Whether it is for storage, games, or artificial intelligence: more services are being delivered directly from the cloud to computers and smartphones — and this is causing more problems. The data centers required for this are not only causing prices for work and data storage to go through the roof, with processors getting more expensive, too. The energy requirements of these server farms are simply enormous.
A Greenpeace study estimates AI data centers will require eleven times more electricity in 2030 than in 2023. The European Union’s ambitious AI growth targets are, therefore, at risk of being thwarted by the slower expansion of the energy infrastructure.
Too Little Electricity Supply Drives Up Prices
Plant operators in the USA are also increasingly reaching their limits, Wired reported. According to the report, 130 new data centers are being planned or are already under construction around New York alone. One of these alone is expected to have a power requirement of up to 450 MW and will therefore be built next to an old coal-fired power plant. The forecasted additional demand has since tripled to 10 GW within a year.
This is causing resistance, as electricity consumption in the USA is also growing significantly faster than the construction of new power plants, translating to rising costs, with end consumers affected as well. Even if the electricity price of approximately $0.18 per kilowatt hour is only around half of what Europe pays on average, the increase for customers in the United States last year was around 7.4 percent, according to CNBC. The environmental impact of energy generation for AI data centers also adds up.
US States Pull the Brakes on New Data Centers
Even tech-friendly Americans are struggling with the added value that the tech companies’ expensive chatbots supposedly deliver in view of the price increases. At the end of last year, cities and regions in fourteen states stopped approving new data centers. In Georgia, Maryland, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Virginia, no new permits for planning and construction are being issued. Now, New York also announced that it will follow suit. There will be no more new server farms built in the next three years.
This is anything but good news for Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and others. Following the principle of “the winner takes it all”, they are investing billions in an attempt to cement their dominance in a future market that promises fantastic profits. However, the intelligent assistants have not yet been able to fulfill the expectations placed in them. And the service providers have not yet been able to earn money on a sustainable scale, either.
