Luckily we live in a society where its ok to use power for personal pleasure, such as running an A/C in the summer which accounts for much more electricity use than LLM inference.
> U.S. data centers consumed 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2024, according to IEA estimates. That works out to more than 4% of the country’s total electricity consumption last year – and is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity demand of the entire nation of Pakistan. By 2030, this figure is projected to grow by 133% to 426 TWh.
There are ~10M cows nationally. The average energy consumption is ~1000 kWh/cow annually. Summing up, the entire dairy industry consumes ~10TWh. That is less than 10% of the national data center energy burn. [edit: was off by a factor of 10]
> U.S. data centers consumed 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2024, according to IEA estimates. That works out to more than 4% of the country’s total electricity consumption last year – and is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity demand of the entire nation of Pakistan. By 2030, this figure is projected to grow by 133% to 426 TWh.
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
chneu|1 month ago
[deleted]
fatherzine|1 month ago
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/24/what-we-k...
There are ~10M cows nationally. The average energy consumption is ~1000 kWh/cow annually. Summing up, the entire dairy industry consumes ~10TWh. That is less than 10% of the national data center energy burn. [edit: was off by a factor of 10]
turtlesdown11|1 month ago
citation for this claim?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/24/what-we-k...
> U.S. data centers consumed 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2024, according to IEA estimates. That works out to more than 4% of the country’s total electricity consumption last year – and is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity demand of the entire nation of Pakistan. By 2030, this figure is projected to grow by 133% to 426 TWh.
jprd|1 month ago