UN report sounds the alarm: The way AI is draining natural resources is more extreme than anyone expected

Companies have been going all in with investments in artificial intelligence and the expectation is that it will keep accelerating in the coming years. In order to support this technological revolution, hundreds upon hundreds of massive new data centers are being built to house the rows upon rows of servers.

These facilities already consume vast amounts of electricity, resulting in carbon emissions when the energy source is non-renewable. However, a report from the United Nations says that we shouldn’t be focusing on just that as “this misses a substantial part of the picture.”

AI has a country-scale footprint on the environment

“AI is threatening natural resources for billions,” according to UN scientists, including water and land on top of its massive energy consumption. Last year, it is estimated that energy use by global data centers was 448 terawatt-hours (TWh), or 448 billion kilowatt-hours.

In order to generate that electricity and keep the servers cool they require trillions of gallons of water. And the buildings, especially those for new data centers, occupy thousands of acres like the one Meta is building in Louisiana that is roughly the size of Manhattan.

The UN scientists predict that AI’s energy footprint by 2030 could be more than double that of 2025, reaching 945 TWh, the combine annual consumption in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. They project that the associated water footprint at almost 2.46 trillion gallons, enough to meet the yearly needs of 1.3 billion people. Meanwhile, data centers’ associated land footprint under their forecast would be nearly 5,600 square miles, twice the size of metropolitan Jakarta, home to over 32 million people.

Reducing one footprint can magnify another

The UN report cautions about evaluating the sustainability of AI by a single metric like its carbon emissions as this misses the trade-off that that has to be made. Being “low-carbon” does not automatically make it “low-water” or “low-land”. The environmental burdens are shifted on to the other metrics, and they can actually be magnified several fold.

“Switching from coal to bioenergy, for example, can on average cut the carbon footprint of electricity by 70 per cent, while increasing its water footprint more than thirty-fold and its land footprint a hundred-fold,” explain the UN scientists.

“What surprised us most is how often the choices that look greenest from a carbon perspective end up worse for water or for land,” Dr. Miriam Aczel, UNU-INWEH Researcher and the lead author of the report, said in a statement. “If we keep judging AI sustainability by carbon alone, we might think that renewables make AI infrastructure clean but that is solving one problem while creating other problems, often in places that didn’t ask for it.”

Get closer to the game! Whether you like your soccer of the European variety or that on this side of the pond, our AS USA app has it all. Dive into live coverage, expert insights, breaking news, exclusive videos, and more. Plus, stay updated on NFL, NBA and all other big sports stories as well as the latest in current affairs and entertainment. Download now for all-access coverage, right at your fingertips – anytime, anywhere.

And there’s more: check out our TikTok and Instagram reels for bite-sized visual takes on all the biggest soccer news and insights.