Editorial Board
AI Is a Humongous Electricity Hog. That’s Great.
Who better to drive clean-energy investment than some of the world’s biggest and most profitable companies?
Keep it clean.
Photographer: Nathan Howard/Bloomberg
Next time you ask ChatGPT for a lasagna recipe, consider how much computing power you’re using: On a typical day, the AI chatbot handles an estimated 195 million queries, consuming enough electricity to supply some 23,000 US households. By 2026, booming AI adoption is expected to help drive a near-doubling of data centers’ global energy use, to more than 800 terawatt-hours — the annual carbon-emission equivalent of about 80 million gasoline-powered cars.
Will this voracious energy appetite undermine efforts to combat climate change? To the contrary, it can and should be harnessed to speed the green transition.