“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
News stories about AI are everywhere we turn. It’s one of the buzziest topics of the year, and for good reason. We are moving at a breakneck pace toward AI completely transforming our lives. Whether that will be good for society remains to be seen, but one thing is becoming clear – AI is a giant power suck. What does this mean for the clean energy transition?
In order to reverse climate change, we need to transition away from fossil fuels. The good news: the percentage of energy generated by renewables is rapidly growing. The bad news: total energy demand is also increasing. One major reason – the skyrocketing energy demand of data centers.
I’ve written before about the staggering amount of energy crypto requires. Well, we are now in the finding out stage that AI is another energy suck. Just how much energy are big data centers consuming? Well, in 2023 Google and Microsoft each used more energy than 100 countries!
To make matters worse, the International Energy Agency predicts data centers will demand twice as much energy is 2026 as they do today. By 2030, data centers are expected to account for 8% of all power use in the US. This is partly driven by the fact that today’s AI tools use 10x the amount of energy per search than standard online search engines.
Both Google and Microsoft have promised to be net-zero by the end of the decade. Google recently announced they are falling behind on that goal. Let’s hope these companies are able to uphold their commitments by making their processes more efficient, and incorporating renewable energy. Otherwise, their energy demand will make the breakup with oil and gas a lot harder.
One thing is for certain – data processing and storage (most notably AI) won’t be slowing down. The fact that renewable energy is just that – renewable – makes it a great solution to handle this accelerating demand. We just need to build more…and fast.
Let’s do something about climate change. Learn about it. Think about it. Talk about it.