AI IN SUSTAINABILITY
A large Google Data Centre being built in Hertfordshire, UK
The International Energy Agency( IEA) has launched something the tech world has been needing for a while: a reliable way to track how much energy AI is consuming.
From its Energy and AI Observatory – which provides the latest data and analysis on the burgeoning links between the energy sector and AI – the company is tackling a glaring data gap that has become impossible to ignore as AI spreads across every industry.
The problem the IEA is trying to solve is that nobody really knows how much electricity data centres are using to power AI systems, despite this being crucial for understanding AI’ s environmental impact.
The agency admits there are“ no comprehensive global statistics on the electricity consumption of data centres”.
Yet as AI workloads make data centres larger and more power-hungry than ever before, gigawatt-scale computing clusters are popping up across North
238 October 2025