Chat GPT took five days to achieve its first million users, an unusual growth among digital platforms, except in the case of Meta’s Threads social network, which took only one hour, although with traps because it took users from Instagram. , from the same group.
Since its birth, on November 30, 2022, the OpenAI artificial intelligence bot has transformed our view of technology and generated future expectations that are as colossal as they are uncertain, because their development will not be possible without an exponential growth of data centers, where thousands of operations per second are crossed to solve complex issues in a simple way. The deployment of these centers is under threat due to their electricity consumption.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a GPT Chat query consumes on average almost ten times more electricity than a Google search. The nearly 11,000 data centers that exist in the world currently consume, between 1% and 2% of the total energybut there are projections that this percentage reaches between 3% and 4% before the end of the decade. This increase in demand will help drive electricity growth never seen in generations, with a radical change in its costs.
Over the past 15 years, Europe’s energy demand has been severely affected by a series of shocks: the global financial crisis, the Covid pandemic and the energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine. This was followed by a recovery slower than expected and current economic deindustrialization. As a result, since the 2008 peak, electricity demand has cumulatively decreased by almost 10%. But between 2015 and 2019 it remained stable due to efficiency improvements, despite the fact that the workload of these centers almost tripled.
What will happen in the future? Between 2023 and 2033, thanks to the expansion of data centers and electrification, European energy demand could grow by 40% and perhaps even 50%, while in data centers it will grow by no less than 160% to 2030, according to Goldman Sachs.
By the end of the decade, the needs of these centers will equal the current consumption of Portugal, Greece and the Netherlands. In parallel, carbon dioxide emissions could double, with a cost of between 125,000 and 140,000 million dollars.
Currently, around 15% of data centers are located in Europewhich accounts for the magnitude of the expected growth. In the United States, the installed capacity reaches 15 gigawatts, compared to only 3 on the Old Continent.
According to analysts, there are two types of countries that will host these centers. In the first group are those with cheap and abundant energy from nuclear, hydroelectric, wind or solar sources. Among these are Spain and Portugal, along with some Nordic countries and France, due to its nuclear power. The second type includes the countries with large financial or technological services companieswho are offering tax breaks to maintain them. Germany is in this category along with the United Kingdom and Ireland.
In our country, about 565 megawatts have been built so far, but demand has multiplied by more than 30, reaching around 16 gigawatts. Redeia has granted authorizations for about 4 gigawatts, although the sector’s employers’ association, Spain DC, considers the demand disproportionate and reduces actual construction to around one gigawatt, due to supply capacity problems.
The problem of satisfying demand is such that in the United States the solution that is openly proposed is a generation of safer and smaller nuclear power plants. Elon Musk has built a huge AI center called Colossus for XAI and Grok, in Memphis, Tennessee, and now plans to double your capacity. Likewise, Microsoft plans a super data center called Stargate. AI aims to have to live off nuclear energy.
The rich pie of data centers attracts billions of investment from electricity and real estate, apart from those announced by technology companies for the deployment of their services. Europe has the oldest electricity grid in the world, which will require greater investments both in the distribution network and in the trunk. Analysts expect spending close to 800 billion on transmission and distribution over the next decade, as well as an investment of close to 850 billion in onshore and offshore solar and wind energy.
In our country, one of the favorite destinations, only in Aragon there are projects worth around 25,000 million. But official sources downgrade this option, because they consider that there is a bubble. “We are going to be very selective with this type of centersbecause they create little employment and consume a lot of energy. We prefer to attract more productive investments, such as the Stellantis gigafactory in Zaragoza, announced last week,” government sources point out.
Official collaboration is essential, because, first of all, it is necessary to lift the cap on investments in distribution networks, which is 0.13 percent of GDP, about 1.5 billion annually. An operation that, according to the Executive, is underway, but it doesn’t come to fruition. In addition, it is necessary to obtain permits to connect to the high-voltage network, which will also require significant injections of money from the Government to respond to this excess demand. Where are Redeia’s plans to face these challenges? They are neither there nor expected. Its president, Beatriz Corredor, usually deflects responsibility to electricity companies.
Even more aberrant is the Executive’s determination to maintain the plan to close nuclear plants, which is scheduled to start next year, despite the fact that, at the moment, they provide almost a quarter of the energy. This same week we have lived several consecutive blackouts of large industry due to the cold and the temporary closure of the Ascó nuclear plant for maintenance work. The situation was saved thanks to the activation of the reserve plants, the combined gas cycles, which provided almost half of the energy and which are also in the process of extinction. Planning is reckless.
The previous Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, had to change her position on nuclear energy to take up her position in Europe. “In Spain, We are going to maintain the nuclear decommissioning plan as one of the hallmarks of our energy policy,” confirms a senior official.
How will the gap between explosive demand be bridged while nuclear weapons are eliminated? “The closure plan is very long-term, in the meantime other sources of renewable energy will come in,” is the official response.
It is incomprehensible that data centers are reviled while the Government considers data centers strategic. Talgo train manufacturer and is preparing to enter its capital or is making enormous efforts in the search for foreign capital, because the Basque businessman José Antonio Jainaga only has 30 million for the project.
Even worse is the public injection of 125 million in a company for which no one has given a euro for a decade, like Duro Felguera, also considered strategic by the Government of Asturias. It would be better to bury the dead with dignity and focus efforts on the world of the living.
After the success of the arrival of the Chinese company CTL with the help of Stellantis to build the second battery factory in Zaragoza, as we announced in this forum, the Executive sticks out his chest and boasts that the weekly The Economist considers that Spain is the best economy in the OECD for the “growth of more than 3 percent and the solidity of its employment.” To this information, a tagline should be added, as is done in investment funds; “Past returns do not guarantee future returns.”
Oil companies have just saved their investment plans in hydrogen and other renewable products, thanks to the fact that the nationalists of Junts and PNV have united against the Government’s extension of the tax and… now we are going to put obstacles to billions in data centers? We are not here to waste money either.
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