- by Anna Pha
- The Guardian
- Issue #2144
Energy-hungry data centres are among the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The energy sector is at the heart of one of the most important technological revolutions today – artificial intelligence (AI). The development of AI and the energy industry are becoming increasingly intertwined.
The International Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook Special Report on Energy and AI, notes that: “AI is the science of making machines capable of learning to perform tasks that traditionally required human intelligence. AI is emerging as a general-purpose technology, much like electricity. Today, it can generate text and videos, accelerate scientific discovery in fields like medicine or materials science, make manufacturing robots smarter and more productive, drive commercial taxis in complex city landscapes, and detect threats to critical infrastructure.” The report was launched on 10 April 2025. AI also plays a critical role in the military sector, espionage and war preparations.
In the past few years, AI has gone from an academic pursuit to an industry with trillions of dollars of market capitalisation and venture capital at stake. The total value of investments in AI-related firms on the US S&P 500 stock-exchange has grown by around US$12 trillion since 2022.
There has been a qualitative change in the capabilities of AI and expansion of its use. This has been driven by falling computation costs, a surge in data availability and technical breakthroughs. Global investment in data centres has nearly doubled since 2022 and amounted to half a trillion US dollars in 2024. This boom is raising growing concerns about skyrocketing electricity demand.
“AI-focused data centres can draw as much electricity as power-intensive factories such as aluminium smelters, but they are much more geographically concentrated. Nearly half of data centre capacity in the United States is in five regional clusters. The sector accounts for substantial shares of electricity consumption in local markets.”
Electricity demand from AI-optimised data centres is anticipated to more than quadruple by 2030. The development of AI has brought contradictory outcomes. For example, because of AI, cyberattacks on energy utilities have increased and become more sophisticated in the past four years – but thanks to AI energy companies are better able to defend themselves against such attacks. In other words: “AI compounds some energy security risks, but it also offers solutions in both the cyber and physical domains.”
The report also notes that AI can be used as a tool in reducing emissions, “but it is not a silver bullet and does not remove the need for proactive policy.” Half of the global growth in data centre demand is met by renewables, supported by storage and the broader electricity grid. However, the IEA claims “Dispatchable sources, led by natural gas, also have a crucial role to play, with the tech sector helping to bring forward new nuclear and geothermal technologies as well.” The IEA expects the first small modular reactors to come online around 2030.
Electricity grids are already under strain in in Australia and elsewhere, as recently witnessed in the devastating blackout that hit Spain, Portugal, and parts of France. This raises questions about AI-related electricity demand being met and if so at what cost to domestic supplies and the environment.
Algorithms already haunt our every move. If you have ever gone online to purchase a product, then you are likely to have experienced ads for that product for days after, regardless of whether you bought anything. AI is likely to make that worse.
Who controls AI, what uses it is put to, and whether renewables are used are imperative for the well-being and safety of humanity and its future. It is vital that AI is used for public good; not for private profit, use in warfare or cyber-attacks, the collecting and trading in personal data or abuse of that data. This can only be achieved with public sector control of its development and uses.
