AI’s climate footprint, a nuclear renaissance, and the new climate subsidy wars 🔥
Plus, the biggest takeaways from the IEA's Electricity 2024 report and how private equity can play a role in decarbonization
Hi everyone,
The International Energy Agency just released its Electricity 2024 report, a 170-page behemoth detailing every corner of the power generation world, and what’s coming in the next few years.
Amid highlights like:
the rapid and structural decline of power sector emissions as illustrated in the above chart from the report;
China’s role in moving global decarbonization numbers (hint: it’s big)
and one way that climate change is threatening major clean energy generation all around the world (all discussed in this week’s episode, of course)
…one thing stood out to me that was largely overlooked in the media coverage of this report:
Global electricity demand from data centers is on track to double in the next two years, driven by the rapid growth and evolution of AI.
Case in point, private equity firm (and landlord of the nation) Blackstone just shared Q4 earnings, where they reported that their 2021 investment in data center operator QTS had grown from $10B to $25B in value in just two and a half years, on the back of exploding demand for data center capacity driven by the AI boom.
At at time when we can barely keep up with the emissions of existing nations, the IEA projects that we’re on track to add at least one Sweden or at most one Germany’s worth of electricity demand from data centers alone between now and 2026.
And this is a trend happening all over the world, from China where data center electricity demand is expected to double by 2030, to the EU where it’s already more than 4% of total EU electricity demand, to Ireland where it’ll be over 30% by 2026, to the US, where the biggest share of the world’s data centers are located.
So, in today’s episode, let’s talk AI, data centers, and climate change.
We also cover:
Nuclear’s big moment, and what it means that uranium prices are at a 16-year high
The new climate subsidy wars and Europe’s recent entry into the global climate technology space race
In case you missed last week’s episode, where we talk about the $200B price tag for 2023’s climate disasters, and how one of Tesla’s most important early manufacturing innovations is now causing one of its biggest customers to churn, you can check it out here.
I found it surprisingly fun to dig into the IEA report for this week’s short episode, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
See you next week 👋