Commentary on the environmental impact of AI often swings wildly between doom-and-gloom catastrophism and blind techno-optimism. But where’s the truth in all this? On July 24, 2025—the symbolic date of Earth Overshoot Day—we sat down with Yves Grandmontagne, founder and editor-in-chief of DCMAG (Data Centre Magazine*), to get his take on AI and its real environmental impact. It is worthy of note that Yves and I explored Silicon Valley’s infrastructure innovators together through extensive press tours some time ago. This provided us with firsthand insight into the tech industry’s approach to these challenges. The current annotated transcript of our interview is a summary of our thorough, nuanced, and let’s admit it, quite lengthy discussion. You are therefore encouraged to treat this article as your starting point for diving deeper into this extremely complex topic.



Exploring the Real Environmental Impact of AI



What’s the real environmental impact of AI? An employee keeps watch over the cooling units at Orange’s data centre in Val de Rueil in Normandy, France — Photo antimuseum.com


* DCMag is only available in French



This post summarises what turned out to be an incredibly rich hour-long conversation. The sheer complexity of this topic forced us to dig into multiple technical, economic, and environmental angles—making any kind of comprehensive analysis near inconceivable.



Drawing on his deep expertise in the data centre and AI sectors, Yves Grandmontagne gives us some much-needed factual perspective on a debate that’s often polarised between doomsday scenarios and over-the-top techno-optimism. To tackle this properly, we decided to take recent quotes—both positive and negative—and fact-check them with our expert.



Yves’s analysis helps us cut through the noise and understand what’s really at stake in this technological breakthrough.











Environmental Impact of AI: Reality Check Time



TLDR: Environmental Impact of AI



The electricity consumption issue is more nuanced than you think* – AI will represent 20-30% of data centre consumption (not twice that number), and only 2-4% of overall electricity consumption




* Energy efficiency gains are actually remarkable – Over the last decade: number of data centres x2, floor space x4, but energy consumption up only 6%



* Beware of dubious comparisons – Comparing a ChatGPT query to Google search is methodologically flawed (completely different technologies and services)



* Water consumption varies massively by geography – Huge issue in the US, but Europe has been using smarter closed-loop systems for ages



* Tech innovations look promising – New technologies (direct liquid cooling, immersion cooling) are slashing water and energy consumption



* AI might actually be part of the solution – Can optimise energy mix management and electricity transport, which is currently our main bottleneck



* Let’s get some perspective here – Data centre impact remains pretty marginal compared to the chemical industry (32% of French energy consumption) or agriculture




*All numbers by Yves Grandmontagne at Data Centre Magazine



Bottom line: The impact is “real but massively overstated”—we need to put things in c...