Alex Kimani
Alex Kimani is a veteran finance writer, investor, engineer and researcher for Safehaven.com.
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By Alex Kimani – Mar 29, 2024, 6:00 PM CDT
- A Boston Consulting Group analysis has predicted that data center electricity consumption will triple by 2030.
- Past trends in technology advances suggest that AI cons are very likely to outweigh the pros as far as power demand is concerned.
- OpenAI’s Altman: nuclear fusion is the ultimate solution to the AI energy puzzle.
Two weeks ago, we reported how Artificial Intelligence (AI), cryptocurrency mining and clean energy manufacturing are powering the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or simply 4R, and driving disruptive trends including the rise of data and connectivity, analytics, human-machine interaction, and improvements in robotics. Unfortunately, these secular megatrends are pushing the U.S. power grid to its limits.
According to Sreedhar Sistu, vice president of artificial intelligence at Schneider Electric (OTCPK:SBGSF), excluding China, AI represents 4.3 GW of global power demand, and could grow almost five-fold by 2028. Another analysis has predicted that demand from AI will grow exponentially, increasing at least 10x between 2023 and 2026.
AI tasks typically demand more powerful hardware than traditional computing tasks. Meanwhile, bitcoin mining shows no signs of slowing down, with mining rates hitting 565 exahashes per second (EH/s) currently, a five-fold increase from three years ago.
Bitcoin mining consumes 148.63 TWh of electricity per year and emits 82.90 Mt CO2 per year, comparable to the power consumption of Malaysia. And, data center demand is not helping matters at all. Data center storage capacity is expected to grow from 10.1 zettabytes (ZB) in 2023 to 21.0 ZB in 2027, good for a 18.5% CAGR.
A Boston Consulting Group analysis has predicted that data center electricity consumption will triple by 2030, enough electricity to power 40 million U.S. homes.
The situation is already getting out of hand: U.S. power demand has started rising for the first time ever in 15 years. “We as a country are running out of energy,” Michael Khoo, climate disinformation program director at Friends of the Earth and co-author of a report on AI and climate, has told CNN.
To be fair, AI has been touted as one of the key technologies that will help tackle climate change. The revolutionary technology is already being used to track pollution, predict weather, monitor melting ice and map deforestation. A recent report commissioned by Google and published by the Boston Consulting Group claimed AI could help mitigate up to 10% of planet-heating pollution.
Unfortunately, past trends in technology advances suggest that AI cons are very likely to outweigh the pros as far as power demand is concerned.
“Efficiency gains have never reduced the energy consumption of cryptocurrency mining. When we make certain goods and services more efficient, we see increases in demand,” Alex de Vries,