Europe’s Recent AI Boom Is Disrupting Its Green Goals

• Europe has always been at the forefront of implementing green initiatives to boost sustainable usage of limited resources such as energy and water.
• However, the recent growth in its AI industry has increased the need for both these resources, threatening to disrupt its green goals.
• Europe's goal was to slash energy usage by 11.7% by the end of 2030. But that seems like an impossible goal now.

The recent AI boom in Europe has raised questions about the environmental impact of such massive growth. Big companies like Nvidia are pushing more and more advanced chips in the market, which results in increased energy usage which in turn results in increased demand for data centers.

According to estimates by Goldman Sachs, data center demands are expected to grow by 160% by the end of 2030. If this truly happens, Europe's decarbonization goals could be seriously disrupted.

Just one square meter in an AI-focused data center can now require up to 120 kilowatts of power. This is equal to the power required by 15-20 houses.

The world is already struggling with an energy crisis as in many places - demand often surpasses supply. So at a time like this, supplying such huge power to data centers could be detrimental to the citizens.

Apart from that, the growing number of data centers can also trigger a water crisis. The advanced chips require high-density computing power, which requires a lot of energy and in return creates a lot of heat.

So developers use tons of cold water to manage temperatures in their facilities. But is this really sustainable? NO.

The Problem With US Companies

Michael Winterson, chair of the European Data Center Association (EUDCA), believes that the biggest cause of this issue is that the AI industry is mostly controlled by US companies.

Unlike Europe, the US focuses more on market domination than sustainability, environmental impact, and energy access.

In fact, there's been increasing pressure from the US chip companies to further lower the water temperature to handle hotter AI chips. This, Winterson warned, could fundamentally drive us back to an unsustainable situation that we were in 25 years ago."

Cooling water also requires a lot of energy. In fact, according to Schneider Electric's AI and data center chief advocate Steven Carlini, it's the second-highest energy consumer in the industry (After IT loads).

The typical temperature in cooling setups ranges from 30-32C (86-89F) but now Nvidia is asking the temperature to be lowered to 20-24C (68-75F) for its Blackwell superchip. This would require a lot of additional energy.

Europe's Green Initiatives: What Does It Want?

Europe's biggest goal right now is to reduce overall energy consumption by 11.7% by 2030. An Energy Efficiency Directive was also established to achieve these goals. However, the rise in energy demand from AI data centers is complicating things.

In 2018, the EU predicted that the AI industry would push up energy demand by at least 28%. But the latest developments in the industry hint that the actual increase could easily be twice or thrice the original estimate.

The EU Commission has already discussed its energy concerns with Nvidia but the latter refused to comment on it.

However, Nvidia did announce the launch of a new platform for its Blackwell Chips earlier this year that would run at 25 times less cost and energy. So this might suggest that the company is exploring energy-efficient options for its chips.

What Can Europe Do Now?

The only thing Europe can do now is to come up with technology that gets the job down without draining critical resources. After all, stepping back from the AI race isn't a choice. It might miss out on too many things.

For example, Nebius (after its split from Russia's Yandex) has pledged to invest $1 billion in Europe's AI infrastructure by mid-2025. It would be unwise for Europe to walk away from an investment like that just to stick to its energy goals, especially when rival countries like the US are waiting to snatch up such opportunities.

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