US EditionThree Takeaways About AI’s Energy Use and Climate Impacts
- In 2024, global data centers consumed around 415 terawatt-hours of electricity, representing 1.5% of worldwide energy use, with AI driving most of this demand.
- This surge resulted from rapid AI adoption, especially since late 2022, and expansion of AI infrastructure, which increased tech giants’ emissions and energy use.
- The environmental footprint of AI varies based on where data centers are situated, the local energy sources, and the time of usage, while investments in data center infrastructure have increased significantly since 2022 to support growing AI-related demand.
- Google’s emissions rose 48% since 2019, and researchers estimate AI may account for 20% of data center power use, with energy demand potentially doubling by year-end 2025.
- Experts recognize AI’s power needs pose challenges requiring coordinated action on diverse energy sources, efficient hardware, and supportive policies to mitigate climate impacts.
19 Articles
19 Articles
Sons of Liberty Media
The Washington StandardAI Data Centers, mRNA, & Chemtrails: Highway To The Danger Zone
In this episode, I’m joined by Sons of Liberty Media contributor Suzanne Hamner and Dan Franklin. We’ll be discussing the amount of power that the new AI datacenters will be consuming and questioning the impact of this on the People, as well as the environment. We’ll also see how mRNA and chemtrails will play in …
How Much Electricity It Actually Takes to Use AI May Surprise You
By now, most of us should be vaguely aware that artificial intelligence is hungry for power. Even if you don't know the exact numbers, the charge that "AI is bad for the environment" is well-documented, bubbling from sources ranging from mainstream press to pop-science YouTube channels to tech trade media. Still, the AI industry as we know it today is young. Though startups and big tech firms have been plugging away on large language models (LLM…
Three takeaways about AI’s energy use and climate impacts
This week, we published Power Hungry, a package all about AI and energy. At the center of this package is the most comprehensive look yet at AI’s growing power demand, if I do say so myself. This data-heavy story is the result of over six months of reporting by me and my colleague James O’Donnell (and the work of many others on our team). Over that time, with the help of leading researchers, we quantified the energy and emissions impacts of ind…
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