RE: Question asked of Microsoft Co-Pilot AI4 Apr 2024 08:41
Humanity’s knack for finding new ways to consume energy is not showing any sign of abating. Take cryptocurrency: a single bitcoin transaction can consume more electricity than a US household does in a month. Or artificial intelligence: a query on ChatGPT uses 10 times more electricity than a Google search, and shifting all internet queries to using AI could consume as much electricity as Ireland does in a year.
Until recently, electricity consumption from data centres accounted for only about 1 per cent of electricity demand globally: energy demand from the explosion in computing, cloud storage, streaming, video calls and so on have been offset by efficiency gains.
But this landscape has shifted recently with the prevalence of AI and cryptocurrency, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that data centres will drive significant electricity growth.
This poses a serious challenge. Growing energy demand at a time when we’re trying to drastically cut emissions is like running down an upwards-moving escalator. Ireland is facing this pressure more acutely than most other countries: 18 per cent of our electricity was consumed by data centres in 2022, as much as all urban homes, making the country an outlier. The country with the next highest share of electricity consumed by data centres is the Netherlands, with 5 per cent, and the figure stands at only about 2 per cent across Europe.
https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/climate-crisis/2024/04/04/data-centres-are-a-serious-threat-to-irelands-carbon-budgets/