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More Worried About AI’s Environmental Impact Than Animal Agriculture? The Numbers Tell a Different Story (open.substack.com)

submitted 1 month ago by Shailu45@lemmy.world to c/vegan@lemmy.ml

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[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The article cites a 2023 figure. The industry was significantly smaller then. The datacenter energy usage changes we're seeing now are significantly larger than that

Globally, the electricity consumption of data centers rose to 460 terawatt-hours in 2022 [...] By 2026, the electricity consumption of data centers is expected to approach 1,050 terawatt-hours

This is also expected to keep going up and up as training energy usage grows ever more. The industry has already delayed fossil fuel phase outs by ramping up demand, and it's now requiring entirely new capacity to be built

Anthropic estimated that by 2027, training a single frontier AI model will require five gigawatts (GW) of power and projected that the U.S. AI sector alone will require 50 GW of new electric capacity by 2028 to maintain global AI leadership. To put the 50 GW figure in context, it is about twice the peak electricity demand of New York City

[...]

The IEA notes that while a typical data center can consume as much electricity as 100,000 households, the largest next-generation campuses currently under construction will demand 20 times that amount

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/global-energy-demands-within-the-ai-regulatory-landscape/

Before this current AI boom, datacenter usage was almost flat for 20 years and was a small portion of power demand