Data centers could consume up to 13 percent of global electricity by 2030

Evidence

It is estimated that data centers will use 3 to 13 percent of all global electricity by the year 2030, compared to the 1 percent they used in 2010. Water is another resource gobbled up by data centers. The surveillance facility constructed by the National Security Agency in the United States, the third largest on the planet, consumes 1.7 million gallons of water daily to operate its servers. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 807

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the attention/surveillance school’s materialist critique — platform power has a physical, resource-extractive footprint, not only an attentional one.
• SEED: Angles toward ‘the Cloud Empire’s water bill’ — the hidden physical cost of data colonialism as a resource-appropriation story.