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posted ago by G45Colt ago by G45Colt +33 / -0

It used to be turn off your lights and turn down (or up) your thermostats to keep Al Gore's private jet fueled.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/How-Many-Barrels-of-Oil-Do-AI-Data-Centers-Consume-on-a-Daily-Basis.html

Here's a couple of snippets from the article:

Back in 2017, we did the math to figure out how much oil it takes to mine a single Bitcoin. The answer then was about 20 barrels of oil equivalent per coin. Today it's closer to 500. The Bitcoin network now draws somewhere between 138 and 175 terawatt-hours a year, depending on whose model you trust…

Data centers pulled about 415 terawatt-hours off the world's grids in 2024, according to the IEA. Run that through the same conversion, and you get roughly 670,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, every day, just to keep the servers humming.

AI companies are now scrambling for the same thing oil companies have fought wars over: secure access to energy. JLL estimates global data-center capacity will nearly double by 2030, requiring almost 100 gigawatts of new supply and as much as $3 trillion in combined infrastructure and GPU spending. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects global data-center electricity demand could surge toward 945 terawatt-hours by the end of the decade.