There are different types of energy and electricity consumption will double in 10 years.
ICT's energy consumption is huge. Global energy is still mainly produces with fossil fuels and Canada, US & Australia are big fossil fuel hogs. Renewable sources are slowly increasing and eating up the the fossil part of the mix: hydro is the largest part of renewables and wind & solar are the fastest growers. Finnish electricity consumption (83tWh) hasn't increased from 2004ish, I would say that's because we haven't had any meaningful growth in economy either, since all business requires energy.
There's elasticity in electricity demand, it can be balanced with storage and pricing and there's a market where you can take trade in energy. We also need reserve markets to keep the frequency balanced - it needs to be within tolerance or the grid will fail. ICT requires a lot of batteries to prepare for disturbances, and you can make money from your capacity when it's not needed for current operations. Combined production of heat & electricity is quite efficient, it's used in wintertime and Biomass has increased it's share of District Heating's energy sources. District heating can utilize the heat that's generated in DC operation, but it does need some priming to get it up to required temperatures and currently there isn't much need for the heat during summer. In the future we should couple DC's, energy sector and city planning and also store the heat generated in non-peak times for future use. DC energy usage is only going skywards, since there's growing investment into AI.
Your comment may be published.
Name:
Email:
Message: