How AI Data centers are the newest climate threat

(This story first appeared in CallawayClimateInsigts.com, a partner of Climate Crisis 247)

We’ve written before about how overloaded data centers, such as ones in Ireland and in Virginia, are threatening to suck vital energy away from power grids, especially with soaring AI computing. The International Energy Agency said recently that global energy consumption from data centers, AI and crypto could double by 2026, to more than 1,000 terawatts (one terawatt is a trillion watts). The additional demand is roughly the size of Japan’s annual energy consumption, the IEA said.

As tech giants race to compete in AI, they are frantically building new data centers, and they are looking to do so in parts of the world where they can use clean, renewable energy companies to avoid having to rely on more fossil fuels.

“The short-term climate risk is that AI growth is going to prevent some of that energy transition, “said Boris Gamazaychikov, senior manager of emissions reduction at San-Francisco-based Salesforce CRM 2.21%↑. “There’s a potential that AI growth may be the reason that we have to re-open a coal plant, or an oil refinery.”

Gamazaychikov said Salesforce has a three-pronged strategy to handle soaring AI computing while also meeting its targets to cut its emissions in half by 2030. One way is to find clean energy spots in the world and direct data center growth there. He mentioned Sweden in Europe, or Oregon in the U.S., which has abundant hydropower, as being strong candidates. Others are doing this as well.

Another strategy is to break AI computing up into smaller programs, suitable to process project requirements without having to be one all-seeing processing application. He said the newest ChatGPT iteration is expected to compute more than a trillion parameters, which is amazing but hardly needed for almost any function. The third way involves using the most sophisticated hardware, such as chips from Nvidia NVDA 2.41%↑ to keep emissions reduced and processing efficient.

It is perhaps inevitable that the demand for more and more AI is going to create more energy usage, but without strategies such as this it would soon overwhelm our existing power grids and create a real energy security emergency to make the Russian emergency seem like a blinking tail light. Grids are the biggest opportunity in climate right now, and the AI threat is just one reason why.