It's no secret that AI eats kilowatts for breakfast. Just one AI-generated image consumes as much energy as it takes to charge a smartphone. At scale, that energy demand is seriously adding up — with the mass-adoption of the energy-hungry tech, data center power usage in North America surged from 2,688 megawatts in 2022 to 5,341 by 2023. That helped catapult data centers up to the 11th largest electrical consumer on the planet — just behind the energy use of France. At the current rate of energy consumption, the data centers powering AI are projected to become fifth in global […]