When The alarms jumped by him temperature increase globally, it was launched The decarbonization plan. Countries, large technology and automotive companies marked objectives for reduce your carbon emissions with goals set for 2030 and 2050. Have been applying measures for itbut with what the industry – and the planet – did not have the rise of the artificial intelligence and his Energy voracity.
One so extreme that there are those who rub their hands: companies that create gas turbines.
The threat of renewables. 2024 was a Good year for renewables. Although it is something that has caused an authentic War between Chinese companiesmarket saturation has allowed the panel price Lower considerably. This facilitates the Installation of self -consumption systemsbut it has also allowed huge parks to flourish even in such oil -dependent as Texas.
We have witnessed Sorpasso of renewables in Europethere are countries that have worked for months only with renewables And that push of solar panels is making progress in the race for the Green hydrogen.
Artificial intelligence. Companies have also adapted their systems to be more efficient, consume less water and even build more respectful and sustainable facilitiesbut in the same way that 2024 was the year of the explosion of renewables, it was also for AI. That is why the main technological have begun to Expand and build data centers all over the world (something that It doesn’t look good everywhere) to be able to meet the current demand for this technology.
Change of plans. That high energy consumption has pushed some of the Big Tech to opt for something striking: Operate your own nuclear power plants. Giants such as Amazon, Google or Microsoft have shown their plans to Create or reactivate nuclear centralsbut it’s not the only thing. European oil companies have readjusted your renewable support strategy And there are already seen that, during the AI consumption peaks, the coal burning as gas to meet energy demand.
Gas interest. That renewed interest in gas is something that already has consequences, and Siemens is a perfect example. How can we read in Bloombergthe German company estimated a financial result close to balance for this fiscal year, but after the growing interest in gas, they now estimate that their income could grow up to 15%.
Siemens Energy manufactures, among other things, gas turbines And in recent months they have seen how this avalanche of investments in data centers with high energy demand has promoted turbine orders. In fact, contrary to what we might think in mind that we wanted to stop depending on the gas, the company has seen that the orders received have doubled during the first three months of the year.
And price increase. According to the International Energy Agency, The energy demand of data centers HE will duplicate By 2030 due to AI workloads and, although renewables are in clear expansion, as the supply is intermittent, there are times when they do not meet the constant demand of these data centers.
Gas is here a safety net For companies, since it provides constant energy for artificial intelligence infrastructure and coal would be used for peaks of demand.
And there are already those who predict that this increase in gas demand will result in an increase in its price for the next winters. And also of carbon emissions, as we are already experiencing with cases such as Microsoft and Google, with Increases of 30% and 50% respectively in recent years.
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