Artificial intelligence may appear weightless to the employees using copilots and generative platforms. Yet every prompt depends on an expanding physical infrastructure of processors, cooling equipment, power systems and network connections.
That infrastructure is growing at extraordinary speed. The International Energy Agency forecasts that global data centre electricity consumption will more than double to approximately 945TWh by 2030, slightly more than Japan consumes today. Demand is expected to grow by around 15% annually between 2024 and 2030, more than four times faster than electricity use across other sectors combined.
This creates a difficult contradiction for enterprises. AI is being positioned as an engine of productivity and competitive advantage, but the infrastructure supporting it could place corporate climate commitments under mounting pressure. Renewable energy procurement may help address reported emissions, but it cannot automatically eliminate local grid congestion or competition for water.
The question, therefore, is no longer simply whether organisations can obtain enough computing capacity. It is whether they can expand their use of AI without transferring its environmental and infrastructure costs to energy networks and future sustainability targets.
