Energy Abundance & Climate Transition • Big Batteries🔋☢️ 🥑• Amateur Outdoorsman • First Gen 🇨🇦
Toronto, Ontario
Joined March 2016
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- Following3.9K
- Followers1.4K
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Alex Simakov retweeted
As a credit guy, this is the most realistic take on compute markets I’ve read to date. It’s a must read.
Alex Simakov retweeted
This has been said before but the case for data centres:
Riches — that we can ensure flow to local communities — driven by high margin advanced technology that is a complement to our natural resources.
Sovereignty with the most important general purpose technology of our age.
Interesting and compelling new work for trades, technicians, and managers across the country.
A laboratory for new research and development in the physical world (interconnects, microgrids, heat management, low-carbon building approaches) all areas Canadians could create original companies.
Canada is also uniquely placed to contain the downsides. Build these things in places with access to abundant clean electricity (increased by investments from the builders) and far enough away from people that it doesn't remove existing land use and there are limited negative impacts on what people see or hear.
Alex Simakov retweeted
Fickling:
"Quite striking contrasting the sober, level-headed IEA projections of carbon-capture vs. reality (left) with the sober, level-headed IEA projections of solar vs reality (right)"
🌞🌞🌞
@AukeHoekstra @JessePeltan
Alex Simakov retweeted
Patrick Beatty described as a 'super-unifier' who might have changed the world ottawacitizen.com/news/patri…
Alex Simakov retweeted
As Ontario continues to grow, our government is taking action to ensure our electricity system is ready to power the future. ⚡🇨🇦
Great to join Minister @Sflecce for an important announcement on modernizing Ontario’s electricity system.
Through initiatives like PULSE, our government is working with municipalities and utilities to support growing communities, attract investment, and create good paying jobs across Ontario. 🤝
Alex Simakov retweeted
We’re bringing the magic of Waymo to Toronto! 🇨🇦
In the coming days, you’ll begin seeing Waymo’s all-electric vehicles driving through Toronto’s streets as we lay the groundwork for our ride-hailing service.
Our goal is to begin serving riders in 2028.
Sign up for future updates: waymo.com/waymo-in-canada
Alex Simakov retweeted
I frankly do not think this claim is correct.
The permitting reform bill will not impact *how many* data centers are built. That is driven by compute demand.
What it *will* impact is whether the data centers that are going to be build get connected to the grid (enabling them to be decarbonized) in exchange for forcing them to pay for grid upgrades (a win-win), verses power themselves Behind-the-Meter using inefficient stand-alone fossil gas turbines (a lose-lose for climate and the environment).
Alex Simakov retweeted
“We don’t need new transmission, we can optimize the grid we’ve already paid for.”
Alex Simakov retweeted
I’m moderately optimistic that the data center backlash has peaked. A month ago there were many calls for moratoriums. The discussion feels more nuanced even in the past few weeks, changing from whether to ban to how to develop responsibly.
More politicians are leaning in by directly speaking to their constituents about the issue, the concerns, and the safeguards. Developed correctly, data centers can be a benefit to a community.
Sentiment on this issue spiraled so quickly with the lack of credible messengers. Communities are understandably skeptical of what the hyperscalers say. They need to hear directly from elected leaders who can acknowledge the tradeoffs, explain the protections, and make the case for responsible development. The politics remains very risky, but leaders are supposed to lead.
Alex Simakov retweeted
Central Asia lost 40% of its population and was getting ethnically replaced by forced deportations 90 years ago.
Today they are doing stuff like this. Never blackpill.
Ever.
Alex Simakov retweeted
"The massive data center build-out may prove to be the critical platform for commercializing clean, reliable, low-carbon electricity-generation technology that the world will need to tackle climate change."
My latest @WSJopinion.
Alex Simakov retweeted
Rainmaker just produced ~19M gallons of water in Alaska via next-gen cloud seeding over 3 hours of operations.
We are the first company to provably produce precipitation in Alaska. As promised, we’ve linked our white paper and relevant data.
In the future, Rainmaker will protect and restore glaciers with man-made snowfall.
Immediately, this demonstration shows how Rainmaker will add new water to the Colorado River and Great Salt Lake in the coming months.
We turned around this analysis and white paper just a couple days after operating. There are many data sources I want to deepen our understanding of the atmosphere and increase our provable production; we’re building the instruments to collect that data in subsequent operations. But at Rainmaker, we won’t tout LOIs, simulations, or lab tests. What matters is physically measuring that you’ve affected the atmosphere; proving that we’ve produced water. We prefer sharing only the tech that has proven to make more water for farms, industries, and ecosystems in need.
Expect a regular cadence of these from us as we build the best atmospheric science lab in the world. Feedback is welcome in the interim.
Rainmaker Century.
rainmaker.com/blog/alaska-va…
Alex Simakov retweeted
In all seriousness I think this represents both a disturbing society-level inability to process basic facts that involve numbers, a lurch toward degrowth on the left and right, and a failure of mainstream journalism to go beyond just nodding along to the "concerns" of everyday people without checking to see if they're the result of a game of telephone that leads back to nothing
Alex Simakov retweeted
As someone who ran a similar program in a different market, I don't think this is going to save money in CA. In fact, likely make energy more expensive.
First principles why👇
Listen up: free electricity.
It’s called Power Hour - providing up to two hours of free electricity for millions of California households.
Working families could save approximately $1,000 a year on their electricity bills.
I’m looking forward to getting this done for California families when I’m in office.
Alex Simakov retweeted
AI may be the most important technology of our lifetimes and data centre compute is increasingly a key factor of competitiveness.
This explainer from @ABDanielleSmith is the gold standard among North American political leaders for educating an uncertain yet open-minded public.
Most Albertans have probably seen the headlines about companies wanting to invest in and build AI data centres in Alberta.
Many Albertans are excited about that, but others have legitimate questions.
Here are the answers to 6 common questions on everything from power to water to land use and how these investments will financially benefit our province now and in the future.
Alex Simakov retweeted
As a Danish taxpayer, I think this is the best spent money ever. We will happily continue to pay to help a European country survive and to stop an existential threat against Europe.
We are just wondering why so many other countries are free-riding and barely contributing?
Alex Simakov retweeted
On this day in 1793, Scottish-Canadian explorer Sir Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific Ocean. It was the first crossing of the North American Continent north of Mexico, beating Lewis and Clark by 12 years, & is regarded as one of the greatest expeditions in Canadian history.
Alex Simakov retweeted
This is such a clear example of the inherent limits of abundance liberalism. They can talk a good game but as long as they’re beholden to a coalition of the anti-development left and status-quoist boomers, they can’t be trusted to actually build stuff.
Alex Simakov retweeted
We look forward to continuing to work to advance the expansion of Billy Bishop Airport. The benefits are clear: the project will contribute up to $8.5 billion to Canada's economy every year, create thousands of jobs, and improve connectivity for millions of travellers and businesses across Ontario, North America and beyond.
As this work continues, we look forward to seeing and anticipate a plan that ensures the project protects public spaces, including the Toronto Islands, addresses potential noise and environmental impacts, expands and improves Little Norway Park, supports new housing opportunities in the area, and delivers lasting benefits for local communities.