126 Data Centers = Electricity Guzzlers …AI’s power demands are increasing – and its progress is increasingly bottlenecked not by data or algorithms, but by the grid and strains related to demand. While AI presently places considerable demands on the energy sector, it is also already unlocking major energy efficiency and operational gains… AI is already being deployed by energy companies to transform and optimize energy and mineral supply, electricity generation and transmission, and energy consumption (p. 16). Current AI-driven demand is extremely high. This is forecast to continue, especially as capital gushes into model providers that, in turn, spend on more compute. At some point, these model builders will need to turn a profit to be able to spend more. While demand – for both compute and energy – will inevitably continue to rise as consumer and business usage does the same, data centers will ultimately only serve those who pay their bills. *IEA member countries include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, S. Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Republic of Türkiye, United Kingdom, and United States. IEA Association countries include Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Singapore, S. Africa, Thailand, and Ukraine. All data shown, unless otherwise specified, is global. Italicized text is directly quoted from the report.