Data Center Energy Spike Will Continue Future Electricity Prices

A recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) found that data center #electricity load growth has tripled over the past 10 years, and is expected to double again between 2024 and 2028. 

The details: The report attributes the growth in U.S. #electricitydemand to the “rise of artificial intelligence” and the steady expansion of the data centers used to power the tech. 

• According to the report, data centers consumed 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and are expected to consume as much as 12% of total electricity demand by 2028. 
• In 2014, data centers used 58 terawatt hours (TWh) of #electricity; in 2023, they used 176 TWh and in 2028, they are expected to use as much as 580 TWh. 

For context, Greece, Switzerland and Israel each consumed around 300 TWh of electricity in 2023. 

“The United States has seen an incredible investment in artificial intelligence and other breakthrough technologies over the last decade and a half, and this industrial renaissance has created greater demand on our domestic energy supply,” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. “We can meet this growth with clean energy.”

The #energy department is pushing both industrial energy storage and on-site energy generation for data center operators as part of its plan to make #datacenters a “grid asset rather than a burden.”

The department said that the commercialization of technologies including more efficient semiconductors, advanced nuclear energy, long-term energy storage and geothermal energy will all be vital to meet this steadily rising demand. 

Geothermal, according to the International Energy Agency, currently meets less than 1% of the world’s energy demand. But the IEA recently found that investment in geothermal is growing, with the sector expected to draw some $1 trillion globally by 2035. 

As costs continue to fall, the IEA predicted that geothermal has the potential to provide some 15% of the world’s energy demand by 2050. 

This comes as the energy demand of AI has pushed the bulk of the Big Tech sector to pursue the construction of new nuclear power plants. In the meantime, new research has highlighted the massive impact of data center emissions on public health around the world.

When I think about the cost-benefit analysis of AI use and the lack of transparency in the industry, I think about energy use and emissions. All we know is that energy demand keeps spiking, pushing far ahead of innovations in technological efficiency. 

We need to re-ground our collective understanding of chatbots and the internet at large, not as some mystical, on-demand portal, but as the result of extensive hardware, powered by enormous quantities of electricity and emitting enormous quantities of carbon and other particulate matter. 

We need to refocus our attention on achieving innovations in technological efficiency, and we need to think more about the cost of use associated with these systems. Future Electricity Prices future cost of electricity