Guest post by Alex Thompson
Whilst I’ve always preferred to take a shower over having a bath for speed and convenience, in my adult life I’ve been increasingly aware of the environmental benefits of showers. Assuming you can contain the time you’re singing in them, showers use less water and in turn consume less energy for heating.
Shorter shower challenges, frequently marketed by water companies, promote saving thousands of litres of water and triple figures in energy costs when shaving 1 minute off your daily shower. In the main, I imagine that the majority of us choose to take a shower over a bath for the same reasons – speed and convenience.
When cloud computing came along, this is exactly what it offered us – speed and convenience – and it has had a profound impact on both our work and personal lives. In seconds we can spin up servers and applications to meet workloads, whilst listening to the latest Taylor Swift album before it’s available in Our Price, to then instantly start up a chat online to debate which Englishman she might be referring to. Insert [Blank Space] here.
With the addition of AI into the convenient cloud, the productivity gain in some workloads is dramatic. Because of the speed and convenience it offers us, this will naturally drive businesses and individuals to consume more and more cloud computing. Unfortunately, shaving 1 minute off a workload does not save thousands of litres of water, nor does it save energy.
In fact, it does the exact opposite:
In 2020, Microsoft committed that, by 2030, they would become carbon negative, water positive, zero waste, and protect more land than we use.
In 2022, Microsoft revealed in their 2022 Environmental Sustainability Report (microsoft.com) that its global water consumption increased 34% in a year, with outside researchers attributing this to its AI research (A.I. usage fuels spike in Microsoft’s water consumption | Fortune).
In 2024, the foreword in the Microsoft 2024 Environmental Sustainability Report from their Chief Sustainability Officer reveals that Microsoft is finding their commitments challenging:
Since that announcement, we have seen major changes both in the technology sector and in our understanding of what it will take to meet our climate goals. New technologies, including generative AI, hold promise for new innovations that can help address the climate crisis. At the same time, the infrastructure and electricity needed for these technologies create new challenges for meeting sustainability commitments across the tech sector.
These ‘new challenges’ are not unique to Microsoft:
…consumers engaging in a 20-50 question conversation with ChatGPT will see the bot “drink” a 500ml bottle of water.
AI chatbots guzzle enormous amounts of water, study finds |Evening Standard
And as the water is consumed, so is the demand for energy, which you can read more about here: Electricity grids creak as AI demands soar – BBC News. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) electricity consumption from data centres, AI and the cryptocurrency sector could double by 2026:
After globally consuming an estimated 460 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2022, data centres’ total electricity consumption could reach more than 1 000 TWh in 2026. This demand is roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan.
Executive summary – Electricity 2024 – Analysis – IEA
…Japan has a population of just over 125 million people by the way.
With a planetary desire (new phrase, I like it) to move away from fossil fuels to renewable sources for our energy supplies, we aren’t half making it harder for ourselves by consuming more and more energy at the same time. Governments have already begun moving the goalposts for fossil fuel consumption targets because they’ve had the calculators out on our energy demands to support a move to electric vehicles. But if they start replacing the calculators with Copilot, then by the time the machines have taken over from the cronies we might see the goalposts moving again.
On average, a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search.
AI is poised to drive 160% increase in data center power demand (goldmansachs.com)
So, it’s no surprise that the “Technology Company” Microsoft may soon be known as the “Energy Company” – Microsoft is going nuclear to power its AI ambitions – The Verge.
To wrap up before that Taylor Swift track ends and I retire for the evening to stream a movie on demand, perhaps we need to adopt a ‘shorter shower challenge’ equivalent and make conscious decisions for our cloud consumption?
In the same way that many of us will have changed our energy usage behaviours in other walks of life, for example walking or cycling to a destination rather than driving, maybe we don’t turn to the cloud for its speed and convenience all the time? Perhaps we don’t stream a movie when that book won’t finish itself, and maybe every now and then we go old school and consciously choose to enjoy generating our own content rather than rely on a machine to do it for us…