Opinion certainty 3/5 debate potential 3/5

Koomey: Analysts wrongly use Nvidia sales projections to forecast electricity growth

John Koomey · A skeptic’s take on AI electricity load growth · Mar 6, 2025 · at 17:14

Energy researcher John Koomey criticizes data center electricity forecasters for relying uncritically on Nvidia hardware sales projections without factoring in efficiency gains.

0:00 / 0:19exact quote · 19.9s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And usually what they're assuming is NVIDIA's business plan is our growth forecast. Right? They're just saying, because for AI, they're just saying, well, NVIDIA has this projection for the next few years of how many AI nodes they're gonna sell, and they just use that and say, that's the, that's what's happening.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from John Koomey

Opinion
Koomey: Anyone forecasting 2035 data center power demand is making it up
“So I think anyone who claims to know what's going to happen in twenty-thirty-five, the data center of electricity use, I think is just making it up.”
John Koomey Mar 6, 2025 ▶ 46:03 A skeptic’s take on AI electricity load growth
Insight
Koomey: Rebound effects from efficiency gains are typically only 10 to 20%
“Yes, the car's a little bit cheaper, and yes, people drive a little bit more, but generally, these effects tend to be kind of small. They tend to be kind of 10 to 20%.”
John Koomey Mar 6, 2025 ▶ 22:39 A skeptic’s take on AI electricity load growth
Opinion
Koomey: OpenAI lacks an obvious path to profitability without massive growth
“Open AI right now is just a major, it's hemorrhaging cash like you can't believe, right? There's no obvious way that they become profitable without a massive increase in the demand for their services and the ability to raise the cost, and that is really unclea…”
John Koomey Mar 6, 2025 ▶ 30:52 A skeptic’s take on AI electricity load growth
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Koomey: AI industry will pivot to massive efficiency gains under infrastructure constraints
“Between those various, ah, improvements that you can get beyond just shrinking transistors and making things closer together, there's orders of magnitude possibility for improving efficiency, and so my sense is that the, you know, the focus has been basically …”
John Koomey Mar 6, 2025 ▶ 38:30 A skeptic’s take on AI electricity load growth
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Koomey: US data center load will double once more then level out
“It would not surprise me if You know, we saw another doubling, but I would say, you know, probably that's about it. I think that's going to level out, and then people are going to be more efficient at what they're doing based on the history”
John Koomey Mar 6, 2025 ▶ 54:13 A skeptic’s take on AI electricity load growth
Assertion Supported
Koomey: Data center compute grew 6x while power rose only 6% (2010-2018)
“We had about a six-fold increase in the compute output for data centers from 20 10 to 20 18, but electricity use went up a grand total of six percent over that period.”
John Koomey Mar 6, 2025 ▶ 9:06 A skeptic’s take on AI electricity load growth
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.