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Curiosity
AI and the environment
Context, costs and choices · Nadia Ellis · 12 November 2026
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You have read these headlines
The Australian, 25 July 2025: AI’s dirty secret, are your Google searches harming the planet?
India Today, 5 June 2025: AI’s dirty secret, how your chatbot is draining Earth’s water and energy
Time, 3 June 2026: AI could use as much water as 1.3 billion people by 2030, UN report warns
The Conversation, 3 June 2026: UN report warns AI could soon use 3% of world’s electricity and more water than we need to drink
UN News, 4 June 2026: AI’s environmental costs threaten water, land and climate
The Atlantic, 13 March 2026: Inside the dirty, dystopian world of AI data centers
Curiosity
Search result screenshots, 2025 and 2026
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Is AI really that bad? It depends where you stand...
Your prompt
tiny
The planet
significant, and growing
One place
data centre locations
Curiosity
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Most alarming articles slide from one scale to another.
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Your prompt
The planet
One place
Your prompt
Scale one. What your own use of AI actually costs.
Curiosity
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One text prompt
0.24 to 0.42 Wh
Boiling one litre in the jug
about 100 Wh
An 8-minute hot shower
about 2,100 Wh
Company figures, self-reported, text only. They say nothing about the total.
Curiosity
Google 2025 · OpenAI 2025 · jug and shower are my arithmetic
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It takes 200 - 400 text prompts...  to boil a jug
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A prompt is not a standard unit
Text prompt
0.4 Wh
One image
about 3 Wh
Short video clip
90 Wh
Long high-resolution video
415 Wh
Curiosity
Research estimates 2023 to 2025, via UN University 2026
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Your prompt
The planet
One place
The planet
Scale two. Every data centre on Earth, added up.
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Data centres will double by 2030
485 TWh
2025 estimate
AI: 155
AI: 465
950 TWh
2030 forecast
Under 2% of the world’s electricity today
About 3% by 2030
AI-focused data centres: about a third now, close to half by 2030
AI is driving future energy demands.
Curiosity
IEA, Key Questions on Energy and AI, April 2026
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Switzerland’s grid
37 g CO₂ per kWh
World average
422 g CO₂ per kWh
Indonesia’s grid
682 g CO₂ per kWh
All data centres: about 180 Mt of CO₂ a year, 0.5% of global fuel-combustion CO₂.
Curiosity
UN University 2026 (grid figures) · IEA 2025 (total)
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The carbon footprint of electricity varies
Animated diagram: data centre water in three places (on-site cooling, off-site power generation, supply-chain hardware), withdrawn versus consumed, and what the WUE metric counts
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AI and water... which number?
On-site cooling only
222 billion litres (Rystad, 2025)
Only the data centre’s own cooling water (1 in the video)
Cooling plus power and chip making
560 billion litres (IEA, 2023)
Adds the power station’s water and chip making (1 + 2 + 3)
Power generation at a global average
4.5 trillion litres (UN University, 2025)
Only the power station’s water (2): mostly hydro lakes and crops
All technically correct. All can serve different agendas. 
Curiosity
Rystad Energy 2026 · IEA 2025 · UN University 2026
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How to make a scary headline in three assumptions
A rough total
15% of Americans, a 2 kW dryer, 10 minutes a day. 6.1 TWh a year. All my assumptions.
An average factor
10 litres of water per kWh. The same factor behind the AP headline on AI.
A comparison for effect
96% of Luxembourg’s electricity use. 61 billion litres of water.
“American hairdryers use nearly as much electricity as Luxembourg”
Curiosity
Scenario is mine · water factor from UN University 2026 · Luxembourg regulator 2025
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Your prompt
The planet
One place
One place
Scale three. Data centres in perspective.
Curiosity
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A small global share can be a big local one
23%
of Ireland’s metered electricity went to data centres in 2025
under 2%
of the world’s electricity goes to data centres
18%
of Ireland’s electricity goes to every urban home combined
61%
of Irish voters want data centre building stopped for now. Thousands marched in Dublin on 7 November.
Nobody lives in the global average.
Curiosity
CSO Ireland 2026 · Irish Times/Ipsos B&A, September 2026
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Datagrid could take 6% of our electricity
6%
Waffle chart: 6 of 100 squares filled
of New Zealand’s electricity, if it ran flat out
280 MW (the developer’s figure) for a year is 2.45 TWh. New Zealand used 40.6 TWh in 2025.
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Ten squares, one per dairy farm
Southland dairy farms of 500 cows: the same consented groundwater take, up to 604,800 litres a day
A ceiling, not measured use. Water withdrawn, not water consumed.
The big question: does it get new power, or take it from our EVs and heat pumps?
Curiosity
Environment Southland consents · MBIE 2026 · dairy consents at about 120 L per cow a day
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Aerial view of the xAI Colossus 1 data centre in Memphis, with rows of generators and cooling equipment
xAI Colossus 1, Memphis, Tennessee
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temporary gas turbines at xAI’s Southaven plant powering Colossus 2, none with an air permit
xAI says trailer-mounted turbines are temporary and exempt. In January 2026 the EPA said temporary turbines still need permits.
On 30 October a judge let the NAACP’s Clean Air Act case go ahead. The court has not yet ruled on liability.
Curiosity
Mississippi Today, July 2026 · EPA, January 2026 · SELC and Bloomberg Law, October 2026
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Power hog. Community smog. 
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Aerial view of the Google data centre in Quilicura, Santiago, with steam rising from cooling towers
Google data centre, Quilicura, Santiago (opened 2015)
7bn
litres of water a year the first design for Google’s Cerrillos site would have used, in a city in drought
In 2024 an environmental court partly reversed the permit after a residents’ campaign. Google switched the design to air cooling.
The existing Quilicura site still uses about a billion litres of water a year.
Curiosity
AFP, October 2024 · DCD, February and September 2024
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Poor design. Public pushback. 
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Google’s Hamina data centre, a converted paper mill on the shore of the Gulf of Finland
Google data centre, Hamina, Finland
80%
of Hamina’s district heating to come from the data centre’s waste heat, given free. (local utility estimates)
A dead paper mill, given a second life. Cooled by the sea since 2011, not the town’s water.
Runs on 97% carbon-free electricity by Google’s own figures. Heat recovery was due to start in 2025.
Curiosity
Google, May 2024 · Haminan Energia via Business Finland, 2024 · DCD
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Reclaimed site, seawater and repurposed heat.
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EcoDataCenters.
Aerial view of the EcoDataCenter campus in Falun, Sweden, surrounded by autumn forest
EcoDataCenter, Falun, Sweden
10 MW
of server heat most data centres just dump, put to work drying wood pellets and heating Falun
Built from timber, not concrete and steel, so far less carbon goes into the building itself.
Its heat replaces fuel the town would otherwise burn. Small scale, company claims. 
Curiosity
DCD · EcoDataCenter
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The difference is local.
Rules
Memphis ran on a gap in the permit rules. A court is still deciding whether that was legal.
Pressure
Chile’s redesign came after a court ruling and a residents’ campaign, not before.
Place
Finland and Sweden had cold water, clean grids and heat networks to plug into.
Local rules and local people decided every one of these.
Curiosity
Memphis, Santiago, Hamina and Falun, previous four slides
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Data centres that flex with demand
-25%
power drawn by an Oracle AI cluster in Arizona at peak demand, with the AI work still on target
How it works
Software slows or reschedules jobs that can wait, like model training, when the grid is under pressure.
Where it’s been tried
Arizona, Oregon, Iceland and a live UK trial with National Grid, 2025 to 2026.
So what.
Could unlock up to 100 gigawatts of US grid capacity (company claims)
Worth asking of Southland: how will it flex? 
Curiosity
Emerald AI and NVIDIA, 2025 to 2026 (company and partner figures)
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Less energy per task. More tasks.
Energy per task: about ten times lower each year
AI data centre electricity: up 50% in 2025
Curiosity
IEA, Key Questions on Energy and AI, April 2026
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QT Sustainability.png
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The handprint
Where AI is already helping, and how to judge whether it is worth it.
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Why a few contrails matter so much
A short contrail fades in dry air; further back, in a humid patch of sky, the contrail persists and spreads into thin cloud
Plane
01
Warm exhaust meets cold air
Exhaust freezes into ice crystals at cruising altitude.
02
Only some persist
In cold, humid conditions, they spread into thin high cloud.
03
Persistent contrails trap heat
That cloud has a net warming effect, especially overnight.
2%
of flights
~80%
of contrail warming
small share
big opportunity
Can AI predict the small areas of sky where this happens?
Curiosity
Lee et al. 2021 · Teoh et al. 2024
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AI contrail forecasts work (when pilots use them)
Google’s AI forecasts where contrails would form. 1,232 flights were offered a route around them
112 flew it: 9%
11.6%
fewer contrails across everyone offered the plan
62%
fewer on the flights that flew it
The forecasting works - but airlines need to act. 
Curiosity
American Airlines and Google trial, January to May 2025 · preprint, March 2026
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What else... 
Working now, with measured results
Wildfire cameras, Arizona. Crews alerted about 45 minutes before the first 911 call, on the utility’s figures.
Flood forecasting. River forecasts for 2 billion people in 150+ countries, flash-flood warnings up to 24 hours ahead.
Smarter power lines, UK. About 8% more capacity from existing lines, now rolling out across 585 km.
Precision irrigation, Nebraska. 29–43% less water on corn, with similar yields.
Listening for biodiversity, Ecuador. Gauged biodiversity correctly from birdsong, while missing most calls.
Building energy. Verified savings of 3–15%, about half what vendors claimed.
Promising, not yet at scale
Possum detection, Aotearoa. Listening for the last possums in our forests. False alarms still a problem.
Plastic-eating enzyme. AI-designed, breaks polyurethane back down for reuse. Kilogram-scale trials.
Battery electrolytes. AI-designed, matching today’s best in the lab.
Soft-plastic sorting, Oregon. A pilot. No recycling results published yet.
Uses generative AI (the enzyme is borderline)
Curiosity
Sources in speaker notes
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Ledger 1. Where is harm reduced?
1,400 Mt
of CO₂ a year could be avoided by 2035 if AI enabled tools that already exist were widely used. Nothing is driving that yet.
4 to 5 times data centres’ own emissions in 2035
IEA, Energy and AI (2025), section 5.8.2, p. 249
Methane leak alerts
40+ leaks fixed, but only 12% of alerts got a reply
Satellite water-leak detection
800+ leaks found in one trial. One UK utility has adopted it fully
Precision weed spraying
About half the herbicide over 5 million acres (maker’s figure)
AI weather forecasts
About 1,000 times less energy than the physics model
The tools work. Hardly anyone is using them yet.
Curiosity
IEA 2025 · UNEP 2026 · Thames Water · John Deere 2025 (vendor figure) · ECMWF 2025
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Ledger 2: Is it worth it for other reasons?
Promising, not proven
New antibiotics, MIT. Two AI-designed compounds cleared infections in mice. Only 2 of the top 80 designs could be made.
Rentosertib. An AI-generated drug through a phase 2a trial, heading for phase III to treat Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a rare lung-scarring disease with no cure and a median survival of 2–4 years.  No AI-designed drug is approved yet. 
Isomorphic Labs. AlphaFold-based drug design, US$2.1bn raised. No compound has reached a person yet.
Uses generative AI
We don’t ask hospitals to be carbon-negative. We ask if they are worth what they use.
Curiosity
MIT 2025 · Insilico Medicine 2025 · Isomorphic Labs 2026
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Two rules keep me honest
01
Judge it use by use
Antibiotic discovery does not excuse a billion throwaway videos.
02
Keep the ledgers apart
A medical breakthrough does not take a tonne of CO₂ out of the air.
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Your prompt
The planet
One place
So, what now?
Bringing the three scales together.
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A fair local deal answers four questions
01
Who decides
Information early enough to matter. Mana whenua and neighbours at the table.
02
Who benefits
Jobs, rates and services. Ownership. Demonstrated, or promised?
03
At what cost
Water, power, noise, landscape, and the clean-up if it closes.
04
Who checks
Metered, reported, enforceable. A promise becomes a condition.
A project can be worthwhile overall and still be a poor deal for its neighbours.
Curiosity
After Ezra Klein and Jasmine Sun, 2026
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Where our effort counts
Let the text prompts go
Your chatbot habit is not the problem. Spend the guilt somewhere useful.
Think twice about video
One long AI clip uses about what a thousand text prompts do.
Ask: which water?
And which year, and compared with what. Mine included.
Ask: who’s checking?
Your suppliers. Your council. What gets metered, and who reports it.
Our biggest lever is the questions we ask of the people who build and approve.
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Costs vs Benefits
Measurable now
Data centre electricity doubling by 2030
Gas turbines running next to homes in Memphis
A fight over water in drought-hit Santiago
Still mostly promises
AI-designed antibiotics, so far only in mice
Climate tools that work, and that few use
Science breakthroughs that are real, and early
And the good ones exist: Hamina heats a town, and Chilean residents changed Google’s plans.
If it’s coming here, let’s be the place that does it well.
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Curiosity
Reasons for action... and for hope.
Nadia Ellis. curiosity.nz