Kilde: FRONTIER GROUP. 5. OKTOBER, 2023
Data centers consumed 240-340 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2022, or 240-340 billion kilowatt-hours – about 1.0-1.3% of total global electricity use, comparabel to the total electricity consumption of UK.
In 2020, the information and communication technology sector as a whole, including data centers, networks and user devices, consumed about 915 TWh of electricity, or 4-6% of all electricity used in the world. The electricity demand of the IT sector may reach 3,200 TWh by 2030. That’s more than the amount of electricity estimated to power every electric vehicle in the world in 2050 if automakers sell only EVs by 2040.
Verifying a single Bitcoin transaction takes about 775.23 kWh of electricity, and. Bitcoin users make hundreds of thousands of these transactions every day. Globally, cryptocurrency mining consumed 110 TWh of electricity in 2022. In 2023, Bitcoin alone may consume 125 TWh of electricity [2].
On top of this, comes the AI boom. Making a seach with ChatGPT consumes 20 times the energy needed to do the same search with the traditional Google search engine.
[1] Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption estimates annualized Bitcoin energy use based on current power demand. Figure used is as of 10/02/2023. https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci.