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  • NEWS FEATURE

How much energy will AI really consume? The good, the bad and the unknown

Researchers want firms to be more transparent about the electricity demands of artificial intelligence.
By
  1. Sophia Chen

    1. Sophia Chen is a freelance science journalist in Columbus, Ohio.

Conceptual illustration of an AI data centre in a rural setting, depicted as a tower of nodes with power cables feeding into it.

Illustration: Ollie Hirst

The aroma of hay and manure hangs over Culpeper County, Virginia, where there’s a cow for every three humans. “We’ve got big farms, most still family-owned, and a lot of forests,” says Sarah Parmelee, one of the county’s 55,000 residents. “It’s very charming small-town USA,” she adds.

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Nature 639, 22-24 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00616-z

References

  1. Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. Data Centers in Virginia 2024. JLARC Report 598 (JLARC, 2024).

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  2. Electric Power Research Institute. Powering Intelligence: Analyzing Artificial Intelligence and Data Center Energy Consumption (EPRI, 2024).

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  3. De Vries, A. Joule 7, 2191–2194 (2023).

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  4. International Energy Agency. World Energy Outlook 2024 (IEA, 2024).

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  5. Shehabi, A. et al. United States Data Center Energy Usage Report (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024).

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