{"id":1484024,"date":"2024-08-16T09:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-16T13:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1484024"},"modified":"2024-08-16T09:45:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-16T13:45:00","slug":"big-tech-uses-more-electricity-than-entire-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/big-tech-uses-more-electricity-than-entire-countries\/1484024\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Tech Uses More Electricity Than Entire Countries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Big Tech Uses More Electricity Than Entire Countries<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Big Tech\u2019s AI dreams are coming with a big energy price tag\u2014technology companies and their data centers are consuming more electricity than countries with many millions of people.<\/p>\n

In the graphic below, Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao<\/a> compares Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple\u2019s 2023 electricity use against select countries. Data sourced from\u00a0company reports<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0U.S. Energy Information Administration<\/a>\u00a0(2022).<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Ranking Tech Companies Energy Use vs. Select Countries<\/h2>\n

Google and Microsoft both consume more electricity (24 TWh) than countries like\u00a0Jordan<\/strong>\u00a0(population: 11 million) and\u00a0Ghana<\/strong>\u00a0(34 million).<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

*U.S. territory. **Estimated value. Figures rounded. Population source:\u00a0World Bank.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This highlights the enormous energy draw for these Big Tech companies that maintain\u00a0massive data centers<\/a>\u00a0as a key part of their operations.<\/p>\n

In their\u00a02024 Environment report<\/a>, Google said its data center electricity use\u00a0grew 17% in 2023<\/strong>, a trend it expects to continue. It further estimated the company\u2019s data centers accounted for 10% of global data center electricity use in 2023.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s easy to see how AI is playing into this consumption. Training AI models increases data centers\u2019 energy and cooling requirements compared to more traditional data center use, like storing files and apps on the cloud or processing emails.<\/p>\n

Tellingly, Microsoft\u2019s electricity use was 11 TWh as recently as 2020 and\u00a0has doubled<\/a>\u00a0to 24 TWh in less than four years. Similarly, Google\u2019s has also doubled to 24 TWh from 11 TWh in 2018.<\/p>\n

Both trends coincide with the companies\u2019\u00a0generative AI push<\/strong>\u00a0in which they are both frontrunners.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, tech companies who have had a comparatively later start to the race (Meta and Apple) are further behind in electricity consumption, though Meta seems to be catching up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nFri, 08\/16\/2024 – 05:45<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/energy\/big-tech-uses-more-electricity-entire-countries<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Big Tech Uses More Electricity Than Entire Countries Big Tech\u2019s AI dreams are coming with a big energy price tag\u2014technology companies and their data centers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1484025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1484024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1484024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1484025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1484024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1484024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1484024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}