A spike in electricity demand from the world's big data providers is raising a worrying possibility for the world's climate: a near-term surge in fossil-fuel use.
Utilities, power regulators and researchers in a half-dozen countries told Reuters the surprising growth in power demand driven by the rise of artificial intelligence and cloud computing is being met in the near-term by fossil fuels like natural gas, and even coal, because the pace of clean-energy deployments is moving too slowly to keep up.
In the United States, home to a third of world data centers, utilities are adding new gas plants and delaying the retirements of fossil-fuel power plants as a slew of sprawling new data centers plug in to the grid. In Poland, Germany and Malaysia, coal could also be in the mix, according to interviews with company executives, regulators and analysts.
The outlook poses a new obstacle to world governments, now gathered at the UN’s annual climate conference in Baku, which are already struggling to meet ambitious targets to decarbonize power systems.
COP29 host Azerbaijan held the first-ever Digitalization Day at a world climate summit and launched a declaration, endorsed so far by 68 countries including China and Korea, to limit the environmental impact of digitalization.
The outlook also reveals the shortcomings of data-company pledges to be green. Companies including Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab, Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab and Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab are committing to sourcing renewable energy and zeroing out emissions with clean power and offset credits - but often that only means siphoning clean power out of the grid that could have been used somewhere else.
Meanwhile, agreements by data providers to power new data centers with advanced nuclear reactors, opens new tab or resurrected nuclear plants are uncertain and years off.
"I think everyone agrees that we need more and more renewable energy to keep up with a growing demand," said Meta spokesman Jim Cullinan. "I think it is up to the utilities to comment on how they will fill the supply."
Amazon told Reuters that investing in new renewable energy for the grid, including in regions relying heavily on fossil fuels, is part of its strategy to decarbonize. Source:euters
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