What do crypto assets and artificial intelligence have in common? Both are power-hungry.
New statistics from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) show a steep increase of global electricity use for crypto mining and AI.
Crypto mining, Bitcoin and the way its transactions are calculated uses a lot of processing power. An AI search uses significantly more processing than a simple web search.
On a side note, a simple tip for saving electricity (not yours, but globally) is to bookmark your favourite pages, instead of using Bing or Google etc.
As the Chart of the Week shows, crypto mining and data centers together accounted for 2 percent of world electricity demand in 2022. And that share is likely to climb to 3.5 percent in three years, according to our estimates based on projections from the International Energy Agency. That would be equivalent to current consumption of Japan, the world’s fifth largest electricity user.
On the flip side, AI applications could lead to smarter and more efficient power use, which some have posited could help ease electricity demand.