Bill Gates Defends AI Energy Use, Highlights Tech's Role in Boosting Green Energy

Bill Gates Defends AI Energy Use, Highlights Tech's Role in Boosting Green Energy
Image credit: WSJ website 

Bill Gates, who left Microsoft's board in 2020 but remains an adviser to CEO Satya Nadella, stated that tech companies would pay a "green premium"—a higher price—for clean energy as they look for new power sources, aiding in the development and deployment of green energy. "The tech companies are the people willing to pay a premium and to help bootstrap green energy capacity," he said at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London on Thursday.

Gates has defended the rapid rise in energy use caused by AI systems, arguing that the technology would ultimately offset its heavy consumption of electricity. Speaking in London, Gates urged environmentalists and governments to "not go overboard" on concerns about the massive amounts of power required to run new generative AI systems, as Big Tech companies like Microsoft race to invest tens of billions of dollars in vast new data centers.

Data centers will drive a rise in global electricity usage of between 2-6 percent, the billionaire said. "The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 percent reduction? And the answer is: certainly," said Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who has been a prolific investor in companies developing sustainable energy and carbon-reduction technologies. In May, Microsoft admitted that its greenhouse gas emissions had risen by almost a third since 2020, largely due to the construction of data centers.