According to a new study, AI systems could produce 80 million tons of CO2 in 2025, which is as much as the world’s bottled water industry.
Recent research demonstrates that measurement is difficult because tech companies have not provided comprehensive data.
The carbon footprint of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 2025 could match New York City’s or a small European country.
Furthermore, AI systems are provided to consume as much water as the global bottled water industry.
The report specifically estimates that AI data centers could emit between 32.6 million and 79.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2025.
As reported by euronews, data centres are complex facilities that accommodate to run online services such as cloud computing, video streaming, and AI.
The study further demonstrated that AI’s water use footprint could be equivalent to the range of global annual consumption of bottled water consumption estimated at between 312.25 and 764.6 billion litres in 2025.
Europe hosts about 15 per cent of the world’s data centres, placing it second only to the United States, which accounts for approximately 45 per cent.This is in line with the World Economic Forum.
The data centres located in Europe have a substantially smaller carbon footprint per unit of electricity consumed.
The study further elucidated the environmental footprint of AI by combining public sustainability reports from predominant tech companies-including those from Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta- with estimates of AI electricity usage.
Consequently, the research calls for new ecological benchmarks, including policies on specific locations for large- scale AI operations and sustainable water use for individual facilities.
