@jillmcardle
Campaigner @beyondfossilfuels.bsky.social. Talk to me about data centres, AI & energy + corporate accounting โก๐ค ๐ฎ๐ช in ๐ง๐ช *NEW REPORT* https://beyondfossilfuels.org/2025/02/10/system-overload-how-new-data-centres-could-throw-europ
Thank you to everyone who joined us this morning outside DESNEZ, to kick off our #StopDirtyDataCentres days of action. Join an action near you this weekend: www.globalactionplan.org.uk/stop-dirty-data-centres
"People are rising up against big tech data centres being built at the expense of people and planet". Photo in black and white of 10 people holding a banner that stays 'STOP DIRTY DATA CENRES'. Global action plan logo.
This weekend weโre coordinating days of action with campaigners and local communities across the country, to oppose Big Tech's unchecked expansion of hyperscale data centres in the UK.
Join an action near you: www.globalactionplan.org.uk/stop-dirty-data-centres
To claim something you need to be able to prove it. So whatโs actually behind claims that AI can help solve climate change and what does the evidence actually say? Read the report @ketanjoshi.co: beyondfossilfuels.org/2026/02/17/t...
@stand.earth @foeus.bsky.social @caadcoalition.bsky.social & more!
Muchas comunidades que viven cerca de los Centros de Datos se quedan sin acceso a agua o energรญa porque se la llevan estas instalaciones. ยซEs el momento para Europa de dejar de complacer a las Big Tech y comenzar a regular los Centros de Datosยป @jillmcardle.bsky.social @beyondfossilfuels.bsky.social
Higher electricity generation growth: The 2025 STEPS projects over 44 000 TWh of electricity generation worldwide in 2035, which is around 4% more than in the 2024 STEPS version. The outlook for electricity demand to serve data centres in the United States and elsewhere are higher than in the WEO-2024, and higher demand for air conditioning in the Middle East and North Africa also makes a large contribution to the overall increase in electricity demand in the 2025 STEPS. Emerging grid integration challenges in China and other major markets also help to explain the differences in the generation mix between the two editions of STEPS. Most of the upward revision in generation is coal-fired power in China. ๏ฎ Increased natural gas consumption: The 2025 STEPS projects 350 bcm more natural gas consumption in 2035 compared with the 2024 STEPS version. Three-quarters of this is for electricity generation, mainly in the United States, Japan and the Middle East, and reflects higher electricity demand and slower progress in adding renewables to the generation mix than projected in the WEO-2024. There is also faster growth in the use of gas for transport, notably for compressed natural gas vehicles in China and LNG for shipping, and for industry in emerging market and developing economies.
After all the dismissiveness and misleading presentation of growth rates, there's basically no escaping the fact that US data centre growth is a globally significant story that is directly incentivising new fossil fuel use and infrastructure growth
Feeling pretty vindicated, given last year's WEO
I had a wonderful week reconnecting w old friends and meeting new ones at #ClimateWeek in NYC. AI and data centers dominated many of the conversations, and my mind reels at the vast discrepancies among the "expert takes" on where we are headed.
In the US, capacity auction prices - paid via costs passed on to consumers by utilities - are set to soar off the back of rocketing energy demand from data centres.
Hardly seems fair that household energy bills will be used to help line the pockets of tech giants.
www.reuters.com/business/ene...
Big Tech CEOs are hungry for power, but that canโt come at the expense of the planet.
All new data centres must run on renewable energy, and their growth needs to align with planetary boundaries.
๐ @jillmcardle.bsky.social @re-publica.com ๐
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fmz...
When it IS clean energy that powers the data centers, itโs nearly always taken from an existing pool that already had customers, so those customers now have to use dirty power.
www.propublica.org/article/data...
Most of this power is fossil-fueled, which means that emissions have skyrocketed. Bloomberg reported in 2024 that without the shell game of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), โAmazon could be forced to admit that its 2022 emissions are.. three times what the company disclosed.โ
archive.is/lBf5H
Today Amazon released its โSustainabilityโ report. Predictably, what it leaves out is vastly more important than what it says.
Amazon is building a dirty energy empire, spending literally hundreds of billions on data centers that will rely primarily on new fossil fuel infrastructure.
Sharing this via @jillmcardle.bsky.social on LinkedIn because itโs just PERFECT๐๐ป๐๐ป๐๐ป
The Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence: how Generative AI Threatens the Renewable Energy Transition, and who Stands to Benefit from it Youโve read the news: A Three Mile Island reactor will be restarted to power Microsoft's AI operations (this was the site of a nuclear meltdown in 1979), Googleโs emissions climbed nearly 50% over the last five years due to AI energy demand, and the only thing impressive about Amazonโs claim that it uses green energy is the chutzpah with which it lies about its creative accounting. Still, if you think you have a good idea of generative AIโs resource demands, think again. The snippets above only present the tip of the iceberg. To show whatโs at stake, we will not only present the latest evidence on energy demand for the entire value chain of AI, including hardware production โ we will also explain how it threatens the transition to renewable energy and the stability of the grid, aka critical infrastructure. Questions to be answered: - What do we know about resource consumption of generative AI? - What implications does the resource consumption have for the green transition? - What implications does the resource consumption have for the development path of Artificial Intelligence (what alternatives to โbrute forceโ large models and Deep Learning based on very large datasets are on the table)? - What governance tools are needed and available to reconcile AI develpoment with planetary boundaries? Organised by AlgorithmWatch with Matthias Spielkamp (moderator), Jill McArdle, Fanny Hidvรฉgi, Claude Turmes, Boris Ruf More information: https://cpdp.be/4117
The Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence: How Generative AI Threatens the Renewable Energy Transition
Organised by AlgorithmWatch with @spielkamp.bsky.social (moderator), @jillmcardle.bsky.social, Fanny Hidvรฉgi, Claude Turmes, Boris Ruf
More info: cpdp.be/4117
#CPDP2025 #TheWorldisWatching
ICYMI ๐ New @greenpeaceeastasia.bsky.social video on the dark side of AI, featuring @jillmcardle.bsky.social on the risks posed by largely AI-driven data centre electricity consumption in Europe.
"The energy consumption of ๐ช๐บ data centres is putting local energy transitions at risk, either by expanding gas infrastructure or forcing other sectors to rely on power from fossil fuels," says @jillmcardle.bsky.social in new @greenpeaceeastasia.bsky.social video.
๐ www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySfh...
Tech companies manufacture demand for chatbots and image generation, and then that in turn manufactures demand for coal and gas.
Blistering @desmog.bsky.social piece here detailing this new and disgusting symbiosis
www.desmog.com/2025/04/22/a...
@jillmcardle.bsky.social points out here the IEA is basically adopting the logic of carbon offsetting into the world of AI and data centres
www.linkedin.com/posts/jillmc...
Today's report on #AI and energy by the @iea.org's largely confirms our analysis published earlier this year, data centre growth is rapidly increasing & leading to more emissions.
Read our report and learn about their impact on emissions & the energy transition.
beyondfossilfuels.org/2025/02/10/s...
Ireland is interesting. Being a nexus of data centre growth it's not surprising to see rising power demand. but much of it is being met by power imports, not new renewables, or fossil fuel output.
bsky.app/profile/keta...
CC @hannahdaly.ie @jillmcardle.bsky.social
The headline you won't read today about the European Court of Auditors report on EU funding for NGOs is that the auditors found no wrong-doing by NGOs, nor any breach of EU values.
An invented scandal to justify cutting EU funding for NGOs and distract from genuine cases of corruption.
You canโt sue a rainbow ๐
No matter what happens in any courtroom โ our global intersectional climate movement will only keep growing stronger and louder ๐๐
#WeWillNotBeSilenced
As promised, here are the slides I shared with students to convince them to NOT use chatGPT and other artificial stupidity.
TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. ๐ช
"AI may exist in the virtual world, but it has real life consequences, and this (BFF) new research should be a wake-up call that sustainable and limitless AI growth is a fantasy," say @jillmcardle.bsky.social & Julia Pazos in latest The Green Fix post ๐
thegreenfix.substack.com/p/ai?utm%5C_...
This headline sounds positive when in fact the regulator has just proposed that data centre growth can continue as long as energy demand is met by their own oil and gas generation. Any pretence to supporting renewable energy has been dropped.
www.irishtimes.com/business/202...
๐ญ A magician never reveals their secretsโbut we just did. EPHโs โcoal exitโ looks like a ruse, shifting polluting assets to its sister company, but behind the scenes it's still turning dirty coal profits.
Read our new research in partnership with Re-set:
beyondfossilfuels.org/2025/02/12/b...
"If the data centre growth relies on fossil gas, it will fuel the climate crisis. To prevent this, expansion must go hand in hand with the buildout of additional renewable energy," says @jillmcardle.bsky.social on the risks surging data centre electricity demand.
www.euronews.com/next/2025/02...
๐งต1/ Between crypto, the cloud & AI, the digital world is growing fast.
Todayโs #AIActionSummit is convening world leaders and industry executives to discuss its future.
We're calling on them to tackle one of the tech industryโs biggest threats: its soaring power demand.
๐
Two other possible outcomes - less likely but definitely worth fighting for, I reckon:
- Tech companies must only ever build new clean energy, but that clean energy must itself not be sucking the life from decarbonisation, electrification and energy transition
- DON'T BUILD SO MANY DATA CENTRES
we don't assume it will be, but we see good reasons to worry that it might, in ireland gas is being used for new data centres. Europe has a lot of RE but the demand from DCs could vastly outstrip it
otes: This chart shows the added emissions from the newly added data centres in the EU starting from 2025, with 2024 being the baseline at zero; Lithuania and Estoniaโs 2022 GHG emission data are from EDGAR 2023 45 .
Huge new @beyondfossilfuels.bsky.social report - EU's data centre frenzy could enable 121 megatonnes of CO2-e
"New data centre demand alone could consume as much as the added power needed for the electrification of the entire transport sector in the EU by 2030"
@jillmcardle.bsky.social
