From goldmansachs.com
On average, a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search. In that difference lies a coming sea change in how the US, Europe, and the world at large will consume power — and how much that will cost.
For years, data centers displayed a remarkably stable appetite for power, even as their workloads mounted. Now, as the pace of efficiency gains in electricity use slows and the AI revolution gathers steam, Goldman Sachs Research estimates that data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030.
At present, data centers worldwide consume 1-2% of overall power, but this percentage will likely rise to 3-4% by the end of the decade. In the US and Europe, this increased demand will help drive the kind of electricity growth that hasn’t been seen in a generation. Along the way, the carbon dioxide emissions of data centers may more than double between 2022 and 2030.
How much power do data centers consume?
In a series of three reports, Goldman Sachs Research analysts lay out the US, European, and global implications of this spike in electricity demand. It isn’t that our demand for data has been meager in the recent past. In fact, data center workloads nearly tripled between 2015 and 2019. Through that period, though, data centers’ demand for power remained flattish, at about 200 terawatt-hours per year. In part, this was because data centers kept growing more efficient in how they used the power they drew, according to the Goldman Sachs Research reports, led by Carly Davenport, Alberto Gandolfi, and Brian Singer.
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