AI boom ‘needs gas as well as green power and nuclear’, claims oil chief
But booming data centre demand and decarbonisation goals of tech giants also provide strong incentive for oil companies to increase investments in renewables, he says
Renewables and nuclear won’t be able to meet the “megatrend” of surging power demand from AI data centres alone, said Abu Dhabi National Oil Company CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, insisting that gas will also have a key role to play.
Speaking at the opening of the ADIPEC conference in Abu Dhabi on Monday, Al Jaber said the energy industry stands “at the dawn of a new era of hope and possibility, defined by three megatrends.”
“First, the rise of the Global South and emerging markets. Second, the transformation of energy systems. And third, the exponential growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI).”
“These three megatrends present mega opportunities that demand mega solutions,” said Al Jaber, who is also the minister of industry and advanced technology of the United Arab Emirates and chair of the country’s national renewables developer Masdar.
Al Jaber described AI as an “era-defining breakthrough that is changing the pace of change itself,” bringing with it the potential to “accelerate the transformation of energy systems and to supercharge low carbon growth.”
“But the exponential growth of AI is also creating a power surge that no one anticipated 18 months ago. And that’s when ChatGPT took off.”
“A single prompt on ChatGPT needs 10 times more energy than a Google Search and as AI expands it will rely on a massive scale-up of data centres for its huge and fast-growing computational needs.”
“Over the next six years, data centres will more than double requiring at least 150GW of installed capacity by 2030 and double that again by 2040.”
“No single source of energy is going to be enough to meet this demand,” said Al Jaber. “We need to integrate renewable energy, nuclear energy and gas in the most cost and carbon-efficient way.”