Governments worldwide are reportedly restricting artificial intelligence (AI) data centers due to their enormous energy consumption that could affect national climate goals and power grids.
The Financial Times reportedly states that to comply with more stringent environmental standards, countries including China, Singapore, and Ireland have recently placed restrictions on constructing new data centers.
(Photo by Morris MacMatzen/Getty Images)
Data centers like this one power artificial intelligence but also contribute to global warming.
Ireland, a hotspot for server farms developed by cloud computing firms because of its low tax rate and easy access to high-capacity subsea cables for worldwide internet traffic, poses the biggest threat to future projects.
Data center companies Vantage, EdgeConneX, and Equinix had their permits for new projects in Dublin refused last year due to the nation's energy and water regulator's decision in 2021 to restrict new data connections to the electricity grid.
Germany and Loudoun County, Virginia, USA, regulations have likewise implemented measures restricting permits for data centers near residential neighborhoods or mandating that they feed renewable energy into the grid and recycle the waste heat they produce.
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AI Energy Consumption
This development comes after an International Energy Agency assessment reportedly revealed that cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence could largely contribute to data centers using twice as much electricity by 2026.
According to the IEA's annual electricity report, using 460TWh of electricity, data centers, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence accounted for about 2 percent of the world's electricity demand in 2022. About 25% of total electricity demand is expected to come from cryptocurrency mining alone, which will need 110TWh in 2022.
Data center electricity consumption, including cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, might reach 1,050TWh by 2026, depending on how quickly technology advances. That rise is equivalent to adding the need for electricity of one more country, Germany at most, or Sweden in a more moderate scenario.
The Verge reports that with 33% of the world's estimated 8,000 data centers, the US now has the most number of data centers. Also, it is the nation where most Bitcoin mining is done.
The US data center power usage is expected to expand at a "rapid pace" over the next few years, according to the IEA, from about 4% of total US demand in 2022 to 6% by 2026. Additional factors propelling that expansion are cloud-based services and growing 5G networks.
Big Tech Companies on AI Energy
In light of the data center's energy consumption increase, Microsoft has reportedly started investigating the possibility of using nuclear energy to power parts of its data centers, even though the major IT companies are all investing in solar and wind energy.
Analysts at Barclays anticipate similar limitations will be enacted globally in the upcoming years, cautioning that governments have not considered the effects of growing internet use on their electrical infrastructures.
This would put additional strain on the $220 billion data center and cloud sector, predicted to grow to $418 billion by the end of the decade due to a growth in demand for data worldwide.
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