The energy needs of AI data centers are massive and risk destabilizing whatever minor climate achievements we’ve made so far
Vora et al 2024. Tiffany J. Vora is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center. She has a PhD in molecular biology from Princeton University. Kathryn Thomas is the chief operating officer of Blue Lion. She has a PhD in water quality and monitoring from the University of Waterloo. Anna Ferré-Mateu is a Ramón y Cajal fellow at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and an adjunct fellow at the Center of Astronomy and Supercomputing of the Swinburne University of Technology. She has a PhD in astrophysics from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. Catherine Lopes is the chief data and AI strategist of Opsdo Analytics. She has a PhD in machine learning from Monash University. Marissa Giustina is a research scientist and quantum electronics engineer. She has a PhD in physics from the University of Vienna. “The sustainability questions policymakers should be asking about AI” June 21, 2024. <https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/geotech-cues/the-sustainability-questions-policymakers-should-be-asking-about-ai/> Accessed 6/29/2024. ARJSH
To develop and leverage AI at the scale imagined by researchers, businesses, and governments, significant physical resources will be required for the design and deployment of the requisite computing hardware and software. While all AI approaches merit attention regarding their sustainability, generative AI is particularly resource-intensive: One such AI-powered chatbot is reportedly consuming the energy equivalent of 33,000 homes. (Note that while it is complicated to estimate such equivalences—given variations in operational timescales and details, home location, user numbers, etc.—various calculations have yielded estimated energy use equivalent to that of tens to hundreds of thousands of US homes.) In addition, new data centers are being designed and built with high demand and at a fast pace, new AI-critical hardware components are being designed and fabricated, and organizations large and small are experiencing urgency in setting their short-term tactics and long-term strategies for AI. Demands on data centers will only continue to grow as AI-powered applications spread through industries and around the world. For example, a recent International Energy Agency report projected an increase in data center energy consumption in 2026 equivalent to the energy consumption of Japan. Sustainability-focused regulation of AI, if deployed in a timely manner, can incentivize further improvements in the efficiency of data center operation and even the efficiency of software itself. Unfortunately, in the past, similar opportunities to promote the sustainable development of emerging technologies across industries have been missed. Failure to act during the rise of cryptocurrency mining has led to concerns today about the industry’s electricity and water use and to tension—internationally and domestically—around regulation and resource accessibility. For example, blockchain advocates filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Energy after the agency attempted to conduct an emergency survey of energy use by crypto miners, with the advocates arguing that it forced businesses to divulge sensitive information. More broadly, global digitization and its associated technologies have spurred crises in e-waste, supply-chain fragility, and human rights, to name a few. Early consideration and prioritization of these issues could have prevented harmful patterns from becoming embedded in today’s systems and processes. Crucially, the projected demands on data centers in the coming years due to the rise of AI—in terms of hardware, power, cooling, land and water use, and access to physical infrastructure and network bandwidth (a particular concern in growing urban areas)—are likely to far outstrip demands associated with other technologies. The potential cumulative impacts of the AI revolution, including resource consumption and byproduct production, underscore the urgency of acting today.