Can AI be efficient and sustainable? Going beyond energy efficiency #EUSEW2025
Want to know more about the environmental impacts of data centres? Come to our session at the European Sustainable Energy Week, #EUSEW2025, the biggest conference dedicated to renewable energy and energy efficiency. We will be presenting about whether AI can be efficient and sustainable, and why we must go beyond energy efficiency to achieve our climate ambitions. Register now!
Electricity demand soared by 4.3% just last year. This is largely due to data centres expanding to facilitate the AI boom, with no signs of this slowing. This has huge social and environmental impacts. Including:
- More energy consumed – most of it from fossil fuels.
- More water used – even in places with water scarcity.
- More land-use change to house data centres and mine critical minerals.
- More electronic waste.
- Less security for communities living close to data centres or areas linked to their supply chain.
- Less chance of achieving climate goals and staying within planetary boundaries.
How can we ensure the digital transition does not undermine the green transition? Find out in our European Sustainable Energy Week session: ‘Can #AI be efficient and sustainable? Going beyond energy efficiency’.
With Anastasia Tsougka of ECOS, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Amazon Web Services, the International Energy Agency, the European Commission, and WWF Sweden.
