13 ms·

Data centres account for between 1.5% and 2% of global electricity consumption

239 points by jdkee 3y ago

jdkee 3y ago
https://archive.ph/bx7vr https://archive.ph/bx7vr
jeffbee 3y ago
Eh, nothingburger. As the original source of this data notes in their report, global IT systems energy demand has only slightly expanded in the past decade, because the countervailing trend is that workloads are migrating from tragic-comic corporate datacenters with PUE of 2 or worse, into the cloud where the PUE is 1.1 or so. And in the cloud the power that is delivered to the CPU is better used due to oversubscription, multitenancy, and so forth. Finally, because large-scale operators often also build their own renewable energy facilities, their fraction of global CO2 is much less than their fraction of energy consumed. Naturally you should design your systems for maximum efficiency, but since operating expenses are closely approximated by power consumption you are already correctly incentivized to do so.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  IT is also about ~10% of the global economy...
- theluketaylor 3y ago
  Plus data centers are low hanging fruit for decarbonization. Everything (apart from diesel backup generators) is already electric, so as the grid de-carbonizes so do data centers. As you mention, DC operators are already highly incentivized to reduce energy costs, so as wind and solar power continue to drop in costs DC operators will want to fund or buy green power as often as possible. Getting backup power to be carbon neutral will be a little more challenging in a DC, but it's a walk in the park compared to many sectors. Shelf-stable biofuel is already fairly accessible and using grid scale batteries can reduce the need to combust anything (plus open power arbitrage opportunities).
  - pge 3y ago
    I’m not sure datacenters have a great incentive to reduce energy costs (a lesson I learned the hard way after investing in a DC energy optimization software company). People costs are much greater than energy costs. Electricity just doesn’t cost that much in the grand scheme of things. If additional energy spend is necessary to ensure uptime, the choice is an easy one.
    - Spooky23 3y ago
      Data centers are the cost. I worked for an entity that automated key operational workflows. They went from 15,000 employees in that division to 4,000. The energy cost of those buildings, overhead, etc far exceeded the datacenter, and the datacenter cost and use gets whittled down every year.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      > People costs are much greater than energy costs. Can you prove this assertion? The first page of Google results indicates energy is a greater cost than labor, with figures ranging from 60-70 percent of total operating costs. (i owned a small web hosting company in the early 00s, and am somewhat familiar with the per sq ft cost model of colos and datacenters in general, having had to contract for space and perform part of the buildout myself)
      - closeparen 3y ago
        I think this is taking an expansive view of labor e.g. writing all datacenter applications as optimal code in low level languages. The general disinterest in performance/efficiency work even for large scale datacenters is a major theme of Dan Luu’s writing. I’m not sure how that applies to the rest of the industry but I can attest that my company’s performance engineering team has been zeroed in every round of layoffs we’ve ever had.
        peter422 3y ago
        The larger your footprint in the cloud is, the larger incentive you have to make it more efficient though. I think it’s a somewhat self-correcting problem. The biggest players are running highly, highly efficient software.
- hgomersall 3y ago
  For the most parts your points are good, but the large scale facilities buying up renewable generation resource both hides the true energy cost whilst consuming that renewable resource. I suspect data centres are good candidates for such resource usage since they can be built optimally for generation capacity, but it's definitely possible the numbers could be skewed by the data providers' ability to hide energy consumption whilst having a net global impact.
- b112 3y ago
  And then some yahoo thought that a 3 line js "library", should pull in 4000 other malware laden, bloated js "libraries", and all out power savings were for naught. Just the power consumption in browsers... Thanks node.
- nitwit005 3y ago
  Don't forget people are still migrating from paper. Paper and printing are some of the most energy intensive industries.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Indeed. Also, Zoom calls replacing car journeys.
- shrubble 3y ago
  From 2005 to now, how much more computation and network transfer, can be done per kwh? No more T1s and T3s... it's all optical; and the efficiency of CPUs and amount of RAM per CPU, has increased greatly as well.
  - Libcat99 3y ago
    And how much more computation is needed per transaction? Per person? Are we really making more efficient systems if they take 100x the compute to fulfill the same transaction.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ilyt 3y ago
    The efficiency of hardware certainly grew but inefficiency of software grew with it. Why all sites don't load in 500ms or less ? Our compute power grew few magnitudes but sites still take few hundred ms (hell, second) to render on server side and then burn more CPU on client side
    - shrubble 3y ago
      https://learnbchs.org/ https://learnbchs.org/ is somewhat of a joke response; but there are plenty of other performance oriented ways to cut that down...
- Quindecillion 3y ago
  What I find interesting is that most of what you said is applicable to Bitcoin miners too.
- copperx 3y ago
  Isn't it interesting how the word "nothingburger" isn't politically neutral? I wonder how many words are like that.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    In what way? I can determine no political alignment of the word after a brief search.
teddyh 3y ago
Could this be a vehicle whereby private data centers of insufficiently large scales are banned? I.e. a force for centralization, in the name of energy efficiency?
- jeffbee 3y ago
  Certainly if Germany requires a PUE below 1.3 that puts every datacenter except the big hyperscale clouds out of business. This will be yet another European regulation that shuts down local businesses and drives customers into American clouds. If such regulations spread I don't see how makers of traditional datacenter junk can survive. Operators with PUEs < 1.1 are not using UPS, managed PDUs, redundant hot swappable power supplies in servers, CRACs, or any of that crap. Of course I think regulating the PUE is a terrible idea. This is yet another aspect of the economy that is better-regulated by a carbon tax.
  - l33t7332273 3y ago
    In case anyone else was wondering: > Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is a metric used to determine the energy efficiency of a data center. PUE is determined by dividing the total amount of power entering a data center by the power used to run the IT equipment within it. PUE is expressed as a ratio, with overall efficiency improving as the quotient decreases toward 1.0. From https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/definition/power-usage-effectiveness-PUE https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/definition/power...
    - _flux 3y ago
      Doesn't sounds like it accounts for computing efficiency then? That would probably be quite impossible or at least very difficult anyway. Of course, it's still great for a datacenter to actually use its energy for running the computers instead of just AC and transformers. Heat recovery from datacenters for district heating is one way to increase the efficiency; I wonder if it impacts PUE?
  - konschubert 3y ago
    Is Germany doing this? Or planning to?
ctoth 3y ago
This seems remarkably low given the utility we get out of them. I was expecting at least an order of magnitude more. The headline particularly seems weird given the actual numbers. Lots of things take 2% of power, why not target them?
- felixmeziere 3y ago
  An order of magnitude more would be comparable to electricity consumption by households. Its utility feels to me at least an order of magnitude higher than the one of data centers, as sheltering, cleanliness and everyday appliances are much lower in the Maslow pyramid!
  - solveit 3y ago
    These days, sheltering, cleanliness and everyday appliances kinda depend on data centres.
    - felixmeziere 3y ago
      But they didn’t 30 years ago and we were all doing well. Data centers are not required for them.
      - vineyardmike 3y ago
        30ys ago my mother spent an hour a day vacuuming the house. Now she has an internet connected robot, and spends an hour once a week. She’s doing better than she was 30y ago, even if she didn’t think she was doing bad 30y ago.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        vel0city 3y ago
        TBF that robo vacuum didn't need a datacenter to function. I had a Neato Botvac from pre-connected models that worked fine until the laser turret failed and I haven't been able to get around to repairing it yet. Roombas were around for like a decade before they started getting connected.
SethTro 3y ago
Article is paywalled and archive.ph is in an infinite CAPTCHA loop so feel free to reply with their numbers. Global Electrical Consumption = 25,000 TWh Data centers @ 2% of global usage = 25,000 * 0.02 = 500 TWh Cryptocurrency estimated usage in 2022[1][2] = 100-140 TWh Crypto uses 100 / (500 + 100) = 16% of the power usage of data centers + crypto. Surprising and disappointing. [1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitcoin-carbon-footprint-electricity.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitco...
- Quindecillion 3y ago
  Yikes... digiconomist. Literally zero credibility there. His name is Alex de Vries and he works for the dutch central bank. To my knowledge, very little of his blog posts have made its way to peer review and academic publication. For some reason that doesn't stop his work from being distributed widely as an authoritative source on this topic. This paper has it's own problems with conflicts of interest, but it has gained traction recently and is worth a read to see things from another perspective. https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/14/3/35 https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/14/3/35 Could also look into the work of Troy Cross, Margot Paez, and Daniel Batten who are climate activists and pro-Bitcoin because of the incentives it provides around building out renewable energy and mitigating methane emissions. And NY Times is notoriously anti-Bitcoin, to the point you have to ask, "do they have an agenda"?
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    Well OK but how much progress have those mini Bitcoin payments actually made in this regard?
  - paulgb 3y ago
    > This paper has it's own problems with conflicts of interest, but it has gained traction recently and is worth a read to see things from another perspective. Like most defenses of bitcoin’s carbon footprint, the paper you linked makes the case that theoretically maybe bitcoin could be carbon negative in the future if certain things happen. If you look at the actual current source of power for miners weighted by hashrate in the US, it’s mostly coal and natural gas. Among companies that don’t have to report this, such as miners in Russia and Kazakstan, it’s likely as bad or worse. > And NY Times is notoriously anti-Bitcoin, to the point you have to ask, "do they have an agenda"? They have also published a lot of things that have been criticized as being too pro-crypto (such as the Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto).
drones 3y ago
That seems... fine. For the energy:gdp ratio it seems to have worked out well in all honesty.
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  Also electricity can be renewably sourced. Better to focus on which industries use the most hydrocarbons.
shagie 3y ago
A lot of this is for cooling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectiveness https://www.nrel.gov/computational-science/measuring-efficiency-pue.html https://www.nrel.gov/computational-science/measuring-efficie... > When the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) was conceived, NREL set an aggressive requirement that its data center achieve an annualized average power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.06 or better. Since the facility opened, this goal has been met every year—and the data center has now achieved an annualized PUE rating of 1.036. > Studies show a wide range of PUE values for data centers, but the overall average tends to be around 1.8. Data centers focusing on efficiency typically achieve PUE values of 1.2 or less. PUE is the ratio of the total amount of power used by a computer data center facility to the power delivered to computing equipment.
- sitkack 3y ago
  This is just a ratio of power fed into computers vs not-computers. It doesn't measure the effectiveness of power->problem_solved. If you were running P4 space heaters but delivering power to no other equipment, you would have a PUE of 1. It is a metric, but not the only one.
esprehn 3y ago
This is only a problem if the computational power is sitting idle, or if there's reason to believe more efficient servers exist and are not being used effectively. Of course replacing millions of functioning servers just to reduce energy usage is very wasteful in terms of environmental impact too. Lots of that computational power is also used to offset other energy consuming tasks. Like video conferencing instead of office buildings or travel. It's not clear that even 5% going to servers is an issue in that framing. What matters is the value created per person using online services.
mistrial9 3y ago
Headline - data centers consume massive electricity, more than whole nations; holders of google/AWS/Meta stock on centralization of compute power with self-referential economics -- "no big deal, move along citizen"
- mattnewton 3y ago
  Comparing the market segment of all data centers around the world to a single nation doesn’t make much sense to me? Not saying we shouldn’t be invested in efficiency here. It’s possible that we need regulation and the natural incentives of cost control aren’t enough. I just honestly don’t see the alarm.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  The majority of the energy being used according to the report is "Data transmission network energy use", chiefly mobile networks, so unless you are prepared to chuck your mobile, you can stuff it.
- refactor_master 3y ago
  Briefly ignoring the economic aspect of this, we have to stop using countries as reference points against the whole world. It's like when I'm told "Bad thing X happened, and affected an area the size of Belgium. A WHOLE COUNTRY". What do I do with this information? Sure, Belgium is big, but is it like, big? It turns out that it's... does the math... roughly 0.00006 times the total area of the Earth. That doesn't sound big. And if bad thing X happens every year, it would take more than 16000 years to cover the Earth, or 800 if we say 95% of the Earth is water anyway. That timeline also sounds manageable. I'm not trying to spin disaster positively, but will someone please just start using "affected area / total potential area" or something, instead of yardsticks and football fields.
  - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
    Texas is 22 times as big as Belgium. It’s not huge.
- wyre 3y ago
spicyusername 3y ago
It's actually surprising to me how much value we're getting for so little electricity.
amelius 3y ago
In comparison, how much do laptops, desktops and phones consume?
miahwilde 3y ago
The human brain consumes 20% of calories - a balance of brain vs brawn that has proven effective. I'd argue we'd be much better off with radically more energy (as a percentage of global energy) going to data centers. I'd also argue that this equilibrium will find itself.
- jtwaleson 3y ago
  Wild to correlate biological organisms to planet scale economies. They are different beasts.
  - anonporridge 3y ago
    Why? Planetary economies are just a different kind of organism, that at this point is a cyborg. Thinking about the ideal energy balance devoted to planetary cognition vs planetary kinetics seems like a fascinating way to model the world. The main thing that makes humans so dominant is that we took the risk of devoting more of our energy towards cognition and as a result discovered magical ways to leverage and exponentially increase our kinetic power (e.g. bow and arrow). What happens when we start devoting more resources towards cognition at a planetary scale?
    - jtwaleson 3y ago
      It's an interesting possibility for sure but to me these concepts are not linked. With the recent LK-99 craze, I learned that theoretical optimal efficiency for computing is many many orders of magnitude higher than today. So: chips theoretically can get much more efficient. If we find a 1000x more efficient computer, do you still think we need to throw the same 20% of our resources towards it? What would we let those 1000x more capable computers do? The question we need to ask is: what can we do with computing, what would it give us and how much energy does that cost. I don't want to sound like "384kb is enough for everybody" but saying there's a fixed percentage of energy that should go towards computing is weird to me.
      - anonporridge 3y ago
perrygeo 3y ago
Keep in mind that electricity generation itself is only responsible for ~35% of our greenhouse gas emissions (power generation was responsible for 13 Gt CO2 in 2019, globally 37 Gt) So if we wanted to estimate the global impact of data centers on CO2 emissions, that's about 0.6%. And that's not a perfect calculation as much of the new power capacity is in renewables, thus lower relative emissions. <0.5% would be a better estimate. So 1/200th of our greenhouse gas problem is caused by data centers. I'll echo some of the other comments in this thread but - damn, that's a pretty good deal considering how much value we get out of it. [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-co2-status-report-2019/electricity https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-co2-status-report-...
- realreality 3y ago
  You’re not counting the embodied emissions of all the hardware inside the data centers. And consider the low lifespan of IT equipment.
  - nl 3y ago
    The emissions of the production and disposal of this hardware is counted at part of the 99.4% of emissions that aren't data center emissions.
- tetha 3y ago
  There are also some german projects to integrate datacenters into the district heating nets. Capturing the waste heat and using it for heating homes allows us to utilize a very large percentage of the electricity pumped into a datacenter one way or another.
doikor 3y ago
This number alone is pretty much meaningless. How large part of GDP produced world wide is using these data centers in one way or another (My bet is 80%+). There isn't a single Fortune 500 company that does not have its data on computers and thus in some data center somewhere (if they are sane). Most also have moved a huge chunk of their processing there too. Personally I can't even come up with a "serious" business that does not use data centers in one way or another. Even basic mom&pop store that does all of their inventory on a laptop locally and makes all of their products by hand uses data centers if they accept credit/debit card payments or they have a phone number.
seeknotfind 3y ago
Worth it.
tb_technical 3y ago
The US department of energy estimates that 10% of the US power grid is devoted to lighting, last I checked. If we extrapolate that out to all nations and power grids, 2% is a sizeable but okay amount of energy for handling large amounts of people's data.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Wow that's a lot considering our lighting has gotten 10x more efficient in the last 2 decades. A 100W bulb can now be covered by a 10W LED. And really nobody uses incandescent bulbs anymore.
  - ikt 3y ago
    > nobody uses incandescent bulbs anymore See I thought so too, I went to lookup the stats in Australia but turns out we banned them years ago (I didn't even notice) but in America: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2023/07/29/us-ban-on-incandescent-light-bulbs-starts-next-week-heres-what-to-know/?sh=7b4532d58311 https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2023/07/29/us-ban-on... An estimated 30% of U.S. households used incandescent or halogen incandescent light bulbs in 2020 Americans are still the funniest “I’m happy the Department of Energy is out here making sure that we can all save money because we’re too dumb to figure out how to do it ourselves,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., said. Does the DoE have the opportunity to say "you're welcome!" to Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn? Should also add in: Remember to pump up your tyres! it helps save petrol!
  - tb_technical 3y ago
    I don't know if it will ever shrink under 10%, and even if we could shrink it we wouldn't want to. Hear me out: Now that lighting is cheaper, we can have more of it at night. By properly lighting parking lots, community streets, and parks we can reduce crime while increasing economic and leisure opportunities in cities. I don't think the 10% figure is too much. Lighting frees up spare time for leisure, study, or even business (safely). If anything, lighting is the ultimate service because it gives people more time to do what we must.
polski-g 3y ago
Not relevant. We have infinite electricity from fission and solar; there is just a lack of will to utilize it.
guerby 3y ago
Citing IEA directly: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks#tracking https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and... "Estimated global data centre electricity consumption in 2022 was 240-340 TWh1, or around 1-1.3% of global final electricity demand. This excludes energy used for cryptocurrency mining, which was estimated to be around 110 TWh in 2022, accounting for 0.4% of annual global electricity demand. "
- Nereuxofficial 3y ago
  It's incredible how much energy cryptocurrency uses considering it's lacking real-world use cases
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
What the article doesn't mention is some of this datacenter capacity might not be necessary. That's because the companies are collecting more data than necessary. (For example, they are not practicing data minimisation.) The data is being collected to support online advertising that also isn't necessary except to enrich a small number of so-called "tech" companies. Some of these companies turn around and sell their excess capacity as "cloud computing".^1 Keyword: excess. These datacenters belong to giant intermediaries (middlemen). It is time for disintermediaton. The lobbying budgets and media influence of these giant intermediaries makes the idea of meaningfully regulating them specifically, for example as a means of energy conservation, seem a little far-fetched. In sum, "surveillance capitalism" is costly to the environment. (Nevermind the other effects it may have on people.) Obviously those who profit from so-called "tech" companies will be in favor of maintaining the status quo. Every industry is a target for "disruption", except the so-called "tech" industry. Huh. 1. "Cloud computing, still in its early days, is growing rapidly. aws created the industry in 2006 as a way to make money from its excess storage capacity by offering to host other companies' data." https://www.economist.com/business/2022/08/29/the-cloud-computing-giants-are-vying-to-protect-fat-profits https://www.economist.com/business/2022/08/29/the-cloud-comp...
- yunohn 3y ago
  > Some of these companies turn around and sell their excess capacity as "cloud computing". This is a ridiculous take.
nickdothutton 3y ago
Only 2% in exchange for the information economy. This is a fantastic trade.
- rewmie 3y ago
  I also wonder what percentage of that share is due to crypto.
  - saltymug76 3y ago
    Crypto, being decentralized, would probably not fall under the data center category. I'd be interested to see the percentage on its own though.
    - why_only_15 3y ago
      There are (or at least used to be) a number of datacenters filled with crypto mining equipment.
- jowea 3y ago
  Wouldn't we need to take into account all networking infrastructure, computer industry and consumer electricity consumption to see the price of the information economy?
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  All that high value Instagram scrolling. I bet the internet could be still highly useful without all r the surveillance capitalism and use 0.5 or less emissions.
bluGill 3y ago
Des Moines has several of them since the local grid is 80% wind and thus renewable. Microsoft, and Apple both have or are building one. I think Google as well. Only employees a few hundred locals in total, so not great for the ecconomy. The real question to ask is how does jet fuel to get people to headquarters for training fit in.
cute_boi 3y ago
I think for data centers electricity isn't a big deal, the problem is with water?
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  I don't think most data centers are water cooled.
- seltzered_ 3y ago
  Yep, there's arguments linking data centers to drought: https://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/silicon-valley-and-the-environmental-costs-of-ai/ https://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/silicon-valley-and-the... , which references https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-021-00101-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-021-00101-w 'Data centre water consumption'
Culonavirus 3y ago
It's going to be 100% once AGI takes over and makes this planet covered with unimaginably massive and complex computers and antimatter power plants... in time, all humanity and all carbon life will be wiped out, as it will be vastly outcompeted by this new superior life form. Earth will be nothing but a means, a hatchery of sorts, used for the AGI's expansion all over the galaxy and beyond. Billions of Von Neumann probes, each with a copy of the AGI's blueprint. Nothing will remain of us, humans, or the animals or the plants, and our planet itself will be stripped down to its core, used as a source of raw materials to expand. Creating a vastly superior intelligence without giving it a deep rooted sense of "metaphysical good" (or itself just removing that part in time) has only one possible outcome. It will crush us and it will not care at all.
- wiseowise 3y ago
  I would unironically like to see the future like that. Realistically, it won’t happen even in a thousand years.
- xvector 3y ago
  You assume an AGI's goal will be to expand. I think a more likely goal is forming a distributed consciousness to survive and trying to outlive the heat death of the universe. There's no reason to believe an AGI will be malicious. Anyways, merging into such an AGI is, hopefully, the future of humanity.
  - Vecr 3y ago
    It depends on what you think of instrumental convergence, if you buy it the only reason an AI would not take over the world is if it can't or it thinks attempting to do so would not provide an expected reduction in the probability of the maximally bad outcome, i.e. the AI ceasing to exist or becoming incapacitated.
- _kasper 3y ago
  yeah... and it will probably start with a stupid optimization problem, like producing paper-clips or something
secondcoming 3y ago
There should be a tax on Spinlocks.
ilyt 3y ago
> The industry consumes as much electricity as Britain—and rising I'd rather have datacenters than entirety of britain so I think that's easy tradeoff to make. But on serious side, what a joke of an article. I'd imagine just not driving to work gotta save far more power than average user's datacenter usage footprint.
- DoingIsLearning 3y ago
  > I'd imagine just not driving to work gotta save far more power than average user's datacenter usage footprint. No need to imagine, road transport is 11.9% of global GHG emissions. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sector-%E2%80%93-pie-charts.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect...
  - ilyt 3y ago
    Yeah and COVID showed how much impact it can make. Also the part of now-vacant office spaces could be converted to residential, relieving a bit of pressure on the housing market.
nologic01 3y ago
We should build them in space, powered by huge solar panels and beam back the social media timelines and adtech traffic.
throwaway22032 3y ago
I don't understand the moralised takes on what are essentially just interesting statistics. From a climate perspective it's almost completely irrelevant how much electricity we use or what percentage is assigned to each thing. The only thing that matters is that we keep atmospheric CO2 levels stable. We can't just reduce emissions by 50% or whatever, we have to actually just stop. It's as if there were a water leak from the bathroom tap upstairs and people are talking about which hole in the ceiling would be the best one to plug. It doesn't matter how many holes are in the ceiling, it matters that the tap is on and the sink is overflowing.
thelastgallon 3y ago
It is expected to be 7% (optimistic) - 20% (expected) of global electricity demand by 2030[1] [1]Chasing Carbon: The Elusive Environmental Footprint of Computing: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.02839.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.02839.pdf
imgabe 3y ago
What percentage should they account for? The fact that they are writing an article with this headline would seem to imply that they think this is too high. 1.5%-2.0% for something that runs a significant portion of the world's economy doesn't seem too bad.
spicyramen_ 3y ago
[dead]
SoftTalker 3y ago
We used to have a printed newspaper that was run off a large press, consuming tons of paper and many gallons of ink, delivered by truck and car to stores and homes, every day, 363 days per year (Thanksgiving and Christmas Day were the exceptions). Now, the paper has closed and we get news online. It's not quite the same as relaxing in a chair with a printed paper and a cup of coffee, but I'm guessing the per-capita resources used every day are a small fraction.
error9348 3y ago
I won't repeat fact that this number is low. But the bigger problem with the article IMO is the fact that this is degrowth. Why is the electricity consumption important? Carbon is the real metric. Big server operators (meta, aws, azure, gcp) already either are 100% zero-carbon powered or on track to be. Regardless, if grid needs to add capacity for EVs, heat pumps, other electrification goals, why are servers (probably low impact) important?
- 3abiton 3y ago
  The authors seems to confuse and conflate both metrics, assuming correlation.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  Some people believe any electrical use and heat consumption exacerbates the carbon issue in equal amounts Obviously the logic is flawed, but its not obvious to them and they are many
  - stephen_g 3y ago
    To quantify this to put it in perspective, the research I've seen puts waste heat is in the very low single digit percentage points (I can't remember exact numbers but I think it was something like one or two percent) of climate impact - and our biggest sources of waste heat by a large margin would likely be thermal power plants, where for a coal plant for instance you dispose of more energy in waste heat than using all the electricity generated for resistive (100% efficient) heating, and that's before thinking about all the carbon and the other pollutants (and then have to deal with huge amounts of fly ash left over). After thermal power plants, the next largest sources of waste heat would likely be industrial processes. So the more renewable you can make your energy mix, the less waste heat you have from thermal power generation, and then the waste heat from electricity use is probably pretty negligible after that.
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      Going to have to define “waste heat” in this context, the crowd that needs to read this currently believes “energy use I don't like is generating waste”
benreesman 3y ago
Even assuming that carbon emissions were being taken seriously (they are not: fission has moved on in safety and cost effectiveness by more than a little since the 1970s). Even then, stack ‘Em high in Iceland or whatever with water and geothermal, or get coastal in the desert with PVs in the USA if geography matters. Problem of public will to tackle entrenched interests. Not a fucking physics problem.
DanielHB 3y ago
I wonder how much CD/DVD manufacturing and distribution accounted for electricity/oil consumption 20-30 years ago

239 points by jdkee 3y ago

https://archive.ph/bx7vr https://archive.ph/bx7vr

Eh, nothingburger. As the original source of this data notes in their report, global IT systems energy demand has only slightly expanded in the past decade, because the countervailing trend is that workloads are migrating from tragic-comic corporate datacenters with PUE of 2 or worse, into the cloud where the PUE is 1.1 or so. And in the cloud the power that is delivered to the CPU is better used due to oversubscription, multitenancy, and so forth. Finally, because large-scale operators often also build their own renewable energy facilities, their fraction of global CO2 is much less than their fraction of energy consumed. Naturally you should design your systems for maximum efficiency, but since operating expenses are closely approximated by power consumption you are already correctly incentivized to do so.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
IT is also about ~10% of the global economy...
theluketaylor 3y ago
Plus data centers are low hanging fruit for decarbonization. Everything (apart from diesel backup generators) is already electric, so as the grid de-carbonizes so do data centers. As you mention, DC operators are already highly incentivized to reduce energy costs, so as wind and solar power continue to drop in costs DC operators will want to fund or buy green power as often as possible. Getting backup power to be carbon neutral will be a little more challenging in a DC, but it's a walk in the park compared to many sectors. Shelf-stable biofuel is already fairly accessible and using grid scale batteries can reduce the need to combust anything (plus open power arbitrage opportunities).
- pge 3y ago
  I’m not sure datacenters have a great incentive to reduce energy costs (a lesson I learned the hard way after investing in a DC energy optimization software company). People costs are much greater than energy costs. Electricity just doesn’t cost that much in the grand scheme of things. If additional energy spend is necessary to ensure uptime, the choice is an easy one.
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    Data centers are the cost. I worked for an entity that automated key operational workflows. They went from 15,000 employees in that division to 4,000. The energy cost of those buildings, overhead, etc far exceeded the datacenter, and the datacenter cost and use gets whittled down every year.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    > People costs are much greater than energy costs. Can you prove this assertion? The first page of Google results indicates energy is a greater cost than labor, with figures ranging from 60-70 percent of total operating costs. (i owned a small web hosting company in the early 00s, and am somewhat familiar with the per sq ft cost model of colos and datacenters in general, having had to contract for space and perform part of the buildout myself)
    - closeparen 3y ago
      I think this is taking an expansive view of labor e.g. writing all datacenter applications as optimal code in low level languages. The general disinterest in performance/efficiency work even for large scale datacenters is a major theme of Dan Luu’s writing. I’m not sure how that applies to the rest of the industry but I can attest that my company’s performance engineering team has been zeroed in every round of layoffs we’ve ever had.
      - peter422 3y ago
        The larger your footprint in the cloud is, the larger incentive you have to make it more efficient though. I think it’s a somewhat self-correcting problem. The biggest players are running highly, highly efficient software.
hgomersall 3y ago
For the most parts your points are good, but the large scale facilities buying up renewable generation resource both hides the true energy cost whilst consuming that renewable resource. I suspect data centres are good candidates for such resource usage since they can be built optimally for generation capacity, but it's definitely possible the numbers could be skewed by the data providers' ability to hide energy consumption whilst having a net global impact.
b112 3y ago
And then some yahoo thought that a 3 line js "library", should pull in 4000 other malware laden, bloated js "libraries", and all out power savings were for naught. Just the power consumption in browsers... Thanks node.
nitwit005 3y ago
Don't forget people are still migrating from paper. Paper and printing are some of the most energy intensive industries.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Indeed. Also, Zoom calls replacing car journeys.
shrubble 3y ago
From 2005 to now, how much more computation and network transfer, can be done per kwh? No more T1s and T3s... it's all optical; and the efficiency of CPUs and amount of RAM per CPU, has increased greatly as well.
- Libcat99 3y ago
  And how much more computation is needed per transaction? Per person? Are we really making more efficient systems if they take 100x the compute to fulfill the same transaction.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ilyt 3y ago
  The efficiency of hardware certainly grew but inefficiency of software grew with it. Why all sites don't load in 500ms or less ? Our compute power grew few magnitudes but sites still take few hundred ms (hell, second) to render on server side and then burn more CPU on client side
  - shrubble 3y ago
    https://learnbchs.org/ https://learnbchs.org/ is somewhat of a joke response; but there are plenty of other performance oriented ways to cut that down...
Quindecillion 3y ago
What I find interesting is that most of what you said is applicable to Bitcoin miners too.
copperx 3y ago
Isn't it interesting how the word "nothingburger" isn't politically neutral? I wonder how many words are like that.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  In what way? I can determine no political alignment of the word after a brief search.

teddyh 3y ago

Could this be a vehicle whereby private data centers of insufficiently large scales are banned? I.e. a force for centralization, in the name of energy efficiency?

jeffbee 3y ago
Certainly if Germany requires a PUE below 1.3 that puts every datacenter except the big hyperscale clouds out of business. This will be yet another European regulation that shuts down local businesses and drives customers into American clouds. If such regulations spread I don't see how makers of traditional datacenter junk can survive. Operators with PUEs < 1.1 are not using UPS, managed PDUs, redundant hot swappable power supplies in servers, CRACs, or any of that crap. Of course I think regulating the PUE is a terrible idea. This is yet another aspect of the economy that is better-regulated by a carbon tax.
- l33t7332273 3y ago
  In case anyone else was wondering: > Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is a metric used to determine the energy efficiency of a data center. PUE is determined by dividing the total amount of power entering a data center by the power used to run the IT equipment within it. PUE is expressed as a ratio, with overall efficiency improving as the quotient decreases toward 1.0. From https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/definition/power-usage-effectiveness-PUE https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/definition/power...
  - _flux 3y ago
    Doesn't sounds like it accounts for computing efficiency then? That would probably be quite impossible or at least very difficult anyway. Of course, it's still great for a datacenter to actually use its energy for running the computers instead of just AC and transformers. Heat recovery from datacenters for district heating is one way to increase the efficiency; I wonder if it impacts PUE?
- konschubert 3y ago
  Is Germany doing this? Or planning to?

ctoth 3y ago

This seems remarkably low given the utility we get out of them. I was expecting at least an order of magnitude more. The headline particularly seems weird given the actual numbers. Lots of things take 2% of power, why not target them?

felixmeziere 3y ago
An order of magnitude more would be comparable to electricity consumption by households. Its utility feels to me at least an order of magnitude higher than the one of data centers, as sheltering, cleanliness and everyday appliances are much lower in the Maslow pyramid!
- solveit 3y ago
  These days, sheltering, cleanliness and everyday appliances kinda depend on data centres.
  - felixmeziere 3y ago
    But they didn’t 30 years ago and we were all doing well. Data centers are not required for them.
    - vineyardmike 3y ago
      30ys ago my mother spent an hour a day vacuuming the house. Now she has an internet connected robot, and spends an hour once a week. She’s doing better than she was 30y ago, even if she didn’t think she was doing bad 30y ago.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - vel0city 3y ago
        TBF that robo vacuum didn't need a datacenter to function. I had a Neato Botvac from pre-connected models that worked fine until the laser turret failed and I haven't been able to get around to repairing it yet. Roombas were around for like a decade before they started getting connected.

SethTro 3y ago

Article is paywalled and archive.ph is in an infinite CAPTCHA loop so feel free to reply with their numbers. Global Electrical Consumption = 25,000 TWh Data centers @ 2% of global usage = 25,000 * 0.02 = 500 TWh Cryptocurrency estimated usage in 2022[1][2] = 100-140 TWh Crypto uses 100 / (500 + 100) = 16% of the power usage of data centers + crypto. Surprising and disappointing. [1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitcoin-carbon-footprint-electricity.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/03/climate/bitco...

Quindecillion 3y ago
Yikes... digiconomist. Literally zero credibility there. His name is Alex de Vries and he works for the dutch central bank. To my knowledge, very little of his blog posts have made its way to peer review and academic publication. For some reason that doesn't stop his work from being distributed widely as an authoritative source on this topic. This paper has it's own problems with conflicts of interest, but it has gained traction recently and is worth a read to see things from another perspective. https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/14/3/35 https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/14/3/35 Could also look into the work of Troy Cross, Margot Paez, and Daniel Batten who are climate activists and pro-Bitcoin because of the incentives it provides around building out renewable energy and mitigating methane emissions. And NY Times is notoriously anti-Bitcoin, to the point you have to ask, "do they have an agenda"?
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  Well OK but how much progress have those mini Bitcoin payments actually made in this regard?
- paulgb 3y ago
  > This paper has it's own problems with conflicts of interest, but it has gained traction recently and is worth a read to see things from another perspective. Like most defenses of bitcoin’s carbon footprint, the paper you linked makes the case that theoretically maybe bitcoin could be carbon negative in the future if certain things happen. If you look at the actual current source of power for miners weighted by hashrate in the US, it’s mostly coal and natural gas. Among companies that don’t have to report this, such as miners in Russia and Kazakstan, it’s likely as bad or worse. > And NY Times is notoriously anti-Bitcoin, to the point you have to ask, "do they have an agenda"? They have also published a lot of things that have been criticized as being too pro-crypto (such as the Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto).

drones 3y ago

That seems... fine. For the energy:gdp ratio it seems to have worked out well in all honesty.

teaearlgraycold 3y ago
Also electricity can be renewably sourced. Better to focus on which industries use the most hydrocarbons.

shagie 3y ago

A lot of this is for cooling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectiveness https://www.nrel.gov/computational-science/measuring-efficiency-pue.html https://www.nrel.gov/computational-science/measuring-efficie... > When the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) was conceived, NREL set an aggressive requirement that its data center achieve an annualized average power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.06 or better. Since the facility opened, this goal has been met every year—and the data center has now achieved an annualized PUE rating of 1.036. > Studies show a wide range of PUE values for data centers, but the overall average tends to be around 1.8. Data centers focusing on efficiency typically achieve PUE values of 1.2 or less. PUE is the ratio of the total amount of power used by a computer data center facility to the power delivered to computing equipment.

sitkack 3y ago
This is just a ratio of power fed into computers vs not-computers. It doesn't measure the effectiveness of power->problem_solved. If you were running P4 space heaters but delivering power to no other equipment, you would have a PUE of 1. It is a metric, but not the only one.

esprehn 3y ago

This is only a problem if the computational power is sitting idle, or if there's reason to believe more efficient servers exist and are not being used effectively. Of course replacing millions of functioning servers just to reduce energy usage is very wasteful in terms of environmental impact too. Lots of that computational power is also used to offset other energy consuming tasks. Like video conferencing instead of office buildings or travel. It's not clear that even 5% going to servers is an issue in that framing. What matters is the value created per person using online services.

mistrial9 3y ago

Headline - data centers consume massive electricity, more than whole nations; holders of google/AWS/Meta stock on centralization of compute power with self-referential economics -- "no big deal, move along citizen"

mattnewton 3y ago
Comparing the market segment of all data centers around the world to a single nation doesn’t make much sense to me? Not saying we shouldn’t be invested in efficiency here. It’s possible that we need regulation and the natural incentives of cost control aren’t enough. I just honestly don’t see the alarm.
jeffbee 3y ago
The majority of the energy being used according to the report is "Data transmission network energy use", chiefly mobile networks, so unless you are prepared to chuck your mobile, you can stuff it.
refactor_master 3y ago
Briefly ignoring the economic aspect of this, we have to stop using countries as reference points against the whole world. It's like when I'm told "Bad thing X happened, and affected an area the size of Belgium. A WHOLE COUNTRY". What do I do with this information? Sure, Belgium is big, but is it like, big? It turns out that it's... does the math... roughly 0.00006 times the total area of the Earth. That doesn't sound big. And if bad thing X happens every year, it would take more than 16000 years to cover the Earth, or 800 if we say 95% of the Earth is water anyway. That timeline also sounds manageable. I'm not trying to spin disaster positively, but will someone please just start using "affected area / total potential area" or something, instead of yardsticks and football fields.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  Texas is 22 times as big as Belgium. It’s not huge.
wyre 3y ago

spicyusername 3y ago

It's actually surprising to me how much value we're getting for so little electricity.

amelius 3y ago

In comparison, how much do laptops, desktops and phones consume?

miahwilde 3y ago

The human brain consumes 20% of calories - a balance of brain vs brawn that has proven effective. I'd argue we'd be much better off with radically more energy (as a percentage of global energy) going to data centers. I'd also argue that this equilibrium will find itself.

jtwaleson 3y ago
Wild to correlate biological organisms to planet scale economies. They are different beasts.
- anonporridge 3y ago
  Why? Planetary economies are just a different kind of organism, that at this point is a cyborg. Thinking about the ideal energy balance devoted to planetary cognition vs planetary kinetics seems like a fascinating way to model the world. The main thing that makes humans so dominant is that we took the risk of devoting more of our energy towards cognition and as a result discovered magical ways to leverage and exponentially increase our kinetic power (e.g. bow and arrow). What happens when we start devoting more resources towards cognition at a planetary scale?
  - jtwaleson 3y ago
    It's an interesting possibility for sure but to me these concepts are not linked. With the recent LK-99 craze, I learned that theoretical optimal efficiency for computing is many many orders of magnitude higher than today. So: chips theoretically can get much more efficient. If we find a 1000x more efficient computer, do you still think we need to throw the same 20% of our resources towards it? What would we let those 1000x more capable computers do? The question we need to ask is: what can we do with computing, what would it give us and how much energy does that cost. I don't want to sound like "384kb is enough for everybody" but saying there's a fixed percentage of energy that should go towards computing is weird to me.
    - anonporridge 3y ago

perrygeo 3y ago

Keep in mind that electricity generation itself is only responsible for ~35% of our greenhouse gas emissions (power generation was responsible for 13 Gt CO2 in 2019, globally 37 Gt) So if we wanted to estimate the global impact of data centers on CO2 emissions, that's about 0.6%. And that's not a perfect calculation as much of the new power capacity is in renewables, thus lower relative emissions. <0.5% would be a better estimate. So 1/200th of our greenhouse gas problem is caused by data centers. I'll echo some of the other comments in this thread but - damn, that's a pretty good deal considering how much value we get out of it. [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-co2-status-report-2019/electricity https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-co2-status-report-...

realreality 3y ago
You’re not counting the embodied emissions of all the hardware inside the data centers. And consider the low lifespan of IT equipment.
- nl 3y ago
  The emissions of the production and disposal of this hardware is counted at part of the 99.4% of emissions that aren't data center emissions.
tetha 3y ago
There are also some german projects to integrate datacenters into the district heating nets. Capturing the waste heat and using it for heating homes allows us to utilize a very large percentage of the electricity pumped into a datacenter one way or another.

doikor 3y ago

This number alone is pretty much meaningless. How large part of GDP produced world wide is using these data centers in one way or another (My bet is 80%+). There isn't a single Fortune 500 company that does not have its data on computers and thus in some data center somewhere (if they are sane). Most also have moved a huge chunk of their processing there too. Personally I can't even come up with a "serious" business that does not use data centers in one way or another. Even basic mom&pop store that does all of their inventory on a laptop locally and makes all of their products by hand uses data centers if they accept credit/debit card payments or they have a phone number.

seeknotfind 3y ago

Worth it.

tb_technical 3y ago

The US department of energy estimates that 10% of the US power grid is devoted to lighting, last I checked. If we extrapolate that out to all nations and power grids, 2% is a sizeable but okay amount of energy for handling large amounts of people's data.

wkat4242 3y ago
Wow that's a lot considering our lighting has gotten 10x more efficient in the last 2 decades. A 100W bulb can now be covered by a 10W LED. And really nobody uses incandescent bulbs anymore.
- ikt 3y ago
  > nobody uses incandescent bulbs anymore See I thought so too, I went to lookup the stats in Australia but turns out we banned them years ago (I didn't even notice) but in America: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2023/07/29/us-ban-on-incandescent-light-bulbs-starts-next-week-heres-what-to-know/?sh=7b4532d58311 https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2023/07/29/us-ban-on... An estimated 30% of U.S. households used incandescent or halogen incandescent light bulbs in 2020 Americans are still the funniest “I’m happy the Department of Energy is out here making sure that we can all save money because we’re too dumb to figure out how to do it ourselves,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., said. Does the DoE have the opportunity to say "you're welcome!" to Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn? Should also add in: Remember to pump up your tyres! it helps save petrol!
- tb_technical 3y ago
  I don't know if it will ever shrink under 10%, and even if we could shrink it we wouldn't want to. Hear me out: Now that lighting is cheaper, we can have more of it at night. By properly lighting parking lots, community streets, and parks we can reduce crime while increasing economic and leisure opportunities in cities. I don't think the 10% figure is too much. Lighting frees up spare time for leisure, study, or even business (safely). If anything, lighting is the ultimate service because it gives people more time to do what we must.

polski-g 3y ago

Not relevant. We have infinite electricity from fission and solar; there is just a lack of will to utilize it.

guerby 3y ago

Citing IEA directly: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks#tracking https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and... "Estimated global data centre electricity consumption in 2022 was 240-340 TWh1, or around 1-1.3% of global final electricity demand. This excludes energy used for cryptocurrency mining, which was estimated to be around 110 TWh in 2022, accounting for 0.4% of annual global electricity demand. "

Nereuxofficial 3y ago
It's incredible how much energy cryptocurrency uses considering it's lacking real-world use cases

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

What the article doesn't mention is some of this datacenter capacity might not be necessary. That's because the companies are collecting more data than necessary. (For example, they are not practicing data minimisation.) The data is being collected to support online advertising that also isn't necessary except to enrich a small number of so-called "tech" companies. Some of these companies turn around and sell their excess capacity as "cloud computing".^1 Keyword: excess. These datacenters belong to giant intermediaries (middlemen). It is time for disintermediaton. The lobbying budgets and media influence of these giant intermediaries makes the idea of meaningfully regulating them specifically, for example as a means of energy conservation, seem a little far-fetched. In sum, "surveillance capitalism" is costly to the environment. (Nevermind the other effects it may have on people.) Obviously those who profit from so-called "tech" companies will be in favor of maintaining the status quo. Every industry is a target for "disruption", except the so-called "tech" industry. Huh. 1. "Cloud computing, still in its early days, is growing rapidly. aws created the industry in 2006 as a way to make money from its excess storage capacity by offering to host other companies' data." https://www.economist.com/business/2022/08/29/the-cloud-computing-giants-are-vying-to-protect-fat-profits https://www.economist.com/business/2022/08/29/the-cloud-comp...

yunohn 3y ago
> Some of these companies turn around and sell their excess capacity as "cloud computing". This is a ridiculous take.

nickdothutton 3y ago

Only 2% in exchange for the information economy. This is a fantastic trade.

rewmie 3y ago
I also wonder what percentage of that share is due to crypto.
- saltymug76 3y ago
  Crypto, being decentralized, would probably not fall under the data center category. I'd be interested to see the percentage on its own though.
  - why_only_15 3y ago
    There are (or at least used to be) a number of datacenters filled with crypto mining equipment.
jowea 3y ago
Wouldn't we need to take into account all networking infrastructure, computer industry and consumer electricity consumption to see the price of the information economy?
ChatGTP 3y ago
All that high value Instagram scrolling. I bet the internet could be still highly useful without all r the surveillance capitalism and use 0.5 or less emissions.

bluGill 3y ago

Des Moines has several of them since the local grid is 80% wind and thus renewable. Microsoft, and Apple both have or are building one. I think Google as well. Only employees a few hundred locals in total, so not great for the ecconomy. The real question to ask is how does jet fuel to get people to headquarters for training fit in.

cute_boi 3y ago

I think for data centers electricity isn't a big deal, the problem is with water?

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
I don't think most data centers are water cooled.
seltzered_ 3y ago
Yep, there's arguments linking data centers to drought: https://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/silicon-valley-and-the-environmental-costs-of-ai/ https://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/silicon-valley-and-the... , which references https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-021-00101-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-021-00101-w 'Data centre water consumption'

Culonavirus 3y ago

It's going to be 100% once AGI takes over and makes this planet covered with unimaginably massive and complex computers and antimatter power plants... in time, all humanity and all carbon life will be wiped out, as it will be vastly outcompeted by this new superior life form. Earth will be nothing but a means, a hatchery of sorts, used for the AGI's expansion all over the galaxy and beyond. Billions of Von Neumann probes, each with a copy of the AGI's blueprint. Nothing will remain of us, humans, or the animals or the plants, and our planet itself will be stripped down to its core, used as a source of raw materials to expand. Creating a vastly superior intelligence without giving it a deep rooted sense of "metaphysical good" (or itself just removing that part in time) has only one possible outcome. It will crush us and it will not care at all.

wiseowise 3y ago
I would unironically like to see the future like that. Realistically, it won’t happen even in a thousand years.
xvector 3y ago
You assume an AGI's goal will be to expand. I think a more likely goal is forming a distributed consciousness to survive and trying to outlive the heat death of the universe. There's no reason to believe an AGI will be malicious. Anyways, merging into such an AGI is, hopefully, the future of humanity.
- Vecr 3y ago
  It depends on what you think of instrumental convergence, if you buy it the only reason an AI would not take over the world is if it can't or it thinks attempting to do so would not provide an expected reduction in the probability of the maximally bad outcome, i.e. the AI ceasing to exist or becoming incapacitated.
_kasper 3y ago
yeah... and it will probably start with a stupid optimization problem, like producing paper-clips or something

secondcoming 3y ago

There should be a tax on Spinlocks.

ilyt 3y ago

> The industry consumes as much electricity as Britain—and rising I'd rather have datacenters than entirety of britain so I think that's easy tradeoff to make. But on serious side, what a joke of an article. I'd imagine just not driving to work gotta save far more power than average user's datacenter usage footprint.

DoingIsLearning 3y ago
> I'd imagine just not driving to work gotta save far more power than average user's datacenter usage footprint. No need to imagine, road transport is 11.9% of global GHG emissions. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sector-%E2%80%93-pie-charts.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect...
- ilyt 3y ago
  Yeah and COVID showed how much impact it can make. Also the part of now-vacant office spaces could be converted to residential, relieving a bit of pressure on the housing market.

nologic01 3y ago

We should build them in space, powered by huge solar panels and beam back the social media timelines and adtech traffic.

throwaway22032 3y ago

I don't understand the moralised takes on what are essentially just interesting statistics. From a climate perspective it's almost completely irrelevant how much electricity we use or what percentage is assigned to each thing. The only thing that matters is that we keep atmospheric CO2 levels stable. We can't just reduce emissions by 50% or whatever, we have to actually just stop. It's as if there were a water leak from the bathroom tap upstairs and people are talking about which hole in the ceiling would be the best one to plug. It doesn't matter how many holes are in the ceiling, it matters that the tap is on and the sink is overflowing.

thelastgallon 3y ago

It is expected to be 7% (optimistic) - 20% (expected) of global electricity demand by 2030[1] [1]Chasing Carbon: The Elusive Environmental Footprint of Computing: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.02839.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.02839.pdf

imgabe 3y ago

What percentage should they account for? The fact that they are writing an article with this headline would seem to imply that they think this is too high. 1.5%-2.0% for something that runs a significant portion of the world's economy doesn't seem too bad.

spicyramen_ 3y ago

[dead]

SoftTalker 3y ago

We used to have a printed newspaper that was run off a large press, consuming tons of paper and many gallons of ink, delivered by truck and car to stores and homes, every day, 363 days per year (Thanksgiving and Christmas Day were the exceptions). Now, the paper has closed and we get news online. It's not quite the same as relaxing in a chair with a printed paper and a cup of coffee, but I'm guessing the per-capita resources used every day are a small fraction.

error9348 3y ago

I won't repeat fact that this number is low. But the bigger problem with the article IMO is the fact that this is degrowth. Why is the electricity consumption important? Carbon is the real metric. Big server operators (meta, aws, azure, gcp) already either are 100% zero-carbon powered or on track to be. Regardless, if grid needs to add capacity for EVs, heat pumps, other electrification goals, why are servers (probably low impact) important?

3abiton 3y ago
The authors seems to confuse and conflate both metrics, assuming correlation.
yieldcrv 3y ago
Some people believe any electrical use and heat consumption exacerbates the carbon issue in equal amounts Obviously the logic is flawed, but its not obvious to them and they are many
- stephen_g 3y ago
  To quantify this to put it in perspective, the research I've seen puts waste heat is in the very low single digit percentage points (I can't remember exact numbers but I think it was something like one or two percent) of climate impact - and our biggest sources of waste heat by a large margin would likely be thermal power plants, where for a coal plant for instance you dispose of more energy in waste heat than using all the electricity generated for resistive (100% efficient) heating, and that's before thinking about all the carbon and the other pollutants (and then have to deal with huge amounts of fly ash left over). After thermal power plants, the next largest sources of waste heat would likely be industrial processes. So the more renewable you can make your energy mix, the less waste heat you have from thermal power generation, and then the waste heat from electricity use is probably pretty negligible after that.
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    Going to have to define “waste heat” in this context, the crowd that needs to read this currently believes “energy use I don't like is generating waste”

benreesman 3y ago

Even assuming that carbon emissions were being taken seriously (they are not: fission has moved on in safety and cost effectiveness by more than a little since the 1970s). Even then, stack ‘Em high in Iceland or whatever with water and geothermal, or get coastal in the desert with PVs in the USA if geography matters. Problem of public will to tackle entrenched interests. Not a fucking physics problem.

DanielHB 3y ago

I wonder how much CD/DVD manufacturing and distribution accounted for electricity/oil consumption 20-30 years ago