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Power Google

Google's Data Center Energy Use Doubled In 4 Years (techcrunch.com) 32

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: No wonder Google is desperate for more power: The company's data centers more than doubled their electricity use in just four years. The eye-popping stat comes from Google's most recent sustainability report, which it released late last week. In 2024, Google data centers used 30.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity. That's up from 14.4 million megawatt-hours in 2020, the earliest year Google broke out data center consumption. Google has pledged to use only carbon-free sources of electricity to power its operations, a task made more challenging by its breakneck pace of data center growth. And the company's electricity woes are almost entirely a data center problem. In 2024, data centers accounted for 95.8% of the entire company's electron budget.

The company's ratio of data-center-to-everything-else has been remarkably consistent over the last four years. Though 2020 is the earliest year Google has made data center electricity consumption figures available, it's possible to use that ratio to extrapolate back in time. Some quick math reveals that Google's data centers likely used just over 4 million megawatt-hours of electricity in 2014. That's sevenfold growth in just a decade. The tech company has already picked most of the low-hanging fruit by improving the efficiency of its data centers. Those efforts have paid off, and the company is frequently lauded for being at the leading edge. But as the company's power usage effectiveness (PUE) has approached the theoretical ideal of 1.0, progress has slowed. Last year, Google's company-wide PUE dropped to 1.09, a 0.01 improvement over 2023 but only 0.02 better than a decade ago. Yesterday, Google announced a deal to purchase 200 megawatts of future fusion energy from Commonwealth Fusion Systems, despite the energy source not yet existing. "It's a sign of how hungry big tech companies are for a virtually unlimited source of clean power that is still years away," reports CNN.

Google's Data Center Energy Use Doubled In 4 Years More | Reply

Google's Data Center Energy Use Doubled In 4 Years

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  • Give Us More (Score:5, Informative)

    by dohzer ( 867770 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2025 @11:42PM (#65490396)

    More's Law

  • I believe that solutions for our energy problems will come from private investment, such as from Google looking to meet their energy needs, than any government program. Politicians in the federal government aren't always looking for the best interests of the nation, most often they are looking for the best interests of some segment of the voters and donors in their state or district. Private industry is looking for the best returns on their investment so they can get the most money in the least amount of

    • I believe that solutions for our energy problems will come from private investment, such as from Google looking to meet their energy needs, than any government program.

      If it weren't for a government program Google would power these with 100% coal power.
      And before you say "oh but solar is so cheap" - well solar is so cheap because a government subsidy program drove economies of scale down.

      • If it weren't for a government program Google would power these with 100% coal power.

        Politics is downstream from culture. The only reason we have any government policies that discourage electricity generation from coal is because people wanted that. If Google wants to attract people to their services then they need to be "greener" than the competition. There might not be any one company that provides the same services an products as Google but there's Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft as a few examples that come to mind that compete with Google in at least one market.

        And before you say "oh but solar is so cheap" - well solar is so cheap because a government subsidy program drove economies of scale down.

        I'm not going to claim so

        • I'm not going to claim solar is cheap as I see little evidence of that being the case.

          That's because you have no actual evidence with anything. People who have built solar power systems know that it is.

          What I do see is solar power subsidies driving spot electricity rates so low they go negative at times

          You were so close to getting it.

          • You were so close to getting it.

            And you are so far from getting it.

            What do you believe happens to the price of electricity after all that "free" solar power disappears after sunset?

            Oh, right, we have batteries for that! Do you believe that batteries care if they are charged up with solar, wind, diesel, coal, or squirrels? The value of any solar+battery system is almost entirely in the batteries. Add any other low CO2 generating capacity to the grid and the batteries can level out the disparity between supply and demand. Solar power ne

            • Do you believe that batteries care if they are charged up with solar, wind, diesel, coal, or squirrels? The value of any solar+battery system is almost entirely in the batteries.

              It seems to me your first statement is true, which means 'The value of any solar+battery system is almost entirely " in the solar. The question is whether solar is cheap enough to warrant the additional cost of batteries. The numbers now seem to indicate it is cheaper than a natural gas plant for peak power generation, but not cheap enough to compete with the low prices of electricity at night.

              So if you are Google, you might build a solar array with batteries for times when power from the grid is expensive

            • Solar plus battery is cheaper than a new coal plant.

              Again, why don't you know any actual facts?

              • Solar plus battery is cheaper than a new coal plant.

                Do you have a source for that? A source that isn't an industry shill? I've been pointing to studies out of the United Nations to back my claims on the cost of solar power versus other options, does anyone believe the UN has a bias?

                Again, why don't you know any actual facts?

                Because I see plenty of conflicting claims with no sources. Provide reliable sources and I'd know things.

        • If Google wants to attract people to their services then they need to be "greener" than the competition.

          No, they don't. Advertisers don't care how "green" Google is.

          • Somebody cares how "green" Google is or they would not be creating press releases on how much they reduced their CO2 emissions.

            • Sure. Google cares about appearing green, just like they care about doing "good". They need to be an attractive place to work. They want people to think they are a responsible corporate citizen. They care about their image. They want you to defend them. What's your point? Those aren't people "using their services".
  • I would suggest that the US put priority on developing room temp quantum photonics and increasing storage density as to reduce the dc footprint, but I know our leader is in lala land. These buildings will be repurposed within 50 years for sure.
  • The only way to solve this is to give up depending on data for everything.

  • Genuine Question (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @09:25AM (#65490938)

    Rather than constantly looking for new and better ways to power ever more energy needs, is anyone in the tech sector looking at trying to improve efficiency? And no, I don't mean trying to wring another ounce of processing out of the same old shit, but real improvement.

    I just keep expecting at some point, especially during this AI hype cycle, someone will come up out of the background and say they've developed a quantum leap level of efficiency improvement, and now can do twice as much work for a fourth of the energy consumption. Or is that a complete fantasy and we're just going to perpetually throw more and more of our energy consumption into these behemoth corporations whose main mode of operation appears to be to gather all data for all humans and process it into a way to replace those humans?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jsonn ( 792303 )
      Efficiency for a lot of traditional data center jobs has improved a lot over the last twenty years: - Virtualization helped to reduce idle resources - Switching from spinning disks to flash memory helped a lot - computational power per Watt has improved significantly - system efficiency was helped a lot by going multi-core I can literally replace a 1000W server from 20 years ago with a 100W machine now and get better performance.

    • "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity." — George Orwell

      And the great enemy of progress is performative hand-wringing masquerading as virtue. It's hard to take a question about efficiency seriously when it concludes with a diatribe against 'replacing humans.' The two points aren't related, which suggests the first was just a setup for the second.

      Rather than constantly looking for new and better ways to power ever more energy needs, is anyone in the tech sector looking at trying to improve efficiency?

      Yes. Welcome to 2025, where the entire datacenter arms race is fundamentally about efficiency. Google’s 2025 environmental report details car

  • ...currently 180 TWh/yr according to: https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci [ccaf.io] If it were a country it would be in the top 25.
  • How long before households are footing part of the bill for the massive infrastructure this all requires? It's not like these large companies are going to offer to foot the bill for all of it.
    • Household commercial rates do support the grid more than commercial rates, but commercial enterprises pay up front for substations and additional capacity, while households finance it over infinity ran by not so saucerful corporate creatures who landed a utility job. Rural customers do pay more to connect to the grid, and tend to be low cost until the storm blows through. As the residential customer goes away with rooftop solar and cheap storage, its the poor renters in multifamily that are going to be
      • Except how many households can run on solar power? I don't think I could. I have three heat pumps, four air conditioners, baseboard heat throughout, a water pump for plumbing, two lift pumps for toilets in the basement, electric hot water tank, three refrigerators, a freezer and a pool pump. Also I live only at about 65% of the Suns strength compared to the equator. I'll need the cost of my house in panels and batteries!

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