U.S. energy demand is surging, the fastest in decades, and experts predict it will hit record highs this year and next, generating even more planet-warming emissions.
Part of the demand is due to the increase in data centers across the country, artificial intelligence.
The roughly 2,700 data centers in the U.S., mostly run by big tech companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Apple, consumed more than 4% of all U.S. electricity in 2022. That's expected to more than double to 9% by 2030, according to the Electric Power Institute, a nonprofit energy research organization that is not affiliated with any company or technology.
But this is already putting a strain on the U.S.'s aging power grid, and the demands on AI are only just beginning to grow: A ChatGPT query, for example, consumes nearly 10 times more electricity than a typical internet search.
“It's going to require innovation to really think about how to scale this fast to keep up with the pace of growth,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, whose job as Google's global head of data center energy is to find more sources of power to keep the company's power-hungry machines running.
According to McKinsey & Company, a single data center could consume as much electricity as 80,000 U.S. homes, and Peterson Corio said that such consumption would be difficult to make sustainable.
“As we look into the next decade, these demands will continue to grow. The real challenge is figuring out how to do this while still meeting our climate objectives,” she said.
Google says its greenhouse gas emissions increased 13% last year and have risen nearly 50% since 2019. The company has invested heavily in wind and solar power and says 64% of its operations are powered by clean energy.
Even when the sun isn't shining or the wind is blowing, data centers still rely on fossil fuels that contribute to climate change, and big tech companies are racing to pump more clean electricity into the power grid.
“We can develop large-scale projects that will have a real impact on climate change,” said Tim Latimer, CEO of Ferbo Energy, which is partnering with Google to ramp up geothermal power.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, geothermal energy provides less than 1% of the United States' electricity.
Ferbo wants to change that: Latimer said the company believes geothermal energy could make up 20% of the U.S. power grid.
Google will use Ferbo's geothermal power to help run its data centers in Nevada, and eventually around the world, with the goal of eliminating its use of coal and gas by 2030.
“You need something reliable that runs 24/7 to get you where you're going,” Latimer said.
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