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AI and energy

August 20, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

MIT recently hosted a symposium on the subject of artificial intelligence being both a problem and a solution for the clean energy transition.

AI-powered computing centers are expanding rapidly, creating an unprecedented surge in electricity demand. Electricity demand in the US had been relatively flat for decades but now these computing centers consume about 4% of the nation’s electricity. Some projections say that this demand could rise to 12-15% in the next five years.

The power required for sustaining some of the AI large-language models is doubling every three months. The amount of electricity used by a single ChatGPT conversation is as much as it takes to charge a phone and consumes the equivalent of a bottle of water for cooling.

The MIT symposium focused on the challenges of meeting these growing energy needs but also on the potential for AI to dramatically improve power systems and reduce carbon emissions.

Research shows regional variations in the cost of powering computing centers with clean electricity. The central United States offers lower costs due to complementary solar and wind resources but would require massive battery deployments to provide uninterrupted power.

Because of data center demand, there is renewed interest in nuclear power, often in the form of small modular reactors, as well as efforts in long-duration storage technologies, geothermal power, or hybrid approaches.

Artificial intelligence offers both great promise and great peril. It will take real intelligence to steer it in the right direction.

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Confronting the AI/energy conundrum

Photo, posted August 31, 2024, courtesy of Jefferson Lab via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Big Tech and emissions

September 23, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Most of the well-known largest technology companies have established ambitious clean energy goals. They are on record for achieving net-zero emissions for all their operations and supply chains in many cases by 2030. As a result, they have been investing heavily in renewable energy in various ways. Despite these lofty goals and sincere efforts, many of them are struggling to reduce emissions. The reason is simple: big data.

A good example is Google, which started investing in renewable energy in 2010 and since 2017 has been purchasing renewable energy on an annual basis to match the electricity consumption of its global operations. However, Google’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased nearly 48% since 2019. This is primarily a result of data center energy consumption.

The expanding use of artificial intelligence technology is consuming large amounts of electricity. For example, a single ChatGPT query uses nearly 10 times as much electrical energy as a traditional Google search.

Google is by no means unique in having this problem. Microsoft’s carbon emissions have risen by nearly 30% since 2020. Amazon is struggling to reach net-zero across its operations by 2040.

All of these companies are entering into large power agreements with renewable energy companies all across the country. The AI arms race for more and more computational power is driving a race to install more and more large-scale renewable energy. Power purchase agreements for solar power, wind power, and even geothermal power are becoming a major activity for most of the largest tech companies.

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Can Google gobble up enough renewables?

Photo, posted February 12, 2023, courtesy of Geoff Henson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

AI’s Environmental Footprint

March 13, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Artificial intelligence is everywhere these days. Some say it is the biggest development since the discovery of fire. There is a lot of hype regarding AI, and it will be a while before the hype is sorted out from the reality. But one thing that is certain is that AI is resource-intensive and has a large environmental footprint.

AI use directly produces carbon emissions from its consumption of non-renewable electricity and is also responsible for the consumption of billions of gallons of fresh water.

Various forms of AI run on many types of devices, but the kind of AI we hear about the most – such as ChatGPT – requires specialized computer equipment that runs in large cloud data centers. There are roughly 10,000 such centers worldwide and more are under construction. Estimates are that electricity consumption from data centers will double between 2022 and 2026 to a total of 1,000 terawatts, roughly as much electricity as all of Japan uses.

These estimates include all data center activities, not just AI. Most operators of data centers don’t reveal what percentage of their energy use comes from AI. One exception is Google, which says machine learning accounts for about 15% of its data center energy use.

Data centers also consume a great deal of water to cool delicate electronics. In 2022, Google’s data centers consumed about 5 billion gallons of fresh water.

AI has the potential to improve the efficiency of systems, improve climate models, and perhaps help develop new ways to help reduce humanity’s environmental footprint. But at the moment, it represents an increasing burden on the environment that cannot just be ignored.

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As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires

Photo, posted January 23, 2023, courtesy of Aileen Devlin / Jefferson Lab via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Chatbots Are Thirsty | Earth Wise

June 19, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

We hear a lot about artificial intelligence these days. ChatGPT has found its way into education, technology, and many other aspects of life. It and its brethren are a source of fascination, enthusiasm, and even fear. Many of us have given queries to the bot to see what kind of results we can obtain. But a recent study has found out something about AI systems that we probably didn’t know – they use up lots of fresh water.

According to researchers at the University of California, Riverside, running a few dozen queries on ChatGPT uses up about half a quart of fresh water from already overtaxed reservoirs.

Running artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT relies on cloud computations done in racks of servers in warehouse-sized data processing centers. Google’s data centers in the U.S. alone consumed nearly 3.5 billion gallons of fresh water in 2021 in order to keep their servers cool.

Data processing centers consume water in two ways. They often draw much of their electricity from power plants that use large cooling towers that convert water into steam emitted into the atmosphere. In addition, the servers themselves need to be cooled to keep running and are typically connected to cooling towers as well.

It isn’t going to be easy for AI systems to reduce their water use. The study’s authors noted that people make use of AI at all hours of the day and night. But a significant amount of AI activity is actually the training of the systems. That could be scheduled for the cooler hours, when less water is lost to evaporation.

In an era of scarce fresh water and droughts, it is important to make AI less thirsty.

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AI programs consume large volumes of scarce water

Photo, posted May 22, 2023, courtesy of Jernej Furman via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio