> Sounds to me like the real criticism is dirty electricity generation.

Not when that "dirty electricity generation" was planned to be shut down before the data centers arrived: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/14/ai_datacenters_coal/, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m..., https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/31/datacenter_power_crun..., https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/eric_schmidt_speech/.