Quote from: rcjordan on July 20, 2026, 04:32:34 PMWatching the world burn as all the money flows into a multitrillion-dollar Magic 8 Ball
https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/20/watching-the-world-burn-as-all-the-money-flows-into-a-multitrillion-dollar-magic-8-ball/5274553
I always have a couple of questions about these articles.
First, yes, the AI boom is causing a rapid growth in data centers and by 2030 it will be the dominant use.
Second, every journalist who complains about data centers publishes online for a job and probably streams at home and uses Google or Apple Maps and a million other things that currently account for 86% of datacenter capacity (albeit, as of the most recent data, which means that might only be 76% now).
The most recent numbers are, of course, hopelessly out of date. But the best number I can find is that 14% of data center use was for AI. Most of the data center usage is for cloud computing and traditional enterprise colocation. The last one is declining, but it should also be noted that some of the growth there displaces enterprises running their own servers. So not all of that datacenter usage is a net growth.
And everyone who uses a computer is using that capacity and we can ask a very reasonable question: as a society, should we really be pouring massive resources into streaming entertainment videos, or should we allocate that to automation and research that uses AI?
In other words, one possible answer to our desire to avoid covering the world with data centers, would be to stop streaming all those videos and to navigate with paper maps again to free up capacity.
Anyway...
Inside the Black Box: Who Actually Uses U.S. Data Centers, and How Much Power Does Each Use Case Consume? (April 2026)
https://nextgenlandco.com/research/data-center-power-consumption-by-workload/
QuoteArtificial intelligence currently accounts for approximately 14 percent of total data center power consumption — a figure that, in isolation, might seem to undercut the urgency with which AI's energy implications are discussed. The number is not wrong, but it is incomplete without the context of trajectory and intensity. AI is the fastest-growing workload category in the data center market by a substantial margin, and its energy intensity per unit of compute is categorically higher than any preceding workload type.
AI: Five charts that put data-centre energy use – and emissions – into context (Sept 2025)
https://www.carbonbrief.org/ai-five-charts-that-put-data-centre-energy-use-and-emissions-into-context
"data centres are currently responsible for just over 1% of global electricity demand and 0.5% of CO2 emissions" (Sept 2025)
"Around a
tenth of the electricity demand growth by 2030 is set to be driven by data centres"
QuoteUnder the IEA's central scenario for data-centre growth, the sector's global electricity consumption would more than double between 2024 and 2030, reaching 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) by the end of the decade. This is equivalent to the current electricity demand of Japan.
The IEA describes AI as "the most important driver of this growth".
As it stands, AI has been responsible for around 5-15% of data-centre power use in recent years, but this could increase to 35-50% by 2030, according to another report prepared for the IEA.
Of course, the IEA's projections on solar adoption have been hopelessly lower than actuality, so if their AI data center predictions are off by as much, read that as 10-150% of projected demand growth.
Demand growth is not even and the US is on the high end (only Japan is higher)
"US data centres used around 4% of the nation's electricity in 2023 and this is set to rise to 7-12% by 2028, according to analysis by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory."
"There is a lot of uncertainty about how much data centres will expand"
16 charts that explain the AI boom (Oct 2025)https://www.understandingai.org/p/16-charts-that-explain-the-ai-boom
"Water use is an overrated problem with AI"
Hint: it doesn't even register on a bar chart where golf courses and home leaks are about 1.5b and 2.5b gallons respectively.
Forecasting Data Center Capacity Increases in the AI Era (Jan 2026)
https://www.abiresearch.com/blog/data-center-capacity-growth-forecast
"AI workloads will overtake legacy workloads by the early 2030s."
Measuring the Data Center Boom: Facts and Statistics (updated July, 2026)
https://programs.com/resources/data-center-statistics/
"Between now and 2030, companies worldwide are expected to invest nearly $7 trillion in building and upgrading data centers."