Efficiency vs Demand in AI Electricity: Implications for Post-AGI Scaling

TL;DR

This paper models the long-term electricity demand of AI growth, highlighting how efficiency improvements and economic factors influence whether AI's energy use remains moderate or becomes dominant, with implications for climate policy.

Contribution

It introduces an AI sector into a global energy model and analyzes how efficiency and economic drivers affect AI electricity demand trajectories.

Findings

Efficiency improvements can keep AI electricity demand moderate.

Income growth strongly influences AI electricity demand.

Price signals have limited impact on demand responsiveness.

Abstract

As AI capabilities and deployment accelerate toward a post-AGI era, concerns are growing about electricity demand and carbon emissions from AI computing, yet it is rarely represented explicitly in long term energy-economy-climate scenario models. In such a setting, digital infrastructure scaling may be constrained by power system dynamics. We introduce an AI computing sector into the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) and run U.S. scenarios that couple AI service growth with time varying compute energy intensity and economic drivers. We find that service growth does not translate linearly into electricity demand: outcomes depend on efficiency trajectories and demand responsiveness. With sustained efficiency improvements, AI electricity demand remains moderated; with slower or saturating gains, income-driven demand dominates by mid-century. Sensitivity analyses show weak responsiveness to price signals but strong dependence on income growth, implying limited leverage from price-based mechanisms alone. Rather than offering a single forecast, we map conditions under which efficiency-dominant versus demand-dominant regimes emerge, providing a compact template for long run AI electricity-demand scenarios and their implications for power sector emissions.