Tech Industry's Energy Growth Undermines Climate Goals

Key Quotes

"most of that energy for most of the companies will be related to data centers not only is that increasing year on year the rate by which it increases is also increasing and so this is something new it's that second part where it's accelerating that is something that wasn't happening before right so if you kind of go back to like 2016 2017 and you looked at the sustainability reports of companies like google or meta the increase was linear and it was proportionate to the size of their customer base and roughly proportionate to how much money they made"

Ketan Joshi explains that data center energy consumption is not only increasing but accelerating, a new phenomenon that has decoupled from business growth metrics like customer base or revenue. This indicates a fundamental shift in how these companies consume energy relative to their operations.

"and so 50 of power demand growth in the us from 2023 to 2024 was from data centers i think there are some about 10 error bars on that from the report and and the majority of global fossil fuel co2 growth was from the united states and so it was used to break down like what caused the high this was from the global carbon budget report that was released partly co authored by some friends climate scientist friends i have here in oslo the largest single chunk from any country in that in that growth in global emissions was from the us was from energy in the us"

Joshi highlights that data centers are a significant driver of power demand growth in the US, contributing substantially to the country's overall energy consumption and, consequently, to global fossil fuel CO2 growth. This underscores the outsized impact of data centers on climate change metrics.

"but they are flying very specifically away from the moon it's not like they've kind of made a few bad decisions along the way and they're roughly on track but a little bit off course they built a rocket and flew in exactly the wrong direction i find that story really compelling right because it's not like yeah they kind of half assed it but didn't do a good job they have very aggressively gone in the exact wrong direction and it's true of every single company you look at right like you put their targets and plans and trajectories into a spreadsheet and then you compare it to their actual unadjusted emissions and every single company has flown off in the wrong direction"

Joshi uses the "moonshot" metaphor to illustrate how tech companies' climate promises have been fundamentally misdirected. He argues that rather than being slightly off course, their actions have aggressively moved them in the opposite direction of their stated climate goals, a trend observable across the industry.

"what they're doing now is in fact using that same momentum and power and influence to directly incentivize fossil fuels rather than renewable energy and i don't think people have quite gotten a grasp on how massively this all has shifted there's a few examples of this xai building a very large number of fossil gas burning turbines they basically constructed a power station just to power the chatbot on x i mean that's really quite remarkable i don't think that's widely known outside of our kind of like spaces but the the size of this the gas power plant essentially that was constructed to run that data center is really shocking"

Joshi points out a significant shift in tech companies' strategies, moving from supporting renewables to actively incentivizing fossil fuels. He cites xAI's construction of a fossil gas power plant specifically for its data center as a stark example of this trend.

"and so i i often see it dismissed on the grounds that oh well you know data centers are like small geographically concentrated things that might cause issues locally but aren't really a big deal nationally or globally and i think that's that's completely debunked now i think we can say that's not true"

Joshi refutes the notion that data center growth is a localized issue with minimal national or global impact. He asserts that the data now clearly demonstrates that data centers are a significant factor influencing national and global climate change trajectories.

"but we do not know what data centers are for right like it's not clear why data centers are now competing with all electric vehicles or all heat pump installations or keeping people warm in in winter like there is no clear explanation of why it is now its own category and that scale of demand growth and just to build on what you're saying like we also see a number of reports from around the united states of these utilities effectively having to build out so much more capacity because of data centers"

Joshi questions the fundamental purpose of data centers, noting their escalating demand growth places them in competition with essential services like heating, cooling, and electric vehicles. He highlights that this demand is forcing utilities to significantly expand capacity, raising concerns about its necessity and impact.