The information and communication technology (ICT) industry enables sustainable development by making the global economy less energy-intensive. The wave of digitalization that swooped the world over the last two decades enabled an increase in economic productivity and energy efficiency. In fact, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) estimated that for every 1kW of energy consumed by the IT sector, 10kW are saved in other sectors.

The backbone of the digital economy is the global network of data centers. During a wave of huge growth in compute demand between 2010 and 2020, the data center industry maintained stable energy consumption of approximately 200TWhs per year—a considerable achievement. With demand for AI applications through the roof, the data center industry doubled its power consumption in 2023, exceeding 400TWh based on Omdia data points.

The IT industry is also having to invest in an overwhelming amount of new IT infrastructure, optimized for the creation (training) and running (inference/generation) of AI models. To satisfy the unprecedented demand for AI, the data center industry cannot rely only on new power generation and will need to find power savings within existing facilities. This compelled us to focus this report on the environmental aspects of the industry’s effort to reduce its carbon footprint.