[LUM#22] AI's energy gluttony: a blessing in disguise?
The deployment of AI is contributing to the rapid growth of the digital sector's ecological footprint. Faced with criticism, the sector is aiming for quick wins to achieve carbon neutrality. These promises have yet to be proven.
The deployment of AI increases the ecological footprint of digital technology. This is not surprising, since AI draws its performance from the processing of ever-increasing amounts of data, which causes computing needs to skyrocket. Behind this is the proliferation of processors and data centers, whose activity drives up the sector's energy consumption. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the electricity requirements for running AI and cryptocurrencies are expected to double between 2022 and 2026.
"The model training phase is the most energy-intensive. Training Chat-GPT 3 is estimated to have consumed 1,300 megawatt hours, which is 200 times more than the annual consumption of a French household. Given that improving an AI model requires repeating this training phase several times... The query, also known as the inference phase, consumes ten times more energy than a conventional Google query," explains Edmond Baranes, a researcher at the Montpellier Research in Economics (MRE) laboratory1).
A bidding war to invest in AI
This energy consumption contributes to the sector's growing carbon footprint. Greenhouse gas emissions from digital technology are set to triple by 2050, according to the baseline scenario in a joint report published in March 2023 by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) and the French Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications, Postal Services, and Press Distribution (ARCEP). And frugality is not on the agenda. "No one is considering reducing digital energy consumption, " confirms Edmond Baranes. One of the reasons is that the business model of the digital giants, the MAMAA (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Apple, and Alphabet), is based precisely on data. "There is a race to invest in AI because mastering it means producing more data and therefore more value, " explains the economist, who has been working for years on digital markets, particularly on the relationships between telecom operators and digital content providers.
Faced with criticism of its energy consumption, the sector has two responses. First, technological innovations to reduce the consumption of IT systems. "The arrival of a new generation of processors that consume less energy than GPUs ( TPUs, NPUs, etc.), as well as improved algorithms that are faster and more efficient, will improve the energy performance of AI, " says Edmond Baranes. However, energy consumption will continue to increase, particularly due to the "rebound effect," a well-known mechanism that describes the continuing negative effects of improving technology. The use of renewable energy to power data centers is also widely promoted by MAMAA. Carbon neutrality in the sector remains a pipe dream for now. In 2020, Microsoft committed to negative emissions by 2030, but by 2024 its emissions had increased by 30% (Le Monde, June 15, 2024).
Finding the right indicators
AI must also contribute indirectly to reducing our consumption. A 2022 OECD report praises the "dual transition" to green and digital technologies, based on the idea that AI-powered products and services are sources of efficiency gains and therefore energy savings, by helping to manage energy systems ("smart grids") or improving the optimization of transport and mobility networks. However, these gains must be weighed against other negative effects of AI deployment, such as the increase in certain "recreational" uses, largely based on the generation of text, images, and videos, which consume more and more energy.
"Today, even though ideas are developing, the expertise needed to assess the energy gains associated with AI is not yet well established. An initiative by Ademe and Arcep is precisely to provide an annual survey on sustainable digital technology in order to monitor changes in digital energy consumption. The challenge is to find the right indicators and adapt them to technological advances," points out Edmond Baranes.
In the meantime, the sector is not subject to any particularly strict restrictions on its energy consumption. "There are general policy guidelines on corporate digital responsibility, with incentives that can be included in their CSR, but there are no targets for reducing consumption. Fortunately, corporate initiatives are developing around green computing, data center optimization, and efforts in sustainable product design and recycling, " says Edmond Baranes. The European Union voted on an AI regulation at the end of May 2024, the world's first binding law on artificial intelligence. "The text lists digital services according to their degree of risk, but the space given to energy consumption is very limited."
Progressive pricing for digital services based on data volume does not seem to be on the agenda either. Even though telecom operators have to manage network capacity and therefore monitor providers' appetite for data traffic. "The few awareness campaigns encouraging users to stream during off-peak hours address this concern for operators. But today, any restriction on Internet access is difficult to justify, as it would be perceived by many as an infringement on a fundamental freedom, " concludes the economist.
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- MRE (UM)
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