AI And Environment

Photo credit: The Rising Nepal Dixya Poudel

Wed, 30 September 2026

Photo credit: The Rising Nepal Dixya Poudel

Wed, 30 September 2026

The accelerating pace of AI is pushing the environment into overdrive. Training and running AI models takes up a huge amount of energy. Servers that support this technology consume electricity, and in most countries, that electricity comes from fossil fuels. Adding to this is the massive quantity of water required to cool these servers that are housed in data centres. Today, data centres are built worldwide, driven in part by the AI surge and are projected to increase rapidly in the future.  

Since data centres guzzle water at an alarming rate, they put a strain on local water resources. This means locals may have to compete for water and because data centres bring lucrative investment and tax revenue, they are often built despite the local protests. Apart from water sources, AI also requires rare earth minerals which could lead to increased mining in the coming years. Mineral extraction carries environmental risks ranging from toxic runoff to habitat destruction. Then there is the matter of electronic waste. High-tech evolves constantly and rapidly. As technological companies compete to use ever more powerful chips, older hardware tends to become obsolete. When it is discarded without recycling, it adds to the global e-waste.