Curry schrijft: "De high-tech bedrijven aan de andere kant van de Atlantische oceaan dreigen de komende jaren in de problemen te komen. De enorme hoeveelheden energie die door de informatie-infrastructuur opgeslokt worden blijven enorm groeien, en de vraag zou al snel het aanbod kunnen overstijgen. Tot het jaar 2007 wordt een stijging van het electriciteitsverbruik van 17 procent verwacht, terwijl de capaciteit op zijn best met 4 procent omhoog gaat. Silicon Valley kwam in paniek bij elkaar om de problemen te bespreken":
High-tech companies wield increasing power in the American economy, but they could face dark days in the coming months unless a nationwide energy shortage is quickly addressed, participants at a regional energy summit warned.
The U.S. Department of Energy and energy experts in several of the nation's largest electricity-consuming states say the possibility of extended blackouts looms large this summer and next, representing the potential loss of billions of dollars to high-tech firms that rely on uninterrupted power sources.
"Our aging power grid is not able to meet the needs of the information age," said Carl Guardino, president of the high-tech industry organization Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, which sponsored yesterday's summit.
Computers and computer peripherals now consume about 13 percent of the nation's available power, a figure that has soared from less than 1 percent since 1993 as the Internet becomes a preferred method of doing business and communicating with each other.
But the construction of new power-generating plants and transmission lines to meet that demand has virtually ground to a standstill in the same period as companies wait to understand the effects of deregulation of the electric utility industry.
The imbalance threatens to grow even larger in coming months amid projections that electricity demand will grow 17 percent by 2007 as transmission capacity rises only 4 percent.
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