How the surging demand for energy and rise of AI is straining the power grid in the U.S.
The surging demand for energy in the U.S. is growing significantly for the first time in decades. Experts say it is forecast to hit record highs both this year and next year — creating more planet-warming emissions.
Part of the demand is due to an increasing number of data centers across the country, along with the rise of artificial intelligence.
The nation's roughly 2,700 data centers are mostly run by big tech firms like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Apple, and consumed more than 4% of all electricity in the U.S. in 2022. It's projected to more than double to 9% by 2030, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a research organization and nonprofit focused on energy. It is not affiliated with any companies or type of technology.
But it's already taxing the U.S.' aging power grid, and the demands of AI are just beginning to grow. A ChatGPT query, for example, uses nearly 10 times the electricity of a typical internet search.
"It's gonna take innovation to really think about how we are going to scale this faster to keep up with the pace of growth," said Amanda Peterson Corio. As the global head of Google's data center energy, Peterson Corio's job is to find more juice to keep the company's power-hungry machines humming.
According to McKinsey & Co., a single data center can use as much power as 80,000 U.S. homes. Peterson Corio said it will be a challenge to make that kind of electricity use sustainable.
"As we look to the next decade, those demands continue to grow and the real challenge is trying to figure out how we can do this in a way that meets our climate goals," she said.
Google's planet warming emissions rose by 13% last year and have jumped nearly 50% since 2019, the company said. Google has invested heavily in wind and solar and says 64% of the time its operations run on clean energy.
When the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, data centers still rely on fossil fuels that contribute to climate change, leaving big tech scrambling to bring more clean power to the grid.
"We can develop large projects that will really move the needle on climate change," said Tim Latimer, the CEO of Fervo Energy, which is partnering with Google to boost geothermal power.
Geothermal energy accounts for less than 1% of electricity in the U.S., according to the Department of Energy.
Fervo wants to change that. Latimer said the company think geothermal energy can be as much as 20% of the U.S. electricity grid.
Google plans to use Fervo's geothermal power to help run its Nevada data centers and eventually others around the world, aiming to eliminate its use of coal and gas by 2030.
"We need something that has that reliability that works 24/7 to get us all the way there," Latimer said.