AWS, Google, and Meta Plan to Invest a Lot of Money in Data Centers

To support the growing demand for artificial intelligence projects, AWS plans to spend $10 billion to build two data center complexes in Mississippi. The Madison County data center is expected to create about 1,000 jobs in Mississippi. According to Tech Radar, AWS has already invested $108 billion in infrastructure in the U.S., while Amazon has already invested $2.3 billion in Mississippi prior to this announcement. AWS also recently announced plans to invest more than $15 billion in data centers in Japan.

Reuters reported earlier this month that Google would invest $1 billion to build a 33-acre data center outside London. According to Network World, Meta plans to spend $800 million to build a data center in Indiana focused on supporting generative AI workloads. The 700,000-square-foot data center is expected to be completed in 2026 and will feature direct-to-chip liquid cooling technology. The data center is expected to be 100 percent powered by renewable energy and achieve LEED gold certification. According to Indiana Business, this will be Meta's 22nd data center worldwide and its 18th in the United States.

By 2026, electricity consumption in data centers, artificial intelligence, and cryptocurrencies will double.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that electricity consumption in the data center, artificial intelligence, and cryptocurrency industries could double by 2026. According to an IEA report, data centers used about 460 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2022 and could consume more than 1,000 TWH by 2026. "Data centers are among the most energy-intensive building types, consuming 10 to 50 times more energy per floor area than a typical commercial office building," according to the Department of Energy.

Dr. Moises Levy, senior principal analyst at Omdia, told Light Reading in 2023 that data center energy consumption has remained relatively flat over the past few years, hovering around 1 to 1.5 percent, which is almost flat compared to global energy consumption. The IEA said that updated regulations and technological improvements, including efficiency improvements, are critical to slowing the surge in data center energy consumption. On the bright side, low-emission sources of electricity - such as renewables, solar, wind, hydro and nuclear - are expected to account for about half of global electricity generation by 2026. In 2023, it will be less than 40 percent. According to Bloomberg, there are 8,000 data centers worldwide, of which about 33 percent are in the United States, 16 percent in Europe and nearly 10 percent in China.