Data centres, whose expansion is being fuelled dramatically by the artificial intelligence boom, have a far bigger carbon footprint than previously estimated, a study said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The sprawling, power-hungry sites, used to store critical IT infrastructure like servers, are being built worldwide by companies and countries as AI applications gobble ever greater computing power.<\/p>\n
This has helped to boost their greenhouse gas emissions, with a new study by Allianz Trade estimating the centres emitted 286 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2025.<\/p>\n
This is 57 percent higher than estimates by the International Energy Agency, according to the group, which is the trade credit insurance arm of global insurer Allianz.<\/p>\n
AI already accounts for between 15 and 20 percent of electricity consumption at data centres, and this share could climb to 40 percent by 2030, the report said.<\/p>\n
“Data centres are evolving from a marginal factor into a structural driver of electricity demand in many regions,” said Patrick Hoffmann, senior climate economist at Allianz.<\/p>\n
Without steps to decarbonise power grids, data centre emissions would more than double by 2030, leading to an estimated $154 billion in annual climate damages — up from $68 billion today, the report said.<\/p>\n
Climate damage related to AI workloads could exceed $50 billion by 2030, it said.<\/p>\n
Data centres also putting huge strain on natural resources — they could require 1.3 to 1.8 trillion litres of water by 2030, comparable to Switzerland’s annual consumption, the report said.<\/p>\n
The same computing power can generate very different emission levels depending on the source of the electricity used.<\/p>\n
In India, emissions linked to electricity exceed 600 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), compared with less than 30 grams in Norway or Sweden, where power generation is largely decarbonised.<\/p>\n
According to Allianz Trade, nearly 70 percent of global data centre emissions are currently concentrated in the United States and China, the world’s AI leaders.<\/p>\n
kas-sr\/bst\/pdw<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Data centres, whose expansion is being fuelled dramatically by the artificial intelligence boom, have a far bigger carbon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,20995,47879,25,782,47880,47878],"class_list":["post-90715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-ai-boom","tag-allianz-trade","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-data-centre","tag-electricity-consumption","tag-greenhouse-gas-emissions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}