Is AI the Next Big Climate-Change Threat? We Haven’t a Clue

As a recent conference in San Francisco, Gary Dickerson took the stage and made a bold prediction. The chief executive of Applied Materials, which is a big supplier to the semiconductor industry, warned that in the absence of significant innovation in materials, chip manufacturing and design, data centers’ AI workloads could account for a tenth of the world’s electricity usage by 2025.

A general view in the CERN Computer/Data Centre
and server farm of the 1450 m2 main room during
 a behind the scenes tour at CERN, the world’s
 largest particle physics laboratory, on April 19, 2017
in Meyrin, Switzerland. 

Today, the millions of data centers around the world soak up a little less than 2% — and that statistic encompasses all kinds of workloads handled on their vast arrays of servers. Applied Materials estimates that servers running AI currently account for just 0.1% of global electricity consumption.

Other tech executives are sounding an alarm too. Anders Andrae of Huawei thinks data centers could end up consuming a tenth of the globe’s electricity by 2025, though his estimate covers all their uses, not just AI.

Read the story from MIT Technology Review by Martin Giles - “Is AI the Next Big Climate-Change Threat? We Haven’t a Clue.”

Off to Munich for the International Passivhaus Conference

We have to rebuild our cities to use less energy and house more people, and Passivhaus design is a useful tool for both problems.

The Passive House (Passivhaus) will be discussed
at an international conference in Munich.

Starting on Friday, the leaders of the Passive House movement around the world are meeting in Munich for the International Passive House conference. Passive House, or Passivhaus, is probably the toughest energy efficiency standard anywhere; houses that meet the standard have super insulation, minimal thermal bridging, high quality windows and controlled ventilation. They are comfortable to live in and cost almost nothing to heat and cool.

I am a huge fan of Passive House, and am attending the conference in Munich, but I am increasingly convinced that it simply isn't enough anymore. Because what is really driving our energy consumption these days is transportation, where we are going backwards. It's sprawl, and it's the form of our housing. It is how we get between our houses and where we work or shop. Passivhaus can be applied to any kind of building, but expensive single family designs out in the country are not going to move the needle on our problems.

Read the TreeHugger story by Lloyd Alter - “Off to Munich for the International Passivhaus Conference.”

The NEG a carbon price by any other name

Assuming the effective design and implementation of a final policy framework, the government’s announced National Energy Guarantee (NEG) provides an alternate approach to maintain reliability in the NEM, and contribute to Australia’s emissions reduction commitment under the Paris Agreement.

Below we outline our initial analyst response and implications for energy and carbon market dynamics.

Read the RenewEconomy story by the executive director energy and carbon markets at RepuTex Advisory, Hugh Grossman - “The NEG a carbon price by any other name.”