As the artificial intelligence frenzy continues to boost tech stocks, with the Nasdaq Composite surging 26% upwards since the start of the year, it is Wall Street’s consensus that this emerging technology will significantly increase energy consumption. Already, statistics are proving such concerns to be true
“The energy consumption of something like ChatGPT inquiry compared to some inquiry on your email, for example, is going to [be] probably 10 to 100 times more power hungry,” Sajjad Moazeni, professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of Washington observed. According to research conducted by the university, hundreds of millions of queries on ChatGPT can consume 1 gigawatt-hour a day. This is the equivalent of the daily electricity usage of 33,000 US households.
In an effort to compensate for this consumption, leading cloud providers such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services have all committed to renewable energy projects to match their energy usage. Holding net-zero pledges, each of these companies removes as much carbon as they emit.