Rory O'Neill talks A.I. and electric bills

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
Roy Neil, our correspondent, joining us now to talk about
what's happening with the tariff schedule as it is still
on track. No more extensions, President Trump says, cut the
deal by August first or else. Good morning, Roy, Welcome in.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Yeah, JT. Good morning. So a few different things happening.
Yesterday we had the President in Scotland with the head
of the European Union announcing a new trade deal there.
I think technically they are our biggest trading partner at
the EU by dollar amount, so it is a significant announcement.
About fifteen percent of most European exports, or rather most

(00:34):
European exports, will be subjected to a tariff of about
fifteen percent. There are some exceptions for pharmaceuticals and some
things are different, higher for steel, for instance, but fifteen
percent overall is roughly what we're seeing right now. They
are opening up talks in Sweden with the US and
China to talk about a possible trade deal there. That

(00:56):
could be two or even three days of talks. We're
still waiting for an agreement, but as you said, Friday
is the day that most of the world will start
to have tariffs imposed on the goods that are imported
here to the US.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, the EU thing was huge, of course in China
obviously certainly a big one. I mean, how much were
we going to be paying for all those things that
we do get from them, which is a lot. But
Donald Trump seemed to be pretty optimistic about it, don't
you think he was saying, yeah, yeah, I think we'll
cut a deal. You know, we're moving in the right
direction here. So do you anticipate that it will get done?

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Friday is going to be tough, but we'll see, you know.
And even the EU deal, like we saw with the UK,
there's sort of frameworks, and you know, there's the devil
is in the details and a lot of these details
have not been hammered out just yet. So maybe they
can get a framework for China done by the Friday deadline.
But at least they're talking, so that's always a good sign, right, all.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Right, good news there and no doubt about that. Let's
talk about what's happening with our electric bills. Artificial intelligence
everywhere it's supposed to help us and I thought reduce costs,
but what's going on with the.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Well, what we're seeing is these AI data centers require
massive amounts of electricity. There are computers running twenty four
to seven NonStop in these massive warehouses that are just
filled with the processing capacity. And what happens is these
AI companies build them in places where electricity is normally
cheap and available, but it's sort of sucking up all

(02:23):
the extra power and that's spilling over to cost homeowners
and businesses a little bit of extra money, maybe fifteen
twenty twenty five dollars a month. But look, there's a
growing frustration that why am I paying an extra two
hundred bucks a year am my electric bill to support
the fact that Google or Amazon has a computer farm

(02:43):
twenty miles away. And there's a bit of pushback is happening.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Yeah, why why aren't these big corporations, billion dollar corporations,
you know, experiencing any demand to know, take on that cost.
If it's their fault, well, look, yeah, they paid their
own election bill.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
That's fine. But you know, you have a utility. The
cover is let's say the whole state of Alabama. I
know that more than one. Let's say it's one whole state. Well,
the utility is just ordering in the electricity it's going
to need. Yes, it generates most of it, but then
they order in extra and as they do, they say, well,
we're going to need more because this facility is here,
and they just spread that cost out among all the consumers.

(03:22):
So again they're seeing a higher capacity order from the utility,
and that is what's being shared with customers. In some
parts of the country, it's a pretty significant Alabama is
not terrible. The killowatt hour cost is up about five
percent year over year, but Louisiana is getting hit hard
with kilowatt hours up about eleven percent year over year.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, I have trouble wrapping my head around the fact
that we bring in electricity from outside our states, and
you know, we do it across the country. Everybody does it.
It's just like bring it.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
In, Dept. Texans Dept texts right, Well, that weird.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Text, so weird. What do you mean bring it in?
We're just roll a line here, plug this extension court
and you someone extentually what happens?

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Right? All right?

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Thank you, Roy, I appreciate you.