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One of the first “big tech” campaigns I worked on was to pressure Facebook to adopt renewable energy (instead of coal) for their new data centers. That was in 2011 and in those 14 years we have seen an explosion in the need for data-processing centers to power the AI boom.
The International Energy Agency projects that global electricity consumption by data centers could double between 2022 and 2026, driven in part by the increasing adoption of AI.
This is a big problem and one that we here at Spake have trouble grappling with.
At the heart of Spake’s mission is our work with nonprofits and campaigners in the climate and clean energy space. We leverage the most advanced online and digital tools available to empower campaigners in driving meaningful change. However, this raises an important question: how do we reconcile the values we aim to promote related to sustainability and environmental protection with the increasing energy demands of the very tools we rely on?
For me personally, this feels a lot like the early days of social media when we had to wrap our heads around the idea of using social media platforms like Facebook to promote campaigns and positive change, while at the same time being very much against the direction Facebook was going when it came to serious issues related to privacy, misinformation and human trafficking.
In conversations with our clients and other practitioners in the field, we recognized that, despite the many problematic practices of platforms like Facebook, we had little choice but to maximize their use because our opponents were already leveraging them. The same logic applies to artificial intelligence: we must become highly skilled in using AI tools because, whether we like it or not, corporations, dark-money groups, think tanks, and other opposition forces are already deploying AI to cancel, counter, confuse, and delay the progress we fight for every day.
Artificial intelligence isn’t going away and the companies behind the AI boom are well aware of the growing energy demands of their sector. Some companies are thriving to do better in this regard, but many others simply don’t care about anything past their bottom line.
Whenever possible, Spake prioritizes using AI and digital tools on platforms powered by sustainable energy. However, given the vast array of tools available and our commitment to providing the most impactful digital strategies for our clients, we sometimes rely on platforms that lack transparency about their sustainability policies or are even powered by fossil fuels. This is the reality of the playing field we’re on, and the stakes are too high for us not to use every advantage to stay ahead of our opponents.