Energy Demands Of The Future

Microsoft is making moves to restart the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant in 2028. It originally shut down from lack of profit, unlike its sister plant, which caused the worst nuclear incident in the U.S. The Department of Energy (DOE) reports that up to 269 gigawatts of capacity could be generated if some 190 coal and ex-nuclear plants could be restarted.

In Texas, the Public Utility Commission announces that they’re unable to keep up with the needs of AI-focused data centres, and warns data centre developers to supply their own power.

And these needs will only continue to grow. Developments in technology & business models prioritise processes on the edge, where computing happens much closer to data sources than centralised systems. These services are more resource-intensive, and demands for speed and efficiency will only compound as progress continues along this trajectory.

And of course, the race for A.I simply cannot be stopped. Supermicro shipped over 100,000 GPUs in Q3 of 2024 alone, sending its stocks soaring by 15.79% after the news.

What does this mean for energy use?

At the current rate of consumption, tech research firm Gartner predicts that AI could take up 3.5% of the world’s electricity by 2030.

According to research from the University of Washington, training just one AI model equivalent to GPT-3 could use up to 10 gigawatt-hours. That’s about the electricity usage of 1,000 homes in the U.S. in one year.

The U.S Department of Energy is investing $1.5 billion split between four transmission projects to improve electrical grids and low-cost clean energy. Solely within the U.S, the DOE has concluded that to meet expected energy reliability and usage demands by 2050, transmission capabilities need to double, or even triple.

But it’s not happening fast enough. Back in Q2 on the Dwarkesh Podcast, Mark Zuckerberg reiterates that the biggest bottleneck to progress continues to be energy constraints. “When you’re talking about building large new power plants or large build-outs and building transmission lines that cross public or private land… you’re talking about many years of lead time,” Zuckerberg adds, after pointing out how heavily regulated energy is compared to the other components of AI development.

What’s to be done?

With the current pressure on the markets, progress needs to start playing catch-up. But before someone invents a miracle solution, we already have the technology for more efficient energy consumption today.

Clean energy will increase in value. Google’s decarbonisation projections find that clean energy companies, including those with advanced nuclear capacities, would reduce costs by 40% as compared to solely wind & solar with lithium-ion storage.

Interestingly, micro data centres are now being powered by excess methane. MARA, previously known as Marathon Digital Holdings, is partnering with NGON, an onsite mitigation services provider, to use excess methane from oilfield production instead of fossil fuels. “Reducing methane emissions is one of the most immediate and impactful ways to improve our environment,” says MARA CEO Fred Thiel in a statement on the partnership.

Hydrogen and geothermal power are also in the works. Earths Energy, an Australian geothermal company, hopes to incorporate geothermal energy sources into data centre designs. Mobii Green Energy Group is establishing a network of cleaner hydrogen-powered data centres, and its next target is in New Zealand.

On top of major changes to the way we produce energy, upgrades to the current state of data centres and accompanying technology are on the way.

Immersion cooling is poised to be the next most efficient cooling method. Liquid cooling firm Submer has raised $55.5 million in an investment round led by M&G, focusing on the expansion of its greener immersion cooling solution. M&G global head of catalyst investment says: “As the global demand for AI and data capacity accelerates, we see Submer’s technology as a critical solution to alleviate the intensive energy and water requirements of digital infrastructure.”

Korean R&D conglomerate LG Chem has developed a material that suppresses thermal runaway, or the overheating and combustion of lithium-ion batteries used in data centres and EVs. This material will act as a “fuse” that kicks in at the early stages of overheating. “This is a tangible research achievement that can be applied to mass production in a short period of time,” says CTO Lee Jong-gu in a statement from LG. Their findings have been published in the Nature scientific journal.

In conclusion, watch this space. The currently-impossible has never stopped progress, and there will eventually be solutions that far outclass the ones we have today. “No one has built a 1GW data center yet,” Zuckerberg tells us. “I think it will happen. This is only a matter of time, but it’s not going to be next year.”