AI could be more polluting than air travel

The exponential growth in demand for artificial intelligence (AI) is
fuelling an equally insatiable need for data centres required
to handle the intense computational demands of AI

SHARE OF GLOBAL CO2 EMISSIONS
PRODUCED BY AI DATA CENTRES (%)

Amazon data
centre in
Ireland

2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2023
0.1
0.1
0.2
0.4
0.5
0.8
1.3
2.1
3.4
2.5

Estimates

Share of global CO2 emissions produced by
entire world’s aviation industry in 2023 (%)

Sources: Sherwood, Axios, Accenture, IEA
Picture: AWS
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