AI's Hidden Environmental Toll: UN Report Highlights Energy, Water, and E-Waste Concerns

Skipping pleasantries like “please” and “thank you” when talking to chatbots could save enough energy to power the annual needs of 760,000 residents in sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the massive but often hidden environmental toll of artificial intelligence, according to a new UN report.

Released by the Institute for Water, Environment and Health under the United Nations University, the UN’s academic arm, the study published on Wednesday also warned that the true cost of AI extended far beyond carbon emissions to include water consumption, land use and electronic waste.

Data centres, which serve as the physical backbone of AI, consumed an estimated 448 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity last year. If data centres were a country, they would rank 11th in the world for energy consumption, roughly on par with France.

Generating this amount of electricity required around 4.5 trillion litres of water – enough to fill 1.8 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. The infrastructure demanded 6,900 sq km of land, which is nearly 4.5 times the size of Greater London, the report said.

Furthermore, by 2030, AI infrastructure could generate up to 2.5 million tonnes of e-waste each year – the equivalent of discarding 250 Eiffel Towers annually.

However, this environmental burden is not shared equally. The United States and China currently host 90 per cent of the world’s AI-specialised cloud infrastructure, leaving smaller nations with little control over access, pricing or data governance.