Forget AI. Keeping cool is the bigger power sector problem
Worldwide, data centres and air conditioners are both projected to triple their electricity use over the coming decade, and will severely test utilities that are already under strain from aging grids and lengthy backlogs for new supply.
Indeed, electricity demand from data centres is projected to rise by roughly 800 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2035, from around 416 TWh in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
That is enough to power around 75 million American homes for a year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Global demand for cooling systems, however, is set to rise by around 1,200 TWh by 2035, or nearly as much electricity as the entire Middle East consumes annually, data from think thank Ember shows.
Importantly, the location of demand growth also differs significantly between the two drivers, as does the consequences of failure to meet this spike.
Most data centre expansions are set to be within developed economies with modern power networks, and increased demand will primarily come from processing search requests for businesses and social media applications.
In contrast, the vast majority of the demand growth for air conditioning is set to occur in emerging economies where many communities already face the prospect of heat-related deaths and illness within already fragile energy systems.
Increased deaths and human suffering, the likely outcome of power system shortfalls in the developing world, are of a different order of magnitude than the risk of slower search results and economic drag that could result from failure to boost power supplies for data hubs.
Climate change is leading to more frequent, more intense and more prolonged heatwaves across the world, but especially in developing regions such as South and Southeast Asia where high humidity levels can amplify the impact of heat stress.
"A single heatwave - even one lasting just a few days - causes tens of thousands of excess deaths in India," according to a report published in April by India's Centre for Science and the Environment.
To combat the effects, new homes and offices across warm climate countries are scaling up the number of cooling units they contain.
And many of these areas are already undergoing a building boom, magnifying the amount of space needing to be cooled.
In 2022, around 36% of all households were estimated to possess some air conditioning equipment, according to the IEA.
By 2035, that share is expected to jump to 50%, and then to 60% by 2050.
To power that expanding footprint, the installed capacity of cooling equipment is set to surge from around 850 gigawatts (GW) in 2022 to 1,750 GW by 2035, and to 2,700 GW by 2050, IEA data shows.
India, which already has the world's largest population and is expected to have the third largest economy by 2035, is expected to be the main driver of cooling system demand in the coming decades.
Currently, around 5% of the world's stock of air conditioners is in India, or around 110 million units of the roughly 2.4 billion in use globally, per the IEA.
By 2035, India's share of the global air conditioner stock is set to rise to 13% (to nearly 500 million units), and then to more than 1.1 billion units by 2050.
Indonesia, another fast-growing populous nation prone to hot and humid spells, is set to treble its air conditioner count by 2035, while Brazil, Mexico and the Middle East are all set to more than double it.
Power firms in all regions have their work cut out in ramping up electricity supplies to match the projected demand growth from both data centres and cooling systems.
But again, the challenges faced in addressing these two demand drivers will differ based on where the power is needed.
In the United States and Europe, most data centre expansions are taking place close to established generation sites, so that server farms can tap uninterrupted power and avoid transmission delays.
In developing economies, many of the new cooling systems are within new multi-story apartment buildings or on previously undeveloped land, meaning that power suppliers have to vastly expand their geographic reach while also boosting volumes.
Needing to rapidly increase both the scope and scale of electricity production will likely expand the use of coal-fired power in India, Indonesia and elsewhere, which will generate pollution that may further accelerate warming trends.
But the sheer magnitude of energy demand growth ensures that fossil fuels alone will not be able to meet it, and that supplies from a multitude of power sources will have to be deployed.
This "all of the above" approach, in turn, means that power from clean energy and renewable sources should gain a growing share of the generation mix over time, potentially squeezing out high polluting fuels from electricity production.
But in the near term, the fossil fuels burned to meet the rising demand for power will only increase.
The need to keep people safe and comfortable as temperatures keep climbing will thus only exacerbate future heat stress, putting ever more pressure on strained electrical grids.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.
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