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Leading figures from governments, the energy sector, the tech industry, financial institutions, academia and civil society gathered in early December 2024 for the first major international meeting of its kind addressing the deepening links between energy and artificial intelligence (AI) as the technology rapidly develops and uptake soars.

      Energy for AI and AI for Energy were in focus at the IEA’s first international conference on these topics. 

The International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) Global Conference on Energy & AI on 4 and 5 December featured a technical forum for experts and a high-level roundtable focused on building strategic understanding on energy and AI topics. The two-day event brought about 500 participants to the agency’s headquarters in Paris to discuss how to meet AI’s energy needs, securely and sustainably, as well as how the technology could be used to optimise energy systems and speed up the pace of energy innovation.

“There is no AI without energy – specifically electricity,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “Given the pace of AI adoption, now is the time for policy makers and industry to collaborate on a vision for meeting this fast-growing source of electricity demand in a secure and sustainable manner.

“At the same time, AI is poised to be a transformative technology for the energy sector, with the potential to accelerate innovation, improve efficiency and security, and speed up energy transitions. This first-of-its-kind IEA conference provided an important venue to advance dialogue on these topics at a critical moment.”

The rise of AI is quickly emerging as one of the most significant energy trends today. AI is already helping to accelerate the discovery of new energy materials and technologies, and it can be used to improve how energy is produced, consumed and distributed. However, expanding AI and the digital economy requires huge data centres, which can each consume as much electricity as 100 000 households. Although data centres currently account for just 1% of electricity usage globally, there are already significant challenges to the grid in areas where they are concentrated, and demand is expected to keep growing. For example, in Ireland, data centres already account for 20% of electricity demand, and in the US state of Virginia, the share is over 25%.

The IEA conference was attended by ministers and high-level government officials from about 25 countries, such as Brazil, Canada, France, India, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. CEOs and senior executives from companies with a combined market value of $15 trillion were also in attendance, with representatives from Amazon Web Services, Google, Hitachi Energy, Iberdrola, Infosys, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Schneider Electric and more sharing insights during the sessions.

“Understanding the AI revolution is critical to understanding the future of energy,” Dr Birol said. “The IEA, which has long been at the forefront of analysing the links between digitalisation and energy, is well placed to ensure that the significant opportunities that AI offers are fully grasped and that associated risks and challenges are addressed.

“We will do this starting with a special report on energy and AI which we will publish in the spring of 2025,” he said.

In addition, the IEA will launch a new AI-based chatbot for users to explore the 2024 edition of the Agency’s flagship World Energy Outlook report. Developed in cooperation with Microsoft, the online tool is designed to answer questions about energy trends in natural, conversational language, allowing anyone curious about the findings of the report to explore its analysis and projections easily.

During the conference, the IEA hosted a fair for students, which considered potential solutions to the challenges of integrating AI into the energy sector. Vijay Vaitheeswaran, Global Energy and Climate Innovation Editor for The Economist, also conducted a series of fireside chats with high-profile participants.

The opening session of the high-level roundtable can be viewed on the IEA’s website here. The Chair’s Summary of the conference can be found here.

For more information visit: https://www.iea.org/news/

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