🌎 AI works hard for you, but the earth is working even harder 🌎

In today's in-depth article, we take a look at how bad AI really is for the environment.

Read more 👉 tuta.com/blog/is-ai-bad-for-th…

in reply to Tuta

Bicester, UK: Plan, 7.000 new homes: stopped, not enough power
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Ireland rejected planned data centers from Microsoft and Amazon because the state-owned network operator fears a blackout
• 11 percent of Ireland's total electricity demand would already go to data centers
• Ireland's data centers consume more electricity than all urban households combined
theguardian.com/world/article/…
• Irish state grid operator Eirgrid estimates that by 2029, nearly 30 percent of Ireland's annual electricity demand will be accounted for by data centers.
gizmodo.com/data-centers-are-p…
• Data center boom threatens Ireland's power grid
heise.de/news/Blackout-Risiko-…

in reply to Okuna

In many places around the world, data centers are already operating at full capacity
• Server farms belonging to Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta required more electricity than Czechia in 2021
• All data centers worldwide consumed approximately as much electricity as Spain in 2022
• Data centers house cloud infrastructure and thus also AI systems
• The largest providers of AI systems are either cloud operators (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) or operate the systems for these three
• Meta, Google, and others are therefore trying to build their data centers in places where a lot of (green) energy is available (Iceland, Finland, Norway, etc.)
in reply to Okuna

Amazon: Acquires Cumulus Data's nuclear data centers: $650 million. Purchases 480 MW of electricity from Susquehanna power plant.
For at least 10 years, it will supply electricity to a nearby data center – at a fixed price that is 50 percent above the current electricity price
n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Amazon-zahl…
• Microsoft: Damaged nuclear power plant for AI. Power plant in Pennsylvania was the site of the most severe meltdown and largest radiation leak in US history in 1979
sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/mic…
heise.de/news/KI-Server-mit-At…
OpenAI asks the US for approval of energy-guzzling 5GW data centers, according to a report
arstechnica.com/?p=2052285
in reply to Okuna

last, because I could go on….
AI processors installed in 2023 (newly added) consume 7-11 hours (TWh), which is about 0.04% of global electricity consumption.
sciencedirect.com/science/arti…
• Goldman Sachs: A ChatGPT query requires almost ten times as much electricity as a Google search. Search
heise.de/news/ChatGPTs-Stromve…
• ChatGPT currently requires around 205,860,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year => More than 70,000 four-person households could be supplied with electricity during the same period
• What's more, it's not just the chips and processors themselves that need electricity, but also their cooling systems: these consume a significant portion of the energy required by a data center – up to 40 percent, according to Intel
intel.com/content/www/us/en/ne…
in reply to Tuta

Google says: In its annual environmental report, the company also announced that its emissions in 2023 rose by 13% compared to the previous year.
gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainabi…
• Greenhouse gas emissions rose by 48% over the last five years
theguardian.com/technology/art…
• Google processes more than three trillion searches in a year = The electricity could power around 340,000 four-person households for a year
de.statista.com/themen/651/goo…
• Llama 4 requires ten times more computing power than its predecessor
heise.de/meinung/Kommentar-zu-…
500,000 tons of CO2 are to be removed from the air in Texas on behalf of Microsoft and pumped into the ground. A record.
heise.de/news/KI-needs-electri…
in reply to Tuta

Google: Report published last year: AI could reduce global emissions by up to 10%. = total carbon pollution of the European Union by 2030
blog.google/outreach-initiativ…
• “AI plays a really important role in combating climate change,” said Kate Brandt, Google's Chief Sustainability Officer, in December, describing the technology as a “tipping point” for making significant progress on environmental goals.
wsj.com/articles/googles-cso-k…
in reply to Tuta

IEA estimates: Total electricity consumption of data centers could double from 2022 to 2026
to 1,000 TWh (terawatt hours) = approx. Japan's electricity demand
computerwoche.de/article/28352…
• IEA: Data centers already accounted for 1 to 1.5% of global electricity consumption in 2022! Before the AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT at the end of the year
iea.blob.core.windows.net/asse…
• According to an analysis by The Guardian, the actual emissions from the company-owned data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple are likely to be 662% higher—or 7.62 times higher—than officially reported between 2020 and 2022.
theguardian.com/technology/202…
in reply to Tuta

According to Google, a new data center already consumes as much electricity as 750,000 households
• The Californian company's existing data centers will require more than 24 TWh in 2023
According to the IEA, this corresponds to up to ten percent of the global electricity consumption of data centers and around 0.1 percent of the general global electricity demand
• Spent $1.1 billion to feed excess heat from its main data center in Finland back into households. This is how the company intends to achieve its climate goals after all.
computerwoche.de/article/28352…
in reply to Tuta

Growing AI power demand means that doubling data centers to keep pace with the industry will lead to an 80% increase in greenhouse gas emissions, even if measures are taken to improve the energy efficiency of these centers, according to a new report by a coalition of several environmental groups
foe.org/wp-content/uploads/202…
• Goldman Sachs: Data center power demand will increase by 160% by 2030
goldmansachs.com/insights/arti…
• Morgan Stanley: Predicts that emissions from data centers will rise to 2.5 billion tons of CO2 equivalent worldwide by 2030
reuters.com/markets/carbon/glo…
in reply to Tuta

According to calculations by research company SemiAnalysis, AI will cause data centers to consume
4.5% of global energy production by 2030.
theguardian.com/technology/art…
• AI data centers could require more electricity than the Netherlands by 2027
datacenterdynamics.com/en/news…
cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-…
AI is likely to increase energy consumption and accelerate climate misinformation.
theguardian.com/technology/202…
• Demand for AI services will grow by 30-40% annually over the next 5-10 years. One estimate suggests that global AI-related energy consumption could be 10 times higher in 2027 than in 2023.
nature.com/articles/d41586-024…
in reply to Tuta

The first version of the Stable Diffusion image generator was trained for 200,000 hours in Amazon's AWS data centers on the US East Coast, reportedly generating 15 tons of CO2 equivalent in the process.
arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/210…
• Assumption: Google answers all search queries with artificial intelligence=> Ten times as much electricity – equivalent to the demand of around 3.4 million four-person households
asociace.ai/wp-content/uploads…