Power sector needs at least $1.5tn investment per year: Sultan Al Jaber

The UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber says the energy sector needs an annual investment of $1.5 trillion to meet the increasing energy requirements driven by AI.

AI is expected to account for 4 per cent of global energy needs by 2026, making it around the same amount of electricity use by all of Japan. 

Dr. Al Jaber, speaking at the opening ceremony of the 40th edition of ADIPEC today, noted that no single source of energy is going to be enough to cater for this demand and meeting this demand sustainably will require harnessing diverse energy sources.

“Wind and solar will expand seven times. LNG will grow by 65 per cent. Oil will continue to be used for fuel and as a building block for many essential products. And as the world becomes increasingly urban, demand for electricity will double,” he said. 

Al Jaber continued, “Adding to this demand is Artificial Intelligence. AI is one of those era-defining breakthroughs that is changing the pace of change itself. It is redefining the boundaries of productivity and efficiency. And it has the potential to accelerate the transformation of energy systems and to supercharge low carbon growth,” he said. 

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Generating one image using AI can use almost as much energy as charging your smartphone. In January, the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued its forecast for global energy use over the next two years. Included for the first time were projections for electricity consumption associated with data centers, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence.

The IEA estimates that, added together, this usage represented almost 2 per cent of global energy demand in 2022, and that demand for these uses could double by 2026, which would make it roughly equal to the amount of electricity used by the entire country of Japan. 

Al Jaber noted that no single source of energy is going to be enough to cater for this demand and meeting this demand sustainably will require harnessing diverse energy sources, from renewables and nuclear to LNG.