Data centers could consume 9.3 trillion liters of water by 2030; Trump dismantles key ocean observation network

AI data centers are everywhere, and they are like energy vampires, sucking up energy from grids across the world.

If you treated all of the data centers in the world as one country and added up all of their energy demand, AI data centers could rank sixth in global energy consumption by twenty thirty.

That's only four years from now.

A new United Nations report projects that the AI market will become twenty-five times larger than it is now in the coming decade.

Generative AI, which you're probably most familiar with, answering queries, generating images, video, audio, code, it makes up twenty percent of the market and is expected to double to forty percent.

AI data centers require a lot of energy and water to answer billions of queries per day.

All data centers in the world consumed four hundred forty-eight terawatt-hours of electricity last year.

AI data centers accounted for twenty percent of that overall consumption.

This energy demand is so great that it already rivals entire regions of the world.

It's enough energy to supply the one point three billion people living in sub-Saharan Africa for more than two years.

The carbon dioxide, or CO2 emissions from this, are massive.

They emitted one hundred eighty-nine million tons of CO2.

It would take three point two billion trees a decade to offset that.

Then you have to take into account the amount of water that data centers guzzle.

Last year, data centers consumed one point eight million Olympic-sized swimming pools of water.

This much water could cover the water needs of over six hundred million people in sub-Saharan Africa.

Imagine if the industry really does grow to the extent that the UN is projecting.

Think about how these already massive numbers would grow.