have introduced legislation to bar the Pentagon and Department of State from using funds appropriated by Congress to, quote, blockade, occupy, annex, conduct military operations against or otherwise assert control over the territory of a NATO member state. Venezuela's state-owned energy company has reportedly started to ramp up oil production again as exports of crude restart under U.S.
supervision. That oil production had fallen close to zero after the U.S. imposed a blockade on oil shipments from the country. So what does a Venezuelan oil industry under U.S. control look like? And what is the oil market? look like in that situation? So we put that question to Andrew Campbell. He's executive director at the Energy Institute at Haas at University of California, Berkeley.
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Chapter 3: How is Microsoft addressing water resource concerns related to data centers?
would control indefinitely Venezuela's oil production. What would that actually mean, given the current market environment for oil?
Well, that's the piece where it's very questionable whether this would be a good idea for the United States or any international oil companies. I mean, the global oil market right now is very well supplied. So that's good for consumers, good for oil consumers. The prices are modest.
But for a country like Venezuela, whose oil reserves are some of the lowest quality oil reserves in the world, that's a really bad thing. Even just producing it is very expensive due to the poor quality oil.
Yeah.
Chapter 4: What impact has public backlash had on data center projects?
I mean, in one post to social media, the president said a big factor in the U.S. involvement in Venezuela is the, quote, reduction of oil prices for the American people. Would that actually lower gas prices for people?
I mean, not anytime soon. I mean, there's a little bit of kind of a grain of an idea there, which is the Gulf Coast in the United States has tremendous refining capacity. Much of that capacity was built and expanded to process oil coming from Venezuela. So the refineries are able to produce gasoline, get it into the market, lower prices for consumers. But there are many other sources of oil too.
And the biggest source actually is U.S. domestic oil. And that is why prices in part are low right now. It's hard to see how Venezuela really would have any impact on that, even if oil production increased substantially.
The president met with oil executives last week, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips. They have outstanding debts in Venezuela. At least one of the CEOs called Venezuela uninvestable. What would make Venezuela a profitable investment? What would make it investable?
Thinking back to the Venezuela of the past, the 1990s Venezuela was highly investable. There were many US oil companies, other foreign companies operating very profitably in the country at that time. There were stable institutions. There were stable, understandable courts. There was a whole framework that was basically friendly to international investment. That system is long gone.
It would take decades to probably put that back together.
President Trump said that Venezuela and the unlocking of its oil would create massive wealth, lower taxes, and create a lot of jobs for Americans and Venezuelans. What do you make of that?
Again, there's a little bit of something there. I mean, the Venezuelan oil industry had historically employed many tens of thousands of Venezuelans. So yeah, certainly a revitalized industry, if that were possible, would create jobs there in Venezuela. I don't really see how it would create jobs in the United States. The oil industry is not really a labor-intensive industry.
It's a capital-intensive industry. It's really about making money for companies, for investors. It's not a big source of employment.
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