13 TWh nell’anno dovrebbero equivalere a 4-5 milioini di server da 500 Watt di potenza
Dirty shade of green
None of this will silence those concerned about energy use and the environment. GPUs might be more power-efficient than CPUs for some applications, but that does not mean they will prevent energy consumption from rocketing if generative AI becomes ubiquitous. "We also face risks related to business trends that may be influenced by climate concerns," said Nvidia, after gushing about its energy efficiency, in its recent annual report filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. "We may face decreased demand for computationally powerful but energy-intensive products, such as our GPUs."
It doesn't help that Microsoft, ChatGPT's main sponsor, is a rather dirty shade of green. Since its 2017 fiscal year, its annual energy consumption has doubled to roughly 13,482 gigawatt hours. Microsoft says 96% of this is from renewables, but only a sliver of that renewables total (147 megawatt hours, or less than 0.01%) is from on-site renewable energy. The rest is attributed to the dubious purchase of renewable energy certificates (RECs) and signing of power purchase agreements (PPAs).
Microsoft's energy use and emissions
(Source: Microsoft)
Even with Microsoft's preferred "market-based" methodology, which factors in those RECs and PPAs, the software company's annual Scope 1 and 2 emissions – those for which it is directly responsible – have risen 17% since 2017, to nearly 287,640 tons for the 2021 fiscal year. With a location-based methodology that assesses the make-up of the electric grid, its emissions are up 74%, to more than 4.74 million tons.