The International Energy Agency (IEA) has called upon policy makers and industry to collaborate on a vision for meeting the fast-growing demand for electricity from data centres. 

In a statement issued after the conclusion of a 2-day Global Conference on Energy and AI in the agency’s headquarters in Paris, which saw over 500 participants from governments and the industry, it was noted that while AI is helping energy transition by discovering new materials, data centres were also turning out to be big consumers of electricity.  

Though the overall consumption of electricity by data centres as a proportion of global demand for electricity will remain small, they could cause grid challenges in pockets where they are concentrated, the statement said. It noted that each data centre could consume as much electricity as 100,000 households. Although data centres currently account for just one per cent of electricity usage globally, there are already significant challenges to the grid in areas where they are concentrated, and demand is expected to keep growing. For example, in Ireland, data centres already account for 20 per cent of electricity demand, while in the US state of Virginia, the share is over 25 per cent.  

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The IEA conference was attended by ministers and high-level government officials from about 25 countries, such as Brazil, Canada, France, India, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. CEOs and senior executives from companies with a combined market value of $15 trillion were also in attendance, with representatives from Amazon Web Services, Google, Hitachi Energy, Iberdrola, Infosys, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Schneider Electric and more sharing insights during the sessions. 

“Understanding the AI revolution is critical to understanding the future of energy,” Dr Fatih Birol, IEA’s Executive Director, said in the statement. “The IEA, which has long been at the forefront of analysing the links between digitalisation and energy, is uniquely placed to ensure that the significant opportunities that AI offers are fully grasped while associated risks and challenges are addressed,” he said, adding that the agency would bring out a special report on energy and AI that they will publish in the spring of 2025. 

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Korea, which will host the 2025 APEC Energy Ministerial, as well as the Clean Energy and Mission Innovation Ministerials, expressed its intention to work with the IEA to advance key discussions on the topic. 

Next week, the IEA will launch a new AI-based chatbot for users to explore the 2024 edition of the Agency’s flagship World Energy Outlook report. Developed in cooperation with Microsoft, the online tool “is designed to answer questions about energy trends in natural, conversational language, allowing anyone curious about the findings of the report to easily dig into its analysis and projections.”