AI’s Power-Guzzling Habits Drive Search for Alternative Energy Sources
The immense amount of energy needed to power generative artificial intelligence models, like the one behind ChatGPT, is creating a new market for data centers that run on alternative energy sources. Supply of electricity, which currently powers the vast majority of data centers, is already strained from existing demands on the country’s electric grids.
AI could consume up to 3.5% of the world’s electricity by 2030, according to an estimate from IT research and consulting firm Gartner. Driven by energy demands and sustainability goals, Amazon.com, Microsoft and Google were among the first to explore an array of nontraditional energy sources, including wind and solar, to power their data centers.
Now those companies and some newer players are looking at an even wider range of sources, including geothermal, nuclear and flared gas, a byproduct of oil production. Exafunction, maker of the Codeium generative AI-based coding assistant, sought out energy startup Crusoe Energy Systems for training its large-language models because it offered better prices and availability of graphics processing units, the advanced AI chips primarily produced by Nvidia, said the startup’s chief executive, Varun Mohan.
Denver-based Crusoe, which began as a cryptocurrency mining operation, converts flared gas—which is burned natural gas from the oil production process—into electricity that powers its data centers. The company launched its cloud service in 2022, focused on AI, because it is the most energy-intensive service that runs on the cloud, said co-founder and CEO Chase Lochmiller.
The vast majority of its customers are AI startups, it said. Crusoe has over 100 small, modular data centers built on-site at oil wells in states such as North
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