The AI Policy Podcast The Energy Cost of AI with Joseph Majkut
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Oct 2, 2025 Joseph Majkut, Director of CSIS's Energy Security and Climate Change Program, shares his insights on the energy challenges facing AI. He examines the current state of the U.S. electrical grid and the staggering demand projected for AI data centers by 2030. Majkut delves into bottlenecks in grid interconnection and the risks posed by concentrated data centers. He also discusses the potential roles of nuclear energy and AI in optimizing grid operations, along with international comparisons showcasing the energy capacity needed for global AI competitiveness.
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From Yucca Mountain To Energy Policy
- Joseph Majkut traces his path from math to climate and energy policy via a public speaking project on Yucca Mountain.
- That project and graduate work on uncertainty modeling pushed him toward applied policy work rather than academia.
The Grid's Three-Part Anatomy
- The U.S. grid is a huge, highly capital-intensive machine split into generation, transmission, and distribution components.
- Regional rules and distributed resources blur lines and create governance complexity for growth decisions.
Two Decades Of Flat Demand
- U.S. electricity demand has been nearly flat since 2007 due to efficiency gains and slower industrial growth.
- That stagnation leaves utilities inexperienced in managing rapid load growth like AI data centers.
