The next great leap in global living standards will be driven by servers, algorithms and the silent hum of data centres. The first artificial intelligence was released in the marketplace barely three years ago, but already AI is on its way to becoming the operating system of modern economies. This is true in the way that governments are adopting AI for service delivery, but also on the consumer side; around one in eight people globally now uses AI tools every month. The UAE is the world’s keenest adopter, with more than 60 per cent of the country’s working-age adults regularly using AI tools.
The promise of such a revolution is tantalising: more efficient businesses, more effective public services, smarter infrastructure, better health care, safer cities and faster scientific discovery. Less discussed, but no less consequential, is the energy required to drive it all.
Dr Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and managing director and chairman of Masdar, captured this truth on Tuesday in his keynote address at the opening of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. “For the first time in history,” Dr Al Jaber said, “[economic growth] is measured in computational power and digital capability… Simply put, there is no artificial intelligence without actual energy.”
For governments, this presents a policy challenge. The potential benefits of AI are impossible to realise without confronting the problem of scarce energy. Global power demand for data centres, critical to developing and deploying AI, is expected to quintuple in the next 15 years. In the long term, and to a more limited extent right now, there is near-universal agreement that the solution is energy abundant through renewable energy. But even getting there increasingly requires more sophisticated and resource-intensive technologies, and so a pragmatic approach is necessary.
The temptation has long been to frame sustainability as a binary choice between renewables and hydrocarbons, but reality is more complex. As Dr Al Jaber noted, by 2040 more than 70 per cent of the world’s energy needs will still be met by hydrocarbons. This inescapable truth requires more thinking on a global scale about how to improve hydrocarbon infrastructure to be cleaner and more efficient, so that it can effectively catalyse the monumental changes needed for a sustainable future.
Renewables should and will continue to grow as a proportion of the world’s energy mix. Solar, wind and nuclear power are essential to decarbonisation, energy security and the long-term health of the planet (and, by extension, those of us living on it). So policymakers in developed and developing countries alike should retain their aspirations, but also plan honestly about the path to achieving them.
The UAE’s own experience, building some of the world’s largest solar plants while expanding nuclear capacity, in addition to carbon capture and reducing methane emissions, shows what progress can be realised through ambition, focus and investment. But in this region and much of the world, sprinting towards progress without compromising the stability of the grid requires a transition to sustainability offered by hydrocarbons deployed more efficiently and with lower carbon intensity. The real risk isn’t pragmatism, but rather paralysis through idealism or fear of the unknown.
AI can deliver much to humanity, including on the sustainability front: cleaner air, more resilient infrastructure and scientific breakthroughs to realise a future of abundant energy. But powering that future requires an approach that is wise, responsible and bold.
