The digital transformation has radically changed our world. Every aspect of our daily lives is now digitally mediated, enabling us to communicate, work, study and consume goods and services with unprecedented ease. But while we are immersed in this new era, it is crucial to consider an aspect that is too often overlooked: digital is not an ‘abstract’ concept, but a very concrete reality. With an energy cost that needs to be addressed, at a time when sustainability is at the heart of the global agenda.
Digitalisation? It requires (a lot of) energy
The rapid digitisation of our society brings with it a growing demand for energy, and data centres stand out among the largest consumers in this context. These infrastructures, which house and manage the servers for processing and storing data – indispensable for the operation of digital platforms, cloud applications and artificial intelligence services – already account for around 1 per cent of global electricity consumption, and the figure is between 2 and 4 per cent in large economies such as the United States, China and the European Union. Despite the fact that today the annual consumption of data centres worldwide is about half of the electricity consumption of household appliances – such as computers, telephones and TVs – estimates indicate that this is set to change rapidly. In fact, the IEA special report ‘Energy and AI’, predicts that the demand for electricity from data centres worldwide will more than double by 2030, reaching about 945 TWh: to give an order of magnitude, slightly more than the entire electricity consumption, to date, of Japan. Driving this growth will beartificial intelligence, with electricity demand from AI-optimised data centres expected to quadruple by 2030.
Although this growth in electricity demand for data centres is bound to increase emissions, it does not mean that digitisation is a bad thing for the future of the planet. On the contrary, it can be a positive driver of change itself, if driven well, to promote energy efficiency globally. Tools such as the Internet of Things (IoT), for example, enable optimisation of consumption in strategic sectors such as building management, transport and industrial production. Artificial intelligence itself, as highlighted by the IEA report itself, if diffused and used according to sustainability criteria, can compensate by enabling a significant reduction in emissions: the adoption of intelligent control systems for monitoring and controlling resources can in fact enable a reduction in energy waste, contributing strongly to a more sustainable future for the planet. This means that, in this context, the challenge will be as much to balance the energy demands of digitisation with the efficiency possibilities that these tools enable, as to generate clean and efficient energy to power the great change underway.
Towards sustainable data centres
For some companies in the IT sector, equipped with a network of data centres that are increasingly powerful and at the same time indispensable, because they are connected to an increasing number of activities, this challenge is crucial in terms of reducing their overall emissions. For Google, for example, data centres are a key part of its path towards net-zero operations by 2030. Therefore, the company is committed not only to reducing the amount of emissions resulting from their construction – by reducing materials and using more sustainable ones – but also to responsibly managing their energy consumption. A commitment that, as shown on the dedicated website, has brought tangible results: in 2024, Google’s data centres used 84% less infrastructure energy than the industry average.
To feed the growth of these infrastructures, and the consequent demand for energy, it is natural to think of renewable energy sources: solar and wind energy, in fact, is undoubtedly – among those available – the potentially most sustainable solution. However, there is no shortage of criticalities in this direction. Above all, the well-known limit of intermittency: sun and wind, unable to guarantee continuity, make it complex to maintain a stable and efficient supply. Hence the need for innovative solutions such as large-scale energy storage systems, or the construction of huge photovoltaic fields and wind power plants close to infrastructures. The latter is a very complex solution in view of the huge investments required and the limitations often caused by the limited space available for these plants, which create a major obstacle to the realisation of sustainable energy solutions for data centres.
The Road to Fusion
But to power its operations, Google is also exploring the route ofFusion Energy. For this reason, the company recently entered into a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) for 200 MW of electricity from the inaugural ARC power plant, which according to CFS will feed energy into the grid in the early 2030s in Chesterfield County, Virginia. Already an investor in CFS since 2021, with this agreement Google also has the opportunity to draw power from other ARC power plants, and aims to help demonstrate and expand the path to commercial fusion energy.
But from a leading digital company to a leading energy company, Eni has also signed an agreement with CFS, worth more than $1 billion, to purchase decarbonised energy from ARC: an agreement that strengthens the strategic partnership between Eni and CFS, adding a commercial partnership to the collaboration in the technological field. In fact, the Italian company was the first to believe in the work of CFS – an MIT spin-out – by investing in it back in 2018 and establishing a collaboration aimed at accelerating the industrial development of magnetic confinement fusion, which would make it possible to generate large quantities of zero-emission energy in a safe and virtually unlimited way.
The goal is clear: to build the first plant capable of feeding fusion energy into the grid.
To get there, the SPARC experimental reactor, capable of handling and confining plasma and ensuring the achievement of a positive net energy balance, will soon be commissioned. This project will pave the way for ARC – in the early 2030s – as the first functioning plant capable of feeding energy into the grid.
The type of reactor – tokamak – under study with CFS lends itself to widespread application. The hope is that in the coming years we will have a sustainable, safe and potentially inexhaustible source of energy in the low-emission energy mix. Which could play a crucial role in satisfying, in a sustainable manner, the ever-increasing demand for energy that the digital transformation brings and will bring in the years to come.