Climate tech startups may be focused on reducing carbon emissions, but some are capitalizing on soaring demand for the energy-intensive data centers powering the AI boom.
That’s created new opportunities for climate startups to scale in a market known for its notable carbon footprint. Data centers currently account for 1-2% of global electricity use, and Goldman Sachs Research estimates this will rise to 3-4% by the end of the decade.
“We’re definitely feeling a lot of market pull because of the AI boom,” said Luca Mezossy-Dona, the cofounder of Ionate, a London-based startup developing hardware to detect disturbances in the power grid.
There are a lot of challenges associated with connecting data centers to the grid, Pippa Gawley, partner at climate fund Zero Carbon Capital, told BI. “We’ve had people say it may take two to five years, in some geographies, to get data centers connected to the grid,” she said. “So, as a result, getting an uninterrupted power supply is important to them.”