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Google and Microsoft consume more power than some countries

In 2023, Google and Microsoft each consumed 24 TWh of electricity, surpassing the consumption of over 100 nations, including places like Iceland, Ghana, and Tunisia, according to an analysis by Michael Thomas. While massive energy usage means a substantial environmental impact for these tech giants, it should be noted that Google and Microsoft also generate more money than many countries. Furthermore, companies like Intel, Google, and Microsoft lead renewable energy adoption within the industry.

Detailed analysis reveals that Google’s and Microsoft’s electricity consumption — 24 TWh in 2023 — equals the power consumption of Azerbaijan (a nation of 10.14 million) and is higher than that of several other countries. For instance, Iceland, Ghana, the Dominican Republic, and Tunisia each consumed 19 TWh, while Jordan consumed 20 TWh. Of course, some countries consume more power than Google and Microsoft. For example, Slovakia, a country with 5.4 million inhabitants, consumes 26 TWh.

Fizz ,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

Not surprising nor is it a negative thing. At least they are incentivized to invest in green energy. If it was China they would have opened up a few coal power plants to cover that demand.

kaffiene ,

It is negative while the grid is majority fossil fuels

bitwolf ,

It would be more helpful to compare their power consumption before and after AI adoption.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

Up 30% since 2020

rottingleaf , (edited )

Detailed analysis reveals that Google’s and Microsoft’s electricity consumption — 24 TWh in 2023 — equals the power consumption of Azerbaijan (a nation of 10.14 million)

It’d be fine with me if Azerbaijan consumed few times that in a few seconds and stopped stinking for a century or so.

EDIT: Oh, didn’t look at numbers and units closely. The point stands, Azerbaijan should be nuked. Good for the planet (it’s a barren wasteland in every part of it populated by Azeris, and even in the illegally occupied Artsakh they had their way with forests in just a few years with quite a success), good for humanity (reduction in negative value), good for countries whose politicians they bribe, and obviously good for Armenians against whom they commit crimes.

Emmie ,

Why is there a random comment wanting to nuke some god forsaken country out of the blue this is just internet things

OP: look at my cat
Cumlord69: we should nuke Azerbaijan

rottingleaf ,

Just the mention triggered me , and as you absolutely correctly pointed out, this is just internet

No reason to get upset

Emmie , (edited )

I am not super upset but try to restrain your violent fantasies. If I can you can. This place would be unreadable if we all poured our bullshit here. There are comms more suited like ncd

fin ,

I love iceland

very_well_lost ,

While massive energy usage means a substantial environmental impact for these tech giants, it should be noted that Google and Microsoft also generate more money than many countries. Furthermore, companies like Intel, Google, and Microsoft lead renewable energy adoption within the industry.

So fucking what? That’s like excusing a mass-murderer because he’s rich and he promised to “not kill quite as many people in the future.”

What a useless and pandering thing to say.

masterspace ,

No, it’s not.

Them making money implies that they are being paid to use power, which is true. Their absolute carbon footprint is irrelevant given that most of what the carbon they use is at the request of someone else. The metric to judge them on is their carbon footprint relevant to peers.

I.e. it’s not fair to judge a cab company for driving someone somewhere (judge the person choosing to hire a cab), but it is fair to judge them if they use gas guzzlers instead of EVs.

ohwhatfollyisman ,

what are you on about, mate? who’s paying for copilot’s adoption? who’s funding the disparaging of the medieval term for a minstrel with a song?

who’s paying you for this absurd take?

masterspace , (edited )

As of last year ~70% of software developers were using copilot or a similar AI assistant. The legal field has seen a drop off in junior hires because of AI assistants. Snapchat’s AI filters and tools have long been a huge draw for that platform (and then copied by everyone else to avoid bleeding users), and Bing saw massive user growth after integrating OpenAI.

AI has problems and limitations but it’s absurd to think there’s no demand for it just because it’s pushed by annoying people. Everything with hype will get pushed by annoying people.

awesome_lowlander ,

~70% of software developers were using copilot or a similar AI assistant

That’s interesting, do you have a source?

masterspace ,

It was the Stack Overflow developer survey I believe

kurap1ka ,

I think he’s partially right. Azure, AWS etc. are running workloads which would otherwise run in a bazillion smaller data centers. I still believe something is wrong as all those giants promise to run their data centers super duper green and sustainable…

Tire ,

Why do you think using energy is bad by itself? They are paying for it and they are trying to get as much renewable as they can.

demonsword ,
@demonsword@lemmy.world avatar

Why do you think using energy is bad by itself?

Building infrastructure has an environmental cost. Even if they’re building them for themselves, wasting the energy produced on AI and some other bullshit will worse our climate catastrophe while delivering nothing useful in exchange

PriorityMotif ,
@PriorityMotif@lemmy.world avatar

One decent sized factory uses more power in one hour than I do all year. There’s millions of them.

masterspace ,

What the fuck do you guys think factories do? Just run for no reason? Where do you think the stuff you own, use, and consume comes from?

PriorityMotif ,
@PriorityMotif@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, I worked at a plastic bottle plant, one of 30 nationally in just that one company making beverage and food containers. None of them were necessary, it’s a huge waste of resources. Look around you, consider the amount of resources it took to make everything around you.

technocrit ,

Privilege unbridled.

masterspace ,

Don’t buy something, and a factory doesn’t need to run to produce it. It’s not privilege, it’s called following a chain of cause and effect.

JackGreenEarth ,

I originally read that as ‘Google and Microsoft hold more power than most countries’, which is also true.

Capricorn_Geriatric ,

It’s definately cheaper to have some in-house power plants than to pay utilities for the electricity more often than not, and hydroelectric or battery storage might also be cost-effective at times, although I’d say a bit less so than generation.

Tja ,

Weird metric, but pretty sure UGGs or KitchenAid hold more power than Lichtenstein or Tuvalu, so not unique to tech giants.

ocassionallyaduck ,

Regulate them!

1984 ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

It’s OK, I sort my garbage to make a better world. Evens it out.

masterspace , (edited )

You also use Gmail and force Google to run their servers to power it.

Reducing your carbon footprint as much as possible is important, but it’s absurd to get mad at companies that power 90% of the world’s businesses for using a bunch of power to do so. It takes power to do those things. Get mad at the companies who are over consuming relative to their peers and those that are driving demand towards unattainable activities. Just getting mad at people for moving and using energy is absurd.

technocrit ,

it’s absurd to get mad at companies that power 90% of the world’s businesses

It’s absurd to actually think that this is what’s happening. wow.

cnbc.com/…/googles-carbon-emissions-surge-nearly-…

masterspace ,

Microsoft posted a revenue of $211.9 billion for 2023. Keeping in mind that the vast majority of the world’s population uses Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office and loads of online applications run on Microsoft Azure, the economic impact of Microsoft’s products is probably counted in trillions of dollars.

Comparing this to countries with the same ballpark energy consumption, Azerbaijan’s GDP was about $78 billion, Slovakia’s GDP was around $127 billion, and Iceland’s GDP was approximately $30 billion in 2023.

The economic output of Google and Microsoft by far exceeds these countries’ GDPs, highlighting the vast financial scale of these tech giants relative to their substantial electricity consumption.

Oh yeah, it’s crazy to think that! I don’t know where I would have gotten that idea, other than the article that OP linked that we’re all discussing.

Yes, training new AI models uses a bunch of power, so does building out any new infrastructure. Atleast Microsoft and Google use a far high percentage of renewable power than most other industries.

humorlessrepost ,

Evens it out

Flattens out the blowjob

chiisana ,
@chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net avatar

Google reported to have earned 305B in 2023. Finland had an estimate of 300B GDP, while consuming 79.8 TWh of electricity.

So, in comparison, Google is massively more efficient than Finland?

thanks_shakey_snake ,

If your efficiency function is centered around revenue, then yeah, of course… No surprise that one of the world’s most successful for-profit companies generates more profit per watt-hour than a nation, which encompasses all sorts of non-revenue-generating activity like running hospitals and keeping street lights on.

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Those will be counted towards GDP – that’s all economic activity.

chiisana ,
@chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net avatar

Lemmy is bad with money, economics and business, also anti corporate/work, so anything positive towards corporate tends to be slammed with ignorance. I try my best to just ignore those replies / votes and move on.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I try to correct them if it’s easy enough. I probably won’t convince them, but maybe the next person will consider it and educate themselves.

thanks_shakey_snake ,

My comment isn’t anti-corporate or anti-work though…? It just isn’t that strange that Google is more efficient at generating revenue (as dollars-per-kWh) than Finland is.

technocrit ,

It’s strange that people believe capitalist/political metrics mean anything of value.

teft ,
@teft@lemmy.world avatar

Wonder what amazon’s would be since they have AWS.

ssebastianoo ,
@ssebastianoo@programming.dev avatar

Google has Google Cloud and Microsoft has Azure

teft ,
@teft@lemmy.world avatar

And AWS is bigger than both of those services yet Amazon isn’t mentioned in this article.

M500 ,

I bet energy usage of aws is counted for the business/people using those services.

Grimy ,

Google has 4.9 billion users while Microsoft has 1.6 billion active devices.

I think comparing them to small nations is dumb but it doesn’t seem extreme when you take into account the huge amount of users (half the planet uses google everyday)

In any case, it’s up to the government to make sure our grid is robust and runs on renewables. Microsoft is building it’s own nuclear reactor because the government is so fucking inept. This is a scape goat.

ReadyUser31 ,

They’re doing what??

SleezyDizasta ,

It’s true lmao

theverge.com/…/microsoft-next-generation-nuclear-…

0x0 ,

A BSOD in a reactor control system… just what the world needed.

technocrit ,

Microsoft is building it’s own nuclear reactor because the government is so fucking inept.

lmao. oh yeah I’m sure that nuke is gonna be hella secure.

propublica.org/…/microsoft-solarwinds-golden-saml…

TrickDacy ,

I don’t see what’s surprising here. They provide services for users globally. Not that it’s justified, it’s just kind of weird that people think global scale computing is light on electricity, apparently

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@fedia.io avatar

It sounds scary, and that's all that's needed to get clicks.

cmnybo ,

All of that AI crap they keep pushing certainly doesn’t help the energy consumption though.

TrickDacy ,

For sure

x1gma ,

It’s not surprising per se, but it’s something that people should be more aware of. And a lot of this consumption is not providing global services (like the Google search or workspace suite) but the whole AI hype.

I didn’t find numbers for Google or Microsoft specifically, but training ChatGPT 4 consumed 50 GWh on its own. The daily estimates for queries are estimated between 1-5 GWh.

Given that the extrapolation is an overestimate and calculating the actual consumption is pretty much impossible, it’s still probably a lot of energy wasted for a product that people do not want (e.g. Google AI “search”, Bing and Copilot being stuffed into everything).

masterspace ,

They only do that because they project it to be profitable, i.e. they project demand for it.

It’s also ridiculous to claim that people don’t want it just because you don’t.

Womble , (edited )

To put a bit of context on those, 50GWh is a single medium sized power station running for 2 days. To create something that is being used around 10 million times a day all over the world.

At 10 million queries per day that puts the usage per query at 100-500 Wh, about the amount of energy used by leaving an old incandecent lightbulb on for an hour, or playing a demanding video game for about 20 minutes.

As another comparison, In the USA alone around 12,000 GWh of energy is spent in burning gasoline in vehicles every single day. So Americans driving 1% less for a single day would save more energy than creating GPT4 and the world using it for a year.

SlopppyEngineer , (edited )

Lots of people were just yelling the grid can’t handle more load like for charging cars while Google adds a country worth of power use with AI.

David_Eight ,

Don’t forget to set you AC to 80 because the grid can’t handle the load lol. That’s exactly why this info is important, ecological solutions are somehow always trusted on individuals when the vast majority of the issue lies with corporations.

iopq ,

Those corporations are serving users, they wouldn’t need all that power if billions weren’t using their services

technocrit ,

lol yeah whatever. keep shilling.

cnbc.com/…/googles-carbon-emissions-surge-nearly-…

iopq ,

Again, users actually use it

David_Eight ,

And I’m using my AC, we’re both using power. How many times has the government told one of these companies to use less power because the grid can’t handle the strain their servers put on it?

And it’s not like these companies aren’t herding people toward these cloud services. A few weeks ago my Google Cloud storage was maxed out so I wanted to delete some photos/videos off their cloud while keeping them on my phone. Legit couldn’t figure out how to do that and just ended up deleting stuff permanently.

Jako301 ,

Google builds entire datacenters with their own transformers and power lines, if not their own powerplants. You plug these datacenters directly into the high voltage networks that don’t have big capacity problems.

The low voltage grids in residential areas on the other hand were build as cheap as possible, so increasing the load by 20% is already too much for most of them.

technocrit ,

The low voltage grids in residential areas suburbs on the other hand were build as cheap as possible, so increasing the load by 20% is already too much for most of them.

Shdwdrgn ,

Google originally made a name for themselves by building a global search engine on low cost, low powered desktop machines running in parallel, so it’s surprising because they have gone from high-efficiency to power hogs.

iopq ,

Who said they are not efficient? They just serve buildings of users. I would be surprised if they didn’t figure out how to do it more efficiently than Bing PER REQUEST. They have PhDs sitting around thinking how to lower power consumption by 1%

technocrit ,

Not surprising at all. Power hogging is the whole point of capitalism. It’s just literally electric power in this case.

fatalicus ,

The thing here also is that I can’t see that they have taken into account that they deliver data center services globally.

So say that my company have 100 VMs in azure. That energy usage should count for our company and country, and not Microsoft.

Melvin_Ferd ,

Showers worldwide use more water than …

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