The report finds that data centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and are expected to consume approximately 6.7 to 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028. The report indicates that total data center electricity usage climbed from 58 TWh in 2014 to 176 TWh in 2023 and estimates an increase between 325 to 580 TWh by 2028.
I see a lot of people arguing about datacenters and their resource consumption. So i think it is good to have actual numbers on how much resources are being consumed. This post only includes energy consumption because i’m too lazy to look up water consumption.
That’s not really that much.
Roughly 10% of all electricity isn’t that much?
For being such an integral and important part of lives of literally everyone - no
It’s really not integral or important to my life. Maybe you can pay for it for me
Not the AI ones, aka the ones that waste the most energy
Usage had doubled in ~10 years, and is expected to double or triple in just 5 years. That rate of growth will put usage above 30% within a decade, and that’s just datacenters… add another decade and you’re looking at 50% usage or more.
We’d likely have more sources of energy, but as you know not all energy sources are renewable, so what’s the long term plan?
Generally all new energy capacity comes from renewables, so that’s not a problem.
The usage is not that bad because everything hosted in datacenters is significant portion of our lives
‘Burning down the forest isn’t that bad because it keeps us warm for a while’
You literally have people die from in winter and the heat in the summer in the us because of power supply/water access issues.
I don’t disagree, I think the main issue I can see is the rate of growth. I know renewable energy is increasing but I guess I just haven’t seen the numbers for that to quell the worry a lot of people have. From a pessimistic view it feels very capitalist to allow this amount of usage for the sake of business. And let’s be honest, a lot of data centers are running services the world doesn’t need
It is. But these numbers don’t tell the whole story. Some data centers use more electricity that all the rest of the city in some locations.
This compares them to the whole US. We don’t buy electricity from the whole US. The grid doesn’t work that way.