Data centres will use twice as much energy by 2030

Posted by gnabgib 4/10/2025

Data centres will use twice as much energy by 2030 – driven by AI(www.nature.com)

20 points | 9 comments

namaria 4/10/2025|

I feel conflicted about this. On the one hand, it seems like an enormous waste and a threat to the effort to contain climate change.

On the other hand, this would seem in line with the idea that life has evolved to more efficiently dissipate energy. So this might be the natural path forward?

Statistical physics of self-replication: https://pubs.aip.org/aip/jcp/article/139/12/121923/74793/Sta...

sightbroke 4/12/2025||

I am curious as power demands for AI/Data centers increase if either/or both algorithms & transistors will become more power efficient.

Then energy consumption won't double because we're computing more efficiently.

OR because we are computing more efficiently increase in energy consumption will grow all that more rapidly and still result in doubling by 2030 for this particular area of industry.

exabrial 4/10/2025||

All of the companies will term you they’re “green” too.

The first step is always “reduce”, or at least maintain…. Not increase.

ringeryless 4/10/2025||

Why is everyone rushing to power this bubble? FOMO needs to serve humanities long term interests, yet Scam Altman and his ilk insist their paper-mache puppet will come to life one day...

Dystopia is rather boring, it turns out, with all the plebs believing their devices to be mystical portals or magical...

financetechbro 4/10/2025|

Turns out most of the populous can be swayed by anything as long as it takes away some of the daily mental strain (mainly googling and looking at web results, it seems)

ringeryless 4/10/2025|

Can we now admit that AI coding hype was overplayed, just like every other LLM application being foisted upon us. An AI IDE or coding assistant? Yuk. No thanks. I have enough frustrations with normal IDEs and their overgrown spellcheck mentality.

pingou 4/10/2025|

AI has made me more productive. The experience of using it may be quite frustrating, unfortunately I don't think the market cares, as long as it makes us more productive, most programmers will be forced to use it more one way or another, so I doubt it's just an overplayed hype.

lm28469 4/10/2025||

> AI has made me more productive.

I don't think anyone says otherwise, the question is a what cost.

pingou 4/10/2025||

Well GP was talking about overplayed AI coding hype, I understood the "hype" as being mostly financial (with the crazy valuation of Nvidia for example), but if it does significantly raise the productivity per $ spent then there is no hype.

It doesn't mean the technology doesn't also have downsides. But many people are actually arguing that it doesn't personally make them more productive, so are more likely to call it a hype.