Everyone is jumping on the AI bandwagon, whether that’s to boost productivity, feed curiosity or avoid one day being replaced by someone else who can use it. But its popularity is putting a strain on power—and according to the CEO of one of the world’s largest telecommunication companies “it’s going to become the next big social and economic issue in the United States.”

John Stankey, AT&T’s chief executive, warned leaders at Fortune’s Global Forum that America isn’t ready for the energy consumption that the AI revolution will take.

“I worry about whether or not we're going to have enough power to make all that work moving forward,” he said, while suggesting that incoming president, Donald Trump will have to tackle the issue—or risk being voted out.

“If $5 a gallon gasoline gets people elected or kicked out of office, two years from now, people are going to be looking at the power bill on their house—because there's going to be a shortage of power and people are going to be consuming it to push the boundaries on AI—and we're going to be asking ourselves, how did this happen? Why do we not have an approach here for critical infrastructure on power?”

AI demand will exceed power utilities’ capacity by 2027, according to a new study published today by Gartner, a management consulting firm. And it has forecasted that 40% of data centers could face power shortages in the next three years. Goldman Sachs’ research previously estimated that data centers will require 160% more electricity by 2030. “That kind of spike in power demand hasn’t been seen in the U.S. since the early years of this century,” the report warned. Case in point: A single ChatGPT query uses 10 times more power than a Google search, according to the investment bank.

AI and sustainability at odds

The other issue with AI being extremely resource-hungry is the setback it could have on net zero commitments and climate pledges from world leaders and business leaders alike.

“There is no plan on how to produce that much power without driving more greenhouse gasses,” Stankey said. “And I'm not saying that it couldn't be done if there was a well-thought plan, but there is no plan right now.”

The solution? Stankey points to nuclear power: “I personally don't see a future that gets us to where we need to get on emissions without some equation of nuclear.”

“If we don't start permitting faster than we are right now, we aren't going to solve that problem—we're well over eight years off for any kind of reasonable online nuclear power coming out and most people don't want to go build natural gas power plants right now.”