Technology

58303 readers

23 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

651

Generative AI is reportedly tripling carbon dioxide emissions from data centers (www.techradar.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

60 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20289663

A report from Morgan Stanley suggests the datacenter industry is on track to emit 2.5 billion tons by 2030, which is three times higher than the predictions if generative AI had not come into play.

The extra demand from GenAI will reportedly lead to a rise in emissions from 200 million tons this year to 600 million tons by 2030, thanks largely to the construction of more data centers to keep up with the demand for cloud services.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Or compare to the CO2 put out by global concrete construction. It's more than some might believe.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yes but concrete is required. It is literally the foundation of modern civilization. It is the second most used substance on the planet after water. Without it we would have to do away with things like roads, power plants (green and carbon emitting), housing, water treatment and waste treatment plants, erosion control and seawalls, and most production facilities for all of our day to day goods and essentials.

The industry is making steps to reduce its up front carbon cost and inrease captured carbon in the concrete, but it is slow moving as big changes can cause major problems with infrastructure. Noone wants their hospital falling down because they used a new mix design that hasn't been thoroughly tested and tried.

We dont work without concrete, but i'm pretty sure we do work without bitcoin.

If your just looking at fun carbon emitting facts though, then aluminum smelting is another huge number like 4% globally. Concrete is like 7% globally, and HVAC is like 12%.

https://sustainability.mit.edu/article/cleaning-one-worlds-most-commonly-used-substances#:~:text=Concrete%20is%20the%20second%20most,it's%20used%20to%20make%20concrete.