this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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142
How Much Energy Does It Take to Power Billions of AI Queries? (spectrum.ieee.org)
submitted 3 weeks ago by flango@lemmy.eco.br to c/technology@lemmy.world
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

All generative AI queries could hit 329 billion per day by 2030. See the big picture on AI's energy use, and how it's reshaping our world.

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[โ€“] Jrockwar@feddit.uk 44 points 3 weeks ago (15 children)

These figures are too cherry picked for the shock value. You could go the opposite end and say that (these are all true, I've tried my best to research them):

8.5 Wh (average of all daily queries for a user) is also...

  • Equivalent to running a 2000 W hair dryer or a kettle for 20 seconds
  • Equivalent to idling a car during a traffic light and not turning off the engine
  • A quarter of the energy required to reheat a ready meal in the microwave (roughly 45 Wh)
  • The power usage of a Macbook screen over just 30 minutes.

850 MWh (whole consumption of all AI queries in the world) is also equivalent to...

  • The power consumption of ONE single cruise ship for 12h (link)
  • Charging 0.002% of the 75 million electric cars in the world
  • The energy stored in the fuel tanks of 2000 petrol cars - a small stadium car park in Europe
  • The amount of energy the largest solar plant in Spain or Germany generate... In a couple of hours.

So yes - AI bad... But for other reasons. This is a diversion. Datacentres powered by coal are bad. Cruise ships are worse.

The problem isn't that the whole world needs less than a solar farm's worth of energy for AI. The bigger problem is the social damage of AI - including the fact that this "expansion at all costs" is justifying getting that energy from non-renewable sources.

But seriously, one single cruise ship uses more energy than all of the AI in the world. They serve no useful purpose and there are hundreds of those.

[โ€“] wewbull@feddit.uk 15 points 3 weeks ago

Datacentres powered by coal are bad. Cruise ships are worse.

Coal Vs Marine fuel. You've picked the kings of pollution.

Coal is worse for CO2. The free carbon it releases binds with oxygen in the atmosphere to produce more CO2 mass than the coal itself. It's crazy how much CO2 it generates.

Heavy fuel oil / bunker oil / marine fuel is cheap ass shit that contains masses of pollutants. So whilst it won't generate as much CO2, it will create a load of other stuff including Sulphur Dioxide. That creates acid rain.

Here's an idea. Let's do neither of them.

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