Posted on 07/16/2024 3:57:40 PM PDT by george76
Big Tech consumes more than many countries..
Tech giants Google and Microsoft each consumed 24 TWh each of electricity during 2023, surpassing the consumption of more than 100 countries, new research has claimed.
Analysis by Michael Thomas, shared on X, claims both Google and Microsoft consumed the same amount of energy as Azerbaijan, which has an estimated GDP of $78.7 billion. Google’s 2023 revenue stood at $307.4 billion, and Microsoft’s at $211.9 billion.
The massive energy usage underscores the substantial environmental impact of these companies. But it also serves as a reminder of their sheer scale, and the positive impact they could have an leading more sustainable initiatives.
Tech firms consume more than many countries Iceland, Ghana, the Dominican Republic and Tunisia each consumed 19 TWh, while Jordan consumed 20 TWh, highlighting the two tech firms’ immense scale. Libya (25 TWh) and Slovakia (26 TWh) consumed slightly more power.
The comparison between entire countries and two single companies highlights the colossal energy requirements of Big Tech. The consumption also alludes to the environmental impacts of data centers, which are used to power cloud services including storage and compute, as well as a new generation of artificial intelligence.
The significant electricity consumption of these companies calls for ongoing discussions around sustainability and renewable energy adoption. Both Google and Microsoft have carbon-free or carbon-negative pledges by the end of the decade, and investments in cleaner energies and energy matching have already scaled up considerably.
With a market cap of $2.294 trillion and $3.372 trillion respectively, Google and Microsoft currently stand as the world’s fourth and second-most valuable companies. With the scale of their operations more akin to an entire nation, all eyes are on them as the world’s economies continue to prevent and reverse environmental damage.
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Shut them down, global warming you know.
Cat’s out of the bag about why they want us to use less power.
AI. Transhumanist evil. AND it’s making the erf’s fever worser.
HOW DARE YOU??!?
Well they are getting more for the $ than those countries are...so probably need to look at those countries and make them go North Korea style energy.
More power to the elites.
but Bill Gates will save the world with all his fake junk
Wow, this is getting to be like a 1960s comic book with huge islands of computing power and peasants elsewhere.
A Gazillion Terawatt
With their cloud services, yeah, I can believe it.
Don't forget the infrastructure cost -- the connection cost of getting you from Bugtussle or BFE, to whichever data center you're connecting to.
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