What's The Environmental Cost Of AI?

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

By 2028, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory forecasts that U.S. data centers could use as much as 12% of the nation's electricity. The reason: generative AI. Since 2022, AI innovation by four leading tech companies — Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon — has led to annual increases in both energy and water consumption. So, in this episode, Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong probes huge water footprint of AI. We begin with the rise of data centers, then look at how computers came to need so much water and, finally, what tech companies are doing to try to turn the ship around.

P.S. Part 2 talks about the leading solutions in the green AI movement. So don't miss our Friday episode!

Curious about tech and the environment? Email us at [email protected] — we'd love to hear from you!

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Transcript

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1:21.8	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
1:27.1	Hey, shortwavers. It's Regina Barber with my co-host, Emily Kwong. Hey, I'm.
1:31.1	Hi, Gina. So today, our episode starts with water.
1:36.7	And someone who's been thinking about water for a long time.
1:40.7	He says maybe that's because of where he grew up.
1:43.1	The official name is Khan R. Chong.
1:45.8	And the town only had like 50,000 people at that time.
1:50.4	This is Sha Lai Ren.
1:51.8	He's from a coal mining town in northern China, where growing up, water was really scarce.
	...

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