A report from Morgan Stanley suggests the datacenter industry is on track to emit 2.5 billion tons by 2030, which is three times higher than the predictions if generative AI had not come into play.
The extra demand from GenAI will reportedly lead to a rise in emissions from 200 million tons this year to 600 million tons by 2030, thanks largely to the construction of more data centers to keep up with the demand for cloud services.
So the increase is a projection of going from 200m now to 600m/yr in 2030, mostly from construction.
It’s significant, but still a projection. We can cut that down with better construction methods and more efficient systems. Also, the world carbon emissions is 35 billion / yr. Saying 2.5bn is slightly misleading as that is a total over the next 5 years. For context, if we flatline emissions around the world over the next 5 years, we will have added 175bn tons of carbon… 2.5 against 175 is barely over 1 percent.
Not saying this is a good thing, but it’s not as much of a bad thing as the article makes it out to be. We can still do better.
From the article:
So the increase is a projection of going from 200m now to 600m/yr in 2030, mostly from construction.
It’s significant, but still a projection. We can cut that down with better construction methods and more efficient systems. Also, the world carbon emissions is 35 billion / yr. Saying 2.5bn is slightly misleading as that is a total over the next 5 years. For context, if we flatline emissions around the world over the next 5 years, we will have added 175bn tons of carbon… 2.5 against 175 is barely over 1 percent.
Not saying this is a good thing, but it’s not as much of a bad thing as the article makes it out to be. We can still do better.
Fair points!