New York's grid is under pressure, and the Champlain Hudson Power Express tells the story well. During the July 3 heat wave, the state imported 52 gigawatt-hours from Canada, covering roughly 9% of daily demand. The infrastructure decisions we make today will define the energy landscape our students enter as professionals. At WCC, we need to weave these real-world grid tensions into our curriculum so students graduate ready to solve them, not just study them.
Story 2 connects this energy conversation directly to AI. The compute demands powering today's large language models consume staggering amounts of electricity, and that appetite grows every semester. When we adopt AI tools on campus, we are also casting a vote for a particular energy future. Our AI advisory committee takes that responsibility seriously, and I believe every administrator and faculty member should too.
Story 3 brings this full circle to our institutional mission. Higher education sits at the intersection of workforce development, civic preparation, and technological literacy. We cannot teach students to lead in an AI-driven economy if we shield them from the messy, interconnected systems AI actually runs on. That means talking honestly about power grids, compute costs, and policy tradeoffs inside our classrooms, not just in committee meetings.
Why it matters: The students sitting in our classrooms today will build, regulate, and live inside the systems we are only beginning to understand.