AI’s hidden cost

Mark Zuckerberg plans to spend hundreds of billions on new AI data centres. He has said little about the energy it would require View in browser Jon Ungoed-Thomas • Monday 21 July 2025 Dear friend, Welcome to today's Sensemaker. Long stories short The UK launched an inquiry into the policing of the Orgreave miners' strike. Trump sued the Wall Street Journal over a report about Jeffrey Epstein. More than 93 Palestinians were reportedly killed waiting for aid in Gaza. AI's hidden cost Mark Zuckerberg said last week that Meta would spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build data centres for artificial intelligence as it races other tech giants for dominance. So what? He said nothing of the energy it would require. AI may be getting smarter, but it is also power hungry; thirsty for water resources; and a boon for those who would benefit from environmental rollbacks. Powering the future. The global network of roughly 12,000 data centres is described as the central nervous system of AI. Most are located in the US, with more than 500 in the UK. Many are enormous: one planned by Meta will cover an area nearly the size of Manhattan. They can use as much electricity as aluminium smelters due to the energy required for operating servers. Find the power. The planned closure of some coal-fired plants in the US has already been put back to help meet demand. This is only part of the picture of data centre consumption, which is here now: the indirect carbon emissions of Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta rose by 150 per cent from 2020 to 2023; going global: electricity demand from centres is forecast to double by 2030 to slightly more than the entire consumption of Japan; and likely to encourage more damaging choices: a US Department of Energy report published this month said the risk of power outages could increase 100 times by 2030 if the US "continues to shutter" oil and gas. Slow down. Ireland is a European hub for AI infrastructure, with its network of about 80 data centres consuming more than a fifth of the country's electricity supply. This has led to a moratorium on new data centres in Dublin until 2028. Going green. Tech giants don't want to see this happen elsewhere, so are now in a race to source cleaner energy for AI. Google last week agreed a $3 billion deal to modernise two hydropower plants in Pennsylvania. Meta said in June that it had struck a 20-year deal with a nuclear plant in Illinois to power its data centres. Microsoft is preparing to reopen a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the site of the most serious nuclear meltdown in US history. Water, water everywhere. It is not clear that these agreements will substantially stem emissions, nor do they deal with the issue of water, which is required in huge amounts for cooling. One study estimates that data centres could consume 1.7 trillion gallons of water globally by 2027, with some using millions of gallons a day. This is already raising costs and threatening shortages for those living nearby. Informed choice. It is hard to tell how much water and energy is required for a typical AI inquiry on the consumer end. According to the OpenAI chief Sam Altman, the average ChatGPT query uses the equivalent of one fifteenth of a teaspoon of water, or the same amount of energy as an oven turned on for about a second. He did not provide a source. Conversely, MIT Technology Review calculated that a charity campaign planned out with AI could use the same amount of energy needed to run a microwave for more than three hours. Part of the solution. There are ways in which AI may mitigate its own needs, by helping to optimise water resources and providing blueprints for more climate-efficient buildings. But for now… More energy will be required. Altman warned in Davos last year that AI would consume vastly more power than people expected, and that there would be no way to get there without an energy breakthrough. Zuckerberg had no answer for that. Chart of the Week The Nibs Capital Economy, business and finance Strange overtones Stephen Colbert's departure from The Late Show has been described as "purely a financial decision" by the TV network CBS. It's true that, as the internet fragments audiences, talk shows are not the cash cows they once were. Colbert has a staff of around 200 and his annual salary tops $15 million. But the departures of predecessors such as Johnny Carson were announced in "upfront" meetings with advertisers; this was not. On 2 July, CBS agreed to pay Donald Trump $16 million after he alleged that they had selectively edited an interview with Kamala Harris. On 14 July, Colbert returned from a two-week holiday and described the settlement as "a big fat bribe" on air. On 16 July, Colbert was told by bosses at CBS that they were ending The Late Show next year. CBS is owned by Paramount, which is in the process of being sold to a company owned by the son of Oracle co-founder and Trump supporter Larry Ellison. Technology AI, science and new things Moon sliver Yesterday marked 56 years since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon. Excuse the anniversary journalism, but it invites a question: why have so few people touched down since? The best answer is money. At its peak, the Apollo programme accounted for more than 4 per cent of the US federal budget, while Nasa now has to make do with about 0.4 per cent. This puts the likes of Artemis III on a lumbering path. Nasa last year postponed the lunar mission to 2027 because of technical problems with the heat shields on its crew capsule. During the space race, Nasa would have had the cash to come up with a Plan B on the hoof. In today's age, it has no choice but to delay. A window may have opened for more funding given that Mars-obsessed Elon Musk is out of favour and China is threatening to put a research base on the Moon. But this may come at the expense of other important things. The 100-year life Health, education and government New front The Israeli army issued an evacuation order for Deir al-Balah on Sunday as it expanded its offensive into one of the few areas of Gaza where it has not yet sent ground troops. The city in central Gaza has mainly avoided attacks because some of the Israeli hostages were believed to be held there. Hamas released three captives from Deir al-Balah in February in a heavily choreographed handover. Most buildings in the city remain intact and it has become a relatively safe haven for Palestinians internally displaced within the enclave. Israel is at least signalling that this will no longer be the case, perhaps in the hope that it will help pressure Hamas in ceasefire negotiations. But after a weekend in which thousands of Israelis took to the streets calling for the end of the war, the IDF has also invited scrutiny by publicising its new front. About 20 hostages are believed to be alive, but it is unclear whether any are in Deir al-Balah. Our planet Climate and geopolitics Winging it The UK's dry spring has caused trouble. Crops are struggling, dairy farmers face a shortage of grass for their cows, and droughts and hosepipe bans have been declared across England. One silver lining is the explosion in the population of adult butterflies. Last year was dire for the insects, with counts near an all-time low as the cloudy and damp summer hindered their ability to fly in search of food. There has been no such issue in 2025. Butterflies are everywhere after the springtime heatwaves spurred eggs, caterpillars and adult lepidoptera to emerge from winter hibernation early. Here's the catch: if the dry weather persists, plants that produce butterfly food could wilt, meaning their time to live, mate and pollinate might not last as long as hoped. This would have a knock-on effect on next year's numbers. Luckily, the rain is here. Culture Society, identity and belonging Speed of sound It took less than 72 hours for a married tech CEO to resign after being spotted on a Coldplay 'kiss cam' canoodling with his company's head of HR. Andy Byron, who already had a public profile as co-founder of the $1.3 billion AI firm Astronomer, was an easy target for internet sleuths. His plight may not keep many people up at night. But it doesn't seem to have widely registered that the hyper-viral story sustained itself, in part, through misinformation: Byron did not apologise using lyrics from a Coldplay song, nor did the pair stand next to another HR exec from the company. It is also not po-faced to say that when the New York City Department of Sanitation uses a picture of Byron and the HR head to warn of its surveillance capabilities, the meme may have gone too far. The rapid exposure of the pair is the latest scalp for an internet hivemind that increasingly treats doxxing as a sport. The Week Ahead UK 21/7 – Keir Starmer grilled by House of Commons liaison committee; Water Commission expected to publish final report into the sector. 22/7 – Commons rises for summer recess; England play Italy in Women's Euros semi-final. 23/7 – Inquest into death of Jay Slater continues; England begin fourth test match against India. 24/7 – Quarterly crime statistics published. 25/7 – Resident doctors due to begin strike action; Donald Trump arrives in Scotland to visit his golf properties and meet Starmer in Aberdeen. World 21/7 – Ukraine Defence Contact Group hold virtual meeting. 22/7 – World Trade Organization meets in Switzerland.   23/7 – US Maritime Security Summit begins in Maryland; Google and Tesla results. 24/7 – EU-China summit in Beijing; Comic-Con opens in San Diego. 25/7 – 25th anniversary of the Air France Concorde crash. 27/7 – Tour de France wraps up in Paris; Women's Euros final in Basel. Thanks for reading. Please tell your friends to sign up and tell us what you think. Jon Ungoed-Thomas jon.ungoed-thomas@observer.co.uk Additional reporting by Stephen Armstrong, Xavier Greenwood and Brad Gray. Graphic by Pete Guest. Edited by Xavier Greenwood.     More from The Observer Read 'Rafah proposal masks plan for mass deportation' Benjamin Netanyahu says Palestinians will be free to  stay or go, but in this prospective open prison – which would violate international law – that is no choice at all Click here to read more → Follow Follow The Observer on social media on your preferred platform:   The Observer     The Observer Food Monthly The Observer Magazine The Observer New Review   Listen Listen for free in the Tortoise app or wherever you get your podcasts: Want to change how you receive these emails? Update email preferences Copyright © 2025 Tortoise Media. All rights reserved. Did this email get caught in your spam filter? Add editor@newsroom.observer.co.uk to your address book to never miss an email again. No longer want to receive this newsletter? Unsubscribe here.