Artificial intelligence (AI) has undergone a rapid expansion in recent years.
Tech leaders have hailed an “AI revolution” – predicting “transformative” effects for humanity – while some governments have set their sights on AI-driven economic growth.
Yet, the industry is also facing scrutiny on many fronts, from inaccuracies in AI outputs through to the threat it poses to democracy.
One major critique concerns the environmental impact of AI, particularly the intensive energy use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of the data centres that power it.
Campaigners, journalists and researchers have warned that the rapid expansion of data centres could slow down or even reverse the global shift towards net-zero.
The topic is complex, not least because the future of AI – and the role it could play in increasing or potentially helping to reduce emissions – remains highly uncertain.
Below, Carbon Brief takes a look at some of the best available figures, largely from the International Energy Agency (IEA), to explore the energy and emissions impact of AI.
- Data centres currently account for a small share of global emissions and electricity use
- Around a tenth of the electricity demand growth by 2030 is set to be driven by data centres
- Data centres could account for half of electricity demand growth in some countries
- Fossil-fuel use will likely expand to power data centres, but clean-energy supplies are set to grow faster
- There is a lot of uncertainty about how much data centres will expand
1. Data centres currently account for a small share of global emissions and electricity use
The process of training and deploying AI models relies on data centres – large, energy-intensive facilities that house computing infrastructure.
Data centres already underpin the internet, among other things, making them essential for modern life. But as hype around AI has grown in recent years, investment in new data centres has ballooned.
The global electricity consumption of expanding data centres has grown by around 12% each year since 2017, according to the IEA’s recent “energy and AI” report.
Concerns about “skyrocketing” electricity demand have also prompted warnings of data centres driving up CO2 emissions, as fossil fuels still generate much of the world’s power.
Indeed, companies, such as Google, Meta and Microsoft, have reported large emissions spikes over the past few years due to data-centre expansion, despite their net-zero pledges.
One research paper concludes that the electricity demand of AI “runs counter to the massive efficiency gains that are needed to achieve net-zero”. Others have voiced concerns that data centres will “overwhelm” and “undermine” both national and company-level climate targets.
Reporting often mentions the electricity demand of data centres – or their emissions – “doubling”, “tripling” or increasing by some other large percentage in the coming years.
But these increases, while potentially dramatic in relative terms, are starting from a low baseline. As shown in the chart below, data centres are currently responsible for just over 1% of global electricity demand and 0.5% of CO2 emissions, according to IEA data.
Given this starting point, even as data centres expand, the IEA suggests that they will make a relatively small contribution to climate change, in the short term.
The agency estimates that data-centre emissions will reach 1% of CO2 emissions by 2030 in its central scenario, or 1.4% in a faster-growth scenario.
Nevertheless, it notes that this is one of the few sectors where emissions are set to grow – alongside road transport and aviation – as most will likely decarbonise in the coming years.
2. Around a tenth of the electricity demand growth by 2030 is set to be driven by data centres
The world is entering what the IEA describes as a “new age of electricity”, in which the electrification of transport, buildings and industry drives a surge in demand for power.
Along with electric cars and factories, data centres are frequently highlighted by analysts as a key “emerging driver” of this demand.
Under the IEA’s central scenario for data-centre growth, the sector’s global electricity consumption would more than double between 2024 and 2030, reaching 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) by the end of the decade. This is equivalent to the current electricity demand of Japan.
The IEA describes AI as “the most important driver of this growth”.
As it stands, AI has been responsible for around 5-15% of data-centre power use in recent years, but this could increase to 35-50% by 2030, according to another report prepared for the IEA.
However, the 530TWh rise in electricity demand in data centres by 2030 would only be 8% of the overall increase in demand that the IEA projects, as shown in the chart below.
This is less than electric vehicles (838TWh) or air conditioning (651TWh). It is considerably less than the 1,936TWh growth expected in industrial sectors by 2030.
If data-centre electricity use rose in line with the IEA’s faster-growth scenario, the facilities would be responsible for around 12% of global demand growth overall.
While the IEA says “uncertainties widen” when considering electricity demand growth beyond 2030, it expects a continued – albeit slower – increase to 1,193TWh by 2035.
This would mean annual demand growth roughly halving, from around 90TWh per year out to 2030, down to less than 50TWh a year out to 2035.
3. Data centres could account for half of electricity demand growth in some countries
While the global picture suggests a relatively modest role for data centres in driving near-future electricity demand growth, it could be far more pronounced in some countries.
Data centres are very geographically concentrated, both in terms of their global distribution and within leading countries. Today, nearly half of their electricity consumption takes place in the US, 25% in China and 15% in Europe, according to the IEA.
US data centres used around 4% of the nation’s electricity in 2023 and this is set to rise to 7-12% by 2028, according to analysis by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
In Ireland – regarded as a European “tech hub” – around 21% of the nation’s electricity is used for data centres. The IEA estimates that this share could rise to 32% by 2026.
Data-centre electricity demand tends to be further localised in certain regions. In the US state of Virginia, these facilities already consume 26% of electricity, while in the Irish capital, Dublin, the figure is 79%, according to analysis by Oeko-Institute.
Much of the commentary on AI threatening climate goals comes from “advanced economies” in the global north, where the IEA estimates that, on average, a quarter of electricity demand growth by 2030 will be driven by data centres.
(In many of these countries, electricity demand has previously been flat or falling for years.)
Roughly half of the power demand growth in the US and Japan over the next five years is expected to come from data centres, according to the IEA, as shown in the figure below.
While there are some notable exceptions, such as Malaysia, data centres are set to be a relatively small portion of electricity demand growth in developing and emerging markets.
Around the world, electricity grids are under strain, with many developed countries, in particular, seeing long wait times for grid connections and new transmission lines. Data-centre growth is raising this pressure.
There are also growing concerns, notably in the US, about the impact data-centre growth could have on energy bills.
The IEA says that demand growth presents “advanced economies” with a “wake-up call” for the electricity sector to invest in infrastructure, otherwise “there is a risk that meeting data-centre load growth could entail trade-offs with other goals, such as electrification”.
4. Fossil-fuel use will likely expand to power data centres, but clean-energy supplies are set to grow faster
The extent to which data-centre growth increases emissions depends on which energy sources power those data centres.
Data centres can use power from the grid, in which case their electricity mix will reflect that of the region they are in and could therefore become cleaner as nations decarbonise.
They can also be powered by “captive” sources, built to supply specific facilities, such as solar panels, small nuclear reactors or gas turbines.
There are concerns that data-centre expansion will be used to justify the prolonged use of fossil fuels, “locking in” a future of elevated emissions.
Indeed, the likes of Shell have framed AI in such terms and some data-centre operators have been explicitly seeking gas connections to meet their electricity needs.
Currently, coal is the biggest single electricity source for data centres globally, largely due to the numerous facilities in China.
Overall, fossil fuels provide nearly 60% of power to data centres, according to the IEA. Renewables meet 27% of their electricity demand and nuclear another 15%.
(These figures are based on the electricity these facilities consume, rather than any contracts they have to buy clean energy credits.)
In the IEA’s central scenario, by 2035 the ratio of the data-centre electricity mix switches from around 60% fossil fuels and 40% clean power to 60% clean power and 40% fossil fuels, as shown in the chart below.
This is expected to be driven primarily by the wider global expansion of renewables, although some projects will be funded directly by data-centre companies.
However, the IEA says significantly more gas and coal power would likely still be required to meet data-centre demand, both from ramping up existing plants and building new ones.
Gas-power generation for data centres is expected to more than double from 120TWh in 2024 to 293TWh in 2035, with much of this growth in the US, according to the IEA.
About 38GW of captive gas plants currently “in development” – roughly a quarter of all such projects – are planned to power data centres, according to Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
The US has doubled the amount of gas- and oil-fired capacity it has in development over the past year, driven partly by the energy demand of the “burgeoning AI industry”, according to GEM.
However, these projects are facing long lead times and “sharply” rising costs, with GEM noting, as a result, that many may never materialise.
5. There is a lot of uncertainty about how much data centres will expand
Currently, there are no comprehensive global datasets available on data-centre electricity consumption or emissions, with few governments mandating any reporting of such numbers.
All figures concerning the energy and climate impact of AI are therefore estimates.
The IEA has assessed hundreds of available estimates and forecasts, noting that even historical data can be “widely divergent”, due in part to a lack of common definitions.
On top of this, there are major uncertainties, including over how quickly AI will be adopted. Despite the enthusiastic uptake of generative AI by individuals and companies, some argue that the business case for continued, rapid growth may be weaker than suggested.
Another uncertainty is how energy-efficient AI will be. Experts have already identified efficiency improvements resulting from better chips, more efficient training algorithms and larger data centres, all of which could continue curbing electricity demand.
(Google has also reported a substantial drop in the electricity use required for individual AI search queries, which is already small compared to the power needed to train AI models.)
A final uncertainty is over how many proposed data centres will actually get built, with some speculative requests for grid capacity relating to plans that may never materialise.
As a result of these knowledge gaps, there have been numerous estimates of short-term electricity demand growth from data centres, which have produced very different results, as shown in the chart below.
Some estimates – such as one from the Gas Exporting Countries Forum arguing that more gas exports will be needed to fuel meteoric rises in electricity demand for AI – have been deemed less credible in reviews by independent experts.
Another area of great uncertainty concerns the impact that the application of AI could have on electricity use and emissions.
Some researchers have attempted to calculate how much AI could curb emissions, by helping to identify efficiency gains in other parts of the energy system, or by making technological breakthroughs.
In some “exploratory” analysis, the IEA says such gains could cancel out any extra data-centre emissions due to the growth of AI.
However, it adds that despite the AI hype, “there is currently no existing momentum of AI adoption that would unlock these emissions reductions”.
The post AI: Five charts that put data-centre energy use – and emissions – into context appeared first on Carbon Brief.
AI: Five charts that put data-centre energy use – and emissions – into context
The head of the United Nations has launched an initiative aimed at holding artificial intelligence companies accountable for their exploding environmental impacts, including their carbon emissions, the amount of water and land used for data centres, and the energy they consume.
During a speech at London Climate Action Week on Tuesday, António Guterres noted that AI can accelerate climate solutions, among other key challenges, and said its potential must be harnessed.
“But AI is also hungry for land, water and power,” he emphasised, adding that the data centres needed to run AI models already consume more electricity than most countries.
The UN Secretary-General repeated a call he first made in July 2025 for all big AI companies to commit to power every data centre with renewable energy by 2030.
Some tech firms have announced they are sourcing or building out clean energy to run their hubs, but growing power demand is also contributing to gas-fired generation in the US, according to data from Global Energy Monitor.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that data centres are set to more than double the emissions from the electricity they use between 2024 and 2030 in a high-growth scenario. But AI’s use could lead to far larger reductions in the energy sector through efficiency gains if adopted widely.
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‘No more hidden costs’
Proposing the new “AI Environmental Transparency Initiative” on Tuesday, Guterres also urged big AI firms companies to measure and publicly disclose the full environmental impact of their systems, including their carbon, water, and land footprints.
“No more hidden costs. No more shifting the burden onto those least able to bear it. It is time to come clean,” he said in a major speech on responding to the world’s twin climate and energy crises. “If AI is to help build a better future, it must be honest about what it costs us now.”
A report issued earlier this month by the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health noted that most current assessments of AI’s environmental cost focus on carbon emissions from training models. But, it added, this misses a substantial part of the picture.
Every kilowatt-hour of electricity for AI also carries a water footprint, from cooling and generation, and a land footprint, from infrastructure and supply chains, it said.
Explainer: Will AI data centres make or break the energy transition?
The report estimated that AI data centres globally could consume 945 terawatt-hours of electricity annually by 2030 – more power than all but five countries and roughly twice France’s 2025 consumption.
Offsetting this carbon footprint by 2030 would require growing some 6.7 billion trees over 10 years, it calculated. Producing power for the data centres would consume water equal to the basic needs of 1.3 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa for a year and take up land of more than 14,500 square kilometers, roughly twice the Jakarta metropolitan area.
The European Union said earlier this month it will develop minimum energy-efficiency standards for both new and existing data centres, with a “needs assessment” due by 2027, Reuters reported. It’s also planning a sustainability label for data centres, covering criteria including water use and clean energy supply – but that has been delayed.
US community push-back
Asked after his speech what the response had been, the UN chief said “we’ll see”, without giving more details.
But, he argued that, in his view, the push for transparency “is perfectly reasonable and even positive for the AI industry, because eventually some people will say that they consume much more than they really do”. “I think the truth is essential,” he added.
Concerns about the environmental impacts of AI and the infrastructure needed to run the technology have led to growing opposition in some communities, especially in the US.
This month, Monterey Park in Los Angeles County was the first city in the United States to enact a citywide prohibition on data centres through a voter-approved ballot measure. The developers behind a proposed centre in the area had already pulled the project in April amid an increasingly hostile local environment and regulatory uncertainty.
The vote that stopped a data center: US communities query resource-hungry AI
According to nonprofit Data Center Watch, around $64 billion-worth of data centre projects nationwide were delayed or blocked between May 2024 and March 2025 as communities pushed back against them.
Industry lobby groups argue that data centres can provide economic benefits in their host communities. According to the US-based Data Center Coalition, which represents big operators and developers, data centres generate tax revenue, support construction and technical jobs, and provide infrastructure needed for cloud computing, scientific research and AI development.
The industry has also challenged claims that data centers necessarily raise electricity costs for households.
Force for good?
The UN chief said benefits can be few in the places that are home to the data centre, while “communities are often left in the dark about the environmental impact of the infrastructure rising around them”.
Guterres said companies have an “obligation” to be clear and open about the services they are offering but also the level of resources they require.
“Transparency is essential for the decisions that communities must make – and transparency is essential even for the future of artificial intelligence, and to make sure that artificial intelligence is essentially a force for good,” he told an audience of climate professionals in London
A senior UN official told journalists ahead of Tuesday’s announcement that the AI industry has started to talk about and disclose some of their impacts, but those efforts are not yet comprehensive enough.
The hope is that the new initiative will “encourage the industry to come together and take further action on it”, the official said.
The post UN asks AI companies to reveal full environmental impacts appeared first on Climate Home News.
Phillipe Ciais has spent almost four decades researching the planet’s carbon cycle – and the ways in which humans have been impacting its balance.
Based at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE) on the outskirts of Paris, Ciais (pronounced “see-es”) has been listed as an author on more than 1,300 peer-reviewed studies.
In fact, analysis of Carbon Brief’s Cosmos database reveals that – by some distance – he is the most highly cited climate scientist in the world.
In a wide-ranging interview, he discusses:
The post Prof Philippe Ciais: The world’s most highly cited climate scientist appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/prof-philippe-ciais-the-worlds-most-highly-cited-climate-scientist/
Climate Change
Cited 23 June 2026: Project Cosmos launch | Science ‘under attack’ at Bonn | Emissions inequality
Welcome to Cited, your essential guide to new climate research.
In the news
SCIENCE ‘UNDER ATTACK’: Climate Home News reported that “dozens” of countries called out “coordinated attacks” aimed at “undermining the role of climate science” at UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, last week. According to the outlet, the countries said that UN decision-making had to remain based on the “best available science”, including the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One negotiator said that India and Saudi Arabia “opposed calls in draft texts to encourage scientific work on scenarios that would minimise the magnitude and duration of any overshoot of 1.5C”, the article noted. For more, read Carbon Brief’s summary of the negotiations.
REPORT OPPOSITION: “Oil industry allies” in the US are targeting a report on extreme weather attribution, due to be published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, according to Politico. The outlet reported that the “heightened scrutiny – which involves a secretive opposition research group scouring scientists’ emails – has prompted two people to leave the 15-person panel tasked with producing the report”. Separately, the Guardian reported that the Trump administration has “reversed its decision” to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $368m deep-sea observation system.
SUPER EL NIÑO: BBC News reported that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that El Niño had “officially begun”. Forecasts suggest the event could be among the “strongest ever recorded”, it added. Meanwhile, a “vigorous debate” is taking place about whether climate change is making the El Niño phenomenon more intense, according to the New York Times. The outlet explained that some scientists see the run of “comparatively strong” El Niño events in recent decades as an indication that “climate change is supercharging El Niño”. However, it added that “others say there is no clear evidence to support that theory”.
Research picks
Water
- Global sea level rise has nearly tripled the number of days since the 1970s when coastal water levels have surpassed average tide gauge readings | Science Advances
- As the Arctic warms, increased iceberg activity could “reshape” deep-sea habitats and “elevate” navigational hazards as maritime traffic expands | Nature
- Sea level rise has quadrupled the frequency of extreme coastal sea-level events since the year 1900 | Nature Climate Change
Inequality
- The top 10% of consumers are responsible for $1.7-5.7tn of environmental damage each year, surpassing international climate and biodiversity financing gaps | Communications Sustainability
- Calculating an individual’s emissions based on their asset ownership suggests that wealthier people are responsible for an even higher share of global greenhouse gas emissions than indicated by past studies | Nature Climate Change
- A plan that places equity at the “centre” of climate adaptation efforts in cities is needed to address the “stark disparities” between “affluent” and “disadvantaged” urban communities’ ability to prepare for extreme heat | PLOS Climate
Extremes
- In the western US, 42% of burned area over 2001-24 occurred during, and immediately following, heatwaves | Science Advances
- “Hot-to-wet” whiplash events have become more frequent across Australia over the past century, with south-eastern Australia emerging as a hotspot | Journal of Climate
- Rapid urbanisation, combined with more intense rainfall from tropical cyclones, have increased people’s exposure to “extreme” rainfall from tropical cyclones across China | Journal of Hydrometeorology
Captured
One billion additional people face at least one day of “extreme heat stress” every year compared to the 1970s, according to research published in Nature Climate Change.
The chart shows changes in “strong” (top), “very strong” (middle) and “extreme” (bottom) heat stress, defined as a “universal thermal climate index” above 32C, 38C and 46C, respectively. The grey bar shows the percentage of the global population exposed to at least one, 30 or 90 days of heat stress in 1970. The light and dark blue bars show the number of additional people experiencing heat stress over 2015-24 due to population growth and rising global temperatures, respectively.
10%
Equivalent damage to the UK’s GDP caused by climate change if global warming reaches 4C by 2100, according to new research in Nature Climate Change. The study estimates a range of 2-20%.
Spotlight
Introducing: Project Cosmos
Carbon Brief explains how it built a major new database of climate science research and unveils a new ranking of the 500 most highly cited publications, authors and institutions in climate science.
This week, Carbon Brief launched Project Cosmos – the world’s largest and most complete database of climate change research.
The database features more than 1.8m academic papers, books and reports, capturing the vast body of human knowledge about climate change that has accumulated over more than a century of academic study.
The climate science “universe” is based on reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are recognised as the world’s most authoritative summaries of the latest climate science.
Since its first report was published in 1990, humanity’s knowledge about human-caused climate change has ballooned. The IPCC has published six sets of reports in total – each one longer than the last.
In total, IPCC reports reference more than 100,000 other papers, books and reports. This is the core of our climate science universe. Carbon Brief then built on this core, by looking at four other sources of data. Read more about how the Cosmos database was created here.
Every single publication in the Cosmos database is linked to at least one other through references. Visualising these links reveals a “galaxy” of references. In the image above, each colour and cluster reveals different topics and densities of research. Explore the galaxy in an interactive map here.
Cosmos 500
As part of an initial wave of preliminary analysis to demonstrate the scope of the Project Cosmos database, Carbon Brief has ranked the 500 most highly cited publications, authors and institutions in the database.
The most highly cited climate scientist is Prof Philippe Ciais, who has spent almost four decades researching the planet’s carbon cycle – and the ways in which humans have been impacting its balance. Carbon Brief recently interviewed Ciais in Paris.
The US tops the tables for the most highly-cited authors and institutions. Almost half of the 500 most highly-cited authors are from US institutions. This raises particular concerns for the future of climate science, as American climate scientists and institutions are coming under attack under the Trump administration.
Experts from global south countries account for only 4% of all authors in the Cosmos 500. China stands out as the most highly-cited global south country. Meanwhile, only 10% of authors in the Cosmos 500 are women.
There are many possibilities for future avenues of research using the Cosmos database. Over time, the database could be used to reveal, for example, how interest in different areas of climate science has changed over time, plus identify potential knowledge gaps and, thus, opportunities for future research.
Carbon Brief invites researchers – including academics, journalists and analysts – to submit their own proposals for co-authored studies, literature reviews and analytical projects.
Preprints to watch
Carbon Brief’s pick of new papers still going through peer review
- Regional reductions in aerosol emissions can “temporarily amplify” the likelihood of record-breaking heat events | Environmental Research: Climate
- Analysis of Reddit posts suggests the Fridays for Future movement has created “wider awareness” of global warming by drawing attention to climate change and “climate actions” | npj climate action
- Periods of simultaneous low wind and solar power generation, known as “renewable energy droughts”, will “intensify progressively” as the planet warms | Nature portfolio
Noticeboard
- 28-30 June: Seventh global conference on climate and sustainable development goal synergies, Bangkok, Thailand
- 29 June-1 July: Exeter climate conference, Exeter, UK
- 29 June-1 July: National Academy of Sciences hybrid workshop on seabed critical mineral resources, Irvine, US
- 30 June: Submission deadline for abstracts for MedCLIVAR conference, scheduled for 21-25 September in Limassol, Cyprus
- 30 June: Application deadline for postdoctoral position in ice-ocean interactions at the Physics Laboratory of Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon | Salary: €3,071-4,714 per month. Location: Lyon, France
- 30 June: Submissions open for abstracts for the pan-African conference on environment, climate change and health, scheduled for 21-24 October in Nairobi, Kenya
- 8 July: Application deadline for position as research officer in climate science and law at the Grantham Research Institute | Salary: £43,277-51,714. Location: London, UK
- 10 July: Application deadline for position as associate or senior editor at Nature Water | Salary: Unknown. Location: Shanghai, Beijing or Milan
Cited is researched and written by Cecilia Keating, Robert McSweeney, Ayesha Tandon, Daisy Dunne and Dr Giuliana Viglione.
Please send tips, feedback and upcoming climate research to cited@carbonbrief.org
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cited email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post Cited 23 June 2026: Project Cosmos launch | Science ‘under attack’ at Bonn | Emissions inequality appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cited 23 June 2026: Project Cosmos launch | Science ‘under attack’ at Bonn | Emissions inequality
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