Aligning Energy Grids, Clouds and Public Values in Sweden
摘要
This chapter explores the relationship between energy, sustainability and digital infrastructure for AI from the perspective of infrastructure misalignments. It focuses on a misalignment between the temporalities and pace of scaling of cloud computing infrastructure, and those of energy grids, showing how this temporal misalignment results in the crowding out of industries and in putting pressure on public values of equal access to electricity. Using examples from Sweden, the chapter further discusses collective efforts by regional and national actors to repair the situation by upscaling electricity grids and change planning practices that in turn create further misalignments and societal conflicts. I suggest that infrastructural misalignment as a perspective on digital infrastructure and sustainability invites a shift in focus from questions about the carbon emissions of computing infrastructure towards concerns with resource access, public values and the common good.