AI Feeds Data Center Power Appetite, And the Gulf’s Solar Boom Isn’t a Silver Bullet

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), electricity used by data centers hit about 415 terawatt-hours in 2024, with AI-specific centers driving a 50 percent jump in demand by 2025.

Despite remarkable improvements in energy used per AI task, simple text queries now need less electricity than running a TV, the explosion in complex work like video generation means total data center consumption could more than double by 2030, again according to the IEA.

Renewable energy, particularly solar, is growing rapidly and represents about half of new supply for data centers, but gas and coal still must plug immediate and large gaps in power.

Every improvement in AI efficiency is being outpaced by the appetite for more advanced, resource-hungry tasks. Cutting the energy use for basic operations only goes so far when demand for complex processing, like AI-generated video and deep learning, is skyrocketing, each sometimes using hundreds or thousands of times more power per request than basic text queries.

Solar energy alone cannot cover all new demand. Even though the Gulf enjoys some of the world’s cheapest and most reliable sunlight, solar installations need huge land areas and reliable energy storage to operate round-the-clock. As the IEA highlights, natural gas and coal are still needed to fill in for solar's day-night and weather-driven gaps.

A doubling or more of global data center electricity use is likely before 2030. Even the world’s leaders in clean energy can’t fully shelter themselves from the rising tide of power needs driven by AI, so the challenge is as much about grid planning and infrastructure as it is about efficiency or green generation.