In early July, Google released its 2024 sustainability report, revealing a nearly 50% increase in greenhouse gas (GHC) emissions since 2019, primarily due to data centre energy consumption and supply chain emissions. “As we further integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging,” the report reads.
About a month earlier, Microsoft released its sustainability report in May, revealing a similar trend. The report showed that emissions have increased by nearly 30% since 2020, driven by the construction of more data centres “designed and optimised to support AI workloads”.
Gone are the days when only fossil fuel companies were scrutinised for their environmental impact. While emissions from burning fossil fuels remain a concern, recent attention has shifted to major tech companies like Google and Microsoft.
With the swift advent of mandatory corporate sustainability reporting, public companies like Google and Microsoft can no longer avoid disclosing their most harmful environmental practices. These platforms consume vast electricity, water, and other natural resources.
An analysis widely shared on the social media platform X claimed that Google and Microsoft each consumed about 24 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in 2023, surpassing the consumption of more than 100 countries. For comparison, Iceland, Ghana, the Dominican Republic, and Tunisia each consumed 19TWh, while Jordan consumed 20TWh, highlighting the enormous scale of these two tech firms.
As Google and Microsoft reported, the increasing use of AI will only exacerbate this. One question to ChatGPT uses about as much electricity as one light bulb being lit for 20 minutes, says researcher Jesse Dodge in an NPR article. “So you can imagine that millions of people using something like that every day adds up to a really large amount of electricity,” he continues.
According to the International Energy Agency, a single Google search takes 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, while a ChatGPT request takes 2.9 watt-hours. (An incandescent light bulb draws an average of 60 watt-hours of juice.) If ChatGPT were integrated into the 9 billion searches done daily, the IEA says, the electricity demand would increase by 10TWh a year — the amount consumed by about 1.5 million EU residents.
OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman emphasised the need for significant growth in energy sources to power future AI projects. According to Altman, advancements in nuclear fusion or more affordable solar power and storage are essential for AI, which will consume far more power than anticipated.
Pressure on data centres
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While the question of whose responsibility it is to bear the ecological challenge brought forth by the rapid technological advancement remains open-ended, the data centre industry continues to bear a surmounting amount of pressure from all stakeholders. And they are keenly aware of their need to take action.
Increasingly, these data centre operators are actively disclosing their annual sustainability report, which touts “net zero by 2030” ambitions, by procuring renewable energy offsets or other means. At the same time, with the growth in AI demands worldwide, these operators are expanding their footprint considerably. A look at the 1 gigawatt (GW) of data centre space planned to be built in Johor Bahru over the next two years is proof enough that energy consumption may far outweigh environmental offsets.
At the unveiling of Princeton Digital Group (PDG)’s new JH1 campus in Johor on July 4, less than a year after construction began, CTO and managing director of Singapore Asher Ling announced that the group has secured power from Tenaga Nasional, the electricity supplier to Peninsular Malaysia.
Ling, who revealed that the group bought its 31.5 acres of land at the Sedenak Tech Park without securing power beforehand, was convinced about the demand for data centres built on the back of spillover demand from Singapore. True enough, Tenaga launched its Green Lane Pathway for data centre operators hoping to build in Johor in late 2023, which will be given “strategic offerings”.
Within weeks, PDG’s plot of land was fitted with two 132-kilovolt (kV) substations. “It’s never been done before, first of its kind,” says Ling. “We applied under that green lane and got this fast-track project. And this is the fastest project Tenaga and PDG have ever done, in fact, in Tenaga’s records. They are very proud of the achievement here.”
As of June 2024, Tenaga had signed 10 electricity supply agreements with data centre operators for a total energy demand of 2,000MW. It expects two data centre projects with a total energy demand of 484MW to be commissioned in the financial year ending Dec 31, 2025.
As Peninsular Malaysia’s only electric utility company, Tenaga primarily relies on fossil fuels for 81% of its electricity, according to a report in 2022. About 19% of its electricity comes from clean energy sources, primarily hydropower. In 2021, the Ministry of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change (NRECC) set a target to reach 31% of renewable energy share in the national installed capacity mix by 2025.
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However, to meet this rising electricity demand, RHB research analyst Sean Lim said in an interview with The Edge Malaysia that gas-fired power plants are the most reliable option without a stable supply of renewable energy and battery energy storage system (BESS) methods. “The low-hanging fruit they can pluck is to build more gas plants,” he says.
Journey to net zero
Therefore, the question is: how can data centre operators attain their “net zero by 2030” goal? PDG’s third annual sustainability report reveals that the group has offset about 15% of its footprint, which includes Scope 1 and 2 emissions, through the procurement of renewable energy.
This is an improvement from the about 6% it declared the year before, as it procured renewable energy generated through geothermal and biomass sources in the form of Renewable Energy Certificates.
Given that the deadline of 2030 is fast approaching, it is difficult to determine if data centre operators like PDG can deliver on their sustainability promises with the recent boom in demand at their doorsteps.
“We have an uphill task on the energy transition roadmap,” says Ling. “And in fact, it is a government approach. It requires the entire village to come together — consumers or a power generation company… We’re putting solar on the rooftops. We’re considering integrating photovoltaics into the walls in our next few phases. Malaysia has a very exciting push for green mobility. So that’s something we’re looking at, and we’re looking to see whether they’re partners we can work with on that aspect. But it is a very real problem.”
Yet, another big technology firm with heavy data centre operations has recently boasted that it achieved its goal of matching 100% electricity with renewable energy — seven years ahead of schedule, last year in 2023.
Amazon credits its renewable energy projects in 27 countries and its support for wind and solar construction policy development. It has 26 onsite solar projects and five wind farms in the UK. Globally, Amazon’s renewable energy portfolio is expected to prevent an estimated 27.8 million tons of carbon emissions annually once all projects are operational.
In addition to investing in carbon-free resources, Amazon has infrastructure that is about four times more efficient than its competitors. For graphics processing unit (GPU) workloads like machine learning, Amazon’s Inferentia 2 chip delivers 50% more performance per watt and up to 40% lower cost compared to a standard GPU, according to a report by Techzine.
“We continue to invest emphatically in the development of AI solutions while at the same time doing everything we can to make our data centres — including servers and hardware — and the way we power AI applications and models more efficient and reduce the carbon footprint: from the infrastructure that powers the servers to data centre cooling technology,” Danielle Gorlick, AWS General Manager Benelux, told Accenture.
Data centre operators in temperate regions of the developing world may face higher costs to make their operations sustainable. Challenges include reliance on coal, risky investments in renewables, and more energy to cool facilities in hotter climates. These operators must work hard for a green transition or at least make an effort.
