Our World in Data is great, but this article would've been improved if it offered a chart that offered a comparison to it's leading "1.5% of global electricity number".

For example: 7% to 10% of all global electricity is consumed by air conditioning. It's not hard to think of relatively small interventions that could save 1.5% of global energy use annually.

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ggreer 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Increasing global electricity production by 1.5% (or 500 terawatt-hours) would also be a solution. Production from solar power increased by 600TWh from 2024-2025 and its rate of adoption is increasing as costs go down, so this doesn't seem like a problem worth worrying about.

	▲	RetroTechie 3 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Going by those figures, would mean that AI datacenters built so far, consume enough energy to undo almost a year of solar power buildout. AND growing like crazy. That's running costs. Not energy going into a building's construction or fabrication of the gear going in there. Does seem like a problem worth worrying about.
	▲	paulhebert 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The problem is we need to be reducing our use of highly polluting energy sources and shifting to renewable sources. The more our energy use increases the harder it is to do so.