IEA - The International Energy Agency said the world will spend $580 billion on data centers in 2024, about $40 billion more than the investment in searching for new oil supplies. This reflects the strong shift of the global economy in the context of rapid development of AI and huge consumption of electricity.
TechCrunch experts say the data center explosion will put more pressure on the power grid, especially in urban areas - where most data centers are located near cities with about 1 million people. However, this is also a great opportunity for renewable energy, especially solar power, thanks to competitive costs and convenient licensing processes.
In addition to the trend of switching to clean energy, the market also witnessed a large-scale investment race in AI infrastructure. OpenAI has announced plans to pour $1.4 trillion to build a new data center. Meta plans to invest $600 billion, while Anthropic is preparing to deploy a $50 billion data center project.
Some energy enterprises have begun to participate in this ecosystem. Redwood Materials develops a model of reusing old electric vehicle batteries to create micro-grids that directly serve AI data centers. This solution is expected to reduce pressure on the power grid in the context of strong increase in electricity demand during the peak season.
The growth of AI data centers at a large scale will also change the landscape and solve the problem of the level of implementation of ambitious investment plans. Many projects require huge capital and policy support, from tax incentives to long-term investment mechanisms. Experts predict that many governments will have to participate more strongly to ensure enough energy infrastructure to meet rapidly increasing demand in the next decade.
