Over the past year, my research has first highlighted the rapidly growing power demand of AI systems, followed by an assessment of the associated carbon and water footprints. Today, my latest research—published in Resources, Conservation & Recycling—addresses another, often overlooked consequence of the expanding AI infrastructure: electronic waste. While this is not the first attempt…
AI systems may now have a carbon footprint equivalent to that of New York City in 2025, while their water footprint could be in the range of the global annual consumption of bottled water. After previously estimating the global power demand of AI systems in 2023, 2024 and 2025, my latest research—published open access in…
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming the largest energy hog within worldwide digital infrastructure. In my latest research, published in the academic journal Joule today, I show that AI systems were responsible for up to 20% of global data center power demand by the end of last year. Moreover, this share could approach half of…
In recent years it has become well known that cryptocurrency networks such as the Bitcoin network are energy intensive systems. As of 2024, Bitcoin mining operates on more than 16 gigawatts of power demand, responsible for around 80 megatonnes of annual carbon emissions. Ethereum proved in 2022 that it is possible to replace this energy…
It has been nine years since Digiconomist was first launched with the objective of “exposing the unintended consequences of digital trends.” For a big part of these nine years, the sustainability of digital assets such as Bitcoin has been a key focus of the research by Digiconomist. However, in 2022 and 2023 a new digital…
It wasn’t long ago non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were making headlines for their excessive environmental impact. Most of these NFTs were making use of the Ethereum blockchain or a related platform, which meant they were also impacted by the energy-hungry proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism that was part of Ethereum until September of last year. During this month,…
A new article published in the peer-reviewed journal “Patterns” has caught the attention of various mainstream media such as the BBC and Bloomberg. The article by Digiconomist-founder Alex de Vries, titled “Cryptocurrencies on the road to sustainability: Ethereum paving the way for Bitcoin,” discusses the progress that Ethereum has made in reducing its electrical energy…