Last month, the Berkeley National Laboratory, under contract with the US Department of Energy, published this report estimating total data center energy usage across the country. It also forecasted future demand out to 2028.
Last month, the Berkeley National Laboratory, under contract with the US Department of Energy, published this report estimating total data center energy usage across the country. It also forecasted future demand out to 2028.
Last month, the Berkeley National Laboratory, under contract with the US Department of Energy, published this report estimating total data center energy usage across the country. It also forecasted future demand out to 2028.
As you can see, in 2018, total electricity consumption by US data centers was estimated at approximately 76 TWh or 1.9% of the US total. In 2023, consumption more than doubled to 176 TWh or 4.4% of the US total. And by 2028, this is expected to further jump to somewhere between 6.7-12% of the US total.
Here's some commentary from the report:
With significant changes observed in the data center sector in recent years, owing to the rapid emergence of AI hardware, total data center energy use after 2023 is presented as a range to reflect various scenarios. These scenarios capture ranges of future equipment shipments and operational practices, as well as variations in cooling energy use. The equipment variations are based on the assumed number of GPUs shipped each year, which depends on the future GPU demand and the ability of manufacturers to meet those demands. Average operational practices for GPU-accelerated servers represent how much computational power, and how often AI hardware in the installed base is used, to meet AI workload demand. Cooling energy use variations are based on scenarios in cooling system selection type and efficiency of those cooling systems, such as shifting to liquid base cooling or moving away from evaporative cooling. Together, the scenario variations provide a range of total data center energy estimates, with the low and high end of roughly 325 and 580 TWh in 2028, as shown in Figure ES-1.
This strikes me as being an important macro trend and a big deal. All signs point to more data centers being needed. And before we know it, they're going to represent a meaningful chunk of total electricity usage.
Note: TWh = terawatt hour = one trillion watt hours
Here is an interactive map, created by the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability, showing the approximately 1,573,777,062 square feet of industrial space that can be found in Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino.
The map allows you to zoom in on specific parcels to see things like site area, warehouse size, and year built. You can also play around with different map radii to create a rollup of warehouse space within a specific area, which includes an estimate of daily truck traffic and CO2 produced.
The Guardian also used this data to create the following chart, which is helpful in showing the dominance of certain cities, as well as how much of this industrial space has been built since 2010:
In 2011, Apple owned 584 acres of land.
As of this year, and according to the Financial Times, the company now owns about 7,376 acres.
Apple uses its “facilities and land for corporate functions, R&D and data centres.” The latter would include server farms for its various online services, such as iMessage, Apple Music, and the App Store.
It can be easy to think of “the cloud” and the online services we use every day as existing only in some ethereal world up in the sky or in a distant land.
But the reality is that these services have very real physical space requirements. The above chart begins to speak to that.
As you can see, in 2018, total electricity consumption by US data centers was estimated at approximately 76 TWh or 1.9% of the US total. In 2023, consumption more than doubled to 176 TWh or 4.4% of the US total. And by 2028, this is expected to further jump to somewhere between 6.7-12% of the US total.
Here's some commentary from the report:
With significant changes observed in the data center sector in recent years, owing to the rapid emergence of AI hardware, total data center energy use after 2023 is presented as a range to reflect various scenarios. These scenarios capture ranges of future equipment shipments and operational practices, as well as variations in cooling energy use. The equipment variations are based on the assumed number of GPUs shipped each year, which depends on the future GPU demand and the ability of manufacturers to meet those demands. Average operational practices for GPU-accelerated servers represent how much computational power, and how often AI hardware in the installed base is used, to meet AI workload demand. Cooling energy use variations are based on scenarios in cooling system selection type and efficiency of those cooling systems, such as shifting to liquid base cooling or moving away from evaporative cooling. Together, the scenario variations provide a range of total data center energy estimates, with the low and high end of roughly 325 and 580 TWh in 2028, as shown in Figure ES-1.
This strikes me as being an important macro trend and a big deal. All signs point to more data centers being needed. And before we know it, they're going to represent a meaningful chunk of total electricity usage.
Note: TWh = terawatt hour = one trillion watt hours
Here is an interactive map, created by the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability, showing the approximately 1,573,777,062 square feet of industrial space that can be found in Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino.
The map allows you to zoom in on specific parcels to see things like site area, warehouse size, and year built. You can also play around with different map radii to create a rollup of warehouse space within a specific area, which includes an estimate of daily truck traffic and CO2 produced.
The Guardian also used this data to create the following chart, which is helpful in showing the dominance of certain cities, as well as how much of this industrial space has been built since 2010:
In 2011, Apple owned 584 acres of land.
As of this year, and according to the Financial Times, the company now owns about 7,376 acres.
Apple uses its “facilities and land for corporate functions, R&D and data centres.” The latter would include server farms for its various online services, such as iMessage, Apple Music, and the App Store.
It can be easy to think of “the cloud” and the online services we use every day as existing only in some ethereal world up in the sky or in a distant land.
But the reality is that these services have very real physical space requirements. The above chart begins to speak to that.
The point of this interactive map, this data, and the accompanying articles is to highlight just how disruptive all of this new industrial space is to these southern California communities and to the environment in general. But I think it is also an important reminder that, whether we like it or not, our online activities have real-world physical implications.
Online shopping requires warehouses and logistics. Online food delivery requires (ghost) kitchens. And online activity, in general, requires the storage of unprecedented amounts of data. All of these "back-end spaces" take up room, even if they're mostly easy to ignore when we're just looking at our phones.
This is our new "phygital" world and, yes, it is changing the landscape of our cities. Now our task is to figure out how to do this in a way that respects communities and respects the environment.
The point of this interactive map, this data, and the accompanying articles is to highlight just how disruptive all of this new industrial space is to these southern California communities and to the environment in general. But I think it is also an important reminder that, whether we like it or not, our online activities have real-world physical implications.
Online shopping requires warehouses and logistics. Online food delivery requires (ghost) kitchens. And online activity, in general, requires the storage of unprecedented amounts of data. All of these "back-end spaces" take up room, even if they're mostly easy to ignore when we're just looking at our phones.
This is our new "phygital" world and, yes, it is changing the landscape of our cities. Now our task is to figure out how to do this in a way that respects communities and respects the environment.
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