Artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise – and with it, electricity consumption is increasing, as the technology requires very powerful data centers. AI applications already consume as much electricity as entire countries. Experts warn of the environmental consequences.
What you as an end user often do not even notice or realize is that every search via a search engine or on the internet consumes energy. Behind the websites are huge data centers with powerful servers that consume a lot of electricity to function. They get warm and need to be cooled, which increases energy consumption even further.
Why does AI require so much energy?
Data centers running artificial intelligence applications require significantly more electricity because the computing power required for AI is enormous. For comparison, a search query from ChatGPT or another generative AI uses on average about ten times as much energy as a simple Google search.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), data centers use 40 percent of their electricity for operations and the same amount for cooling. However, normal data centers can operate in well-conditioned rooms and be sufficiently cooled, but AI applications are so powerful that they often need to be cooled with water, says Fabrice Coquio of data center service Digital Realty.
How much energy does AI need?
Before the triumph of AI, data centers accounted for about 1 percent of global electricity demand. The IEA projected that data centers, cryptocurrencies and AI applications would consume 460 terawatt hours in 2022, equivalent to a 2 percent share. This share could double again by 2026, when AI would consume as much electricity as Japan.
And it’s not just servers and data centers that are driving up energy consumption related to AI. There’s an entire industry behind the technology that produces chips and server capacity. Researcher Alex de Vries, who runs the online portal Digiconomist, looked at the consumption of Nvidia, a world leader in AI hardware. His calculations showed that it uses between 85.4 and 134.0 terawatt hours of electricity – the amount used by Argentina and Sweden in a year.
How does this fit in with climate goals?
Major players in the AI space, such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, are trying to reduce their carbon footprint by purchasing large amounts of electricity from renewable energy sources. Amazon’s cloud provider AWS claims to be the world’s largest purchaser of renewable energy.
AWS wants to be carbon neutral by 2040, Google and Microsoft want to achieve this goal ten years earlier. However, building new data centers does not help. On the contrary: Google and Microsoft recently stated that their greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase in recent years. Google reported a 48 percent increase since 2019, Microsoft 30 percent since 2020.
Both companies blamed the AI boom. Microsoft President Brad Smith told Bloomberg in May that the carbon neutrality pledge was made before the “AI explosion.” Today, the goal is five times further away than it was in 2020.
Source: Krone
I am an experienced and passionate journalist with a strong track record in news website reporting. I specialize in technology coverage, breaking stories on the latest developments and trends from around the world. Working for Today Times Live has given me the opportunity to write thought-provoking pieces that have caught the attention of many readers.
