Many big tech companies are consuming more electricity than countries with millions of people because of AI. The reports from these tech companies and US Energy Information Administration were used to compare Meta, Google, Microsoft and Apple’s energy consumptions in 2023 to electricity consumptions of some specific countries.

According to the data Microsoft and Google are using more electricity than countries like Ghana with a population of 34 million and Jordan with population of 11 million. The total electricity consumption of Microsoft and Google is 24 TWh while Ghana and Jordan use 19 TWh and 20 TWh electricity respectively. The only countries above Microsoft and Google in terms of electricity usage are Nigeria, Ireland and Serbia.

This shows that these big tech companies are using enormous amounts of electricity for their data centers. 2024 Environment Report indicates that use of electricity at Google’s data centers has grown 17% in 2023. Google’s data centers used 10% of the overall electricity of all data centers in the world in 2023.

AI training is also taking up a lot more electricity usage. Microsoft’s electricity usage jumped to 24 TWh in 2023 from 11 TWh in 2020. Similarly, Google’s electricity consumption went from 11 TWh in 2018 to 24 TWh in 2023. Tech companies who took the generative AI step a little later (Meta and Apple) than other companies are not using as much energy as Microsoft and Google, but Meta seems to be going up in the list.

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