The recent artificial intelligence-related Nobel Prize in chemistry is just more evidence that the AI revolution is well underway, but there will be unobvious barriers to overcome. One will be the almost unimaginable amount of energy required to support some of its most important applications. For example, 50 pending requests for the creation of 90 new data centers in Ohio would triple the peak load on Ohio American Electric Power’s grid compared with 2023, enough to power over 20 million households.

For context, consider that each typical AI data center will consume annually the equivalent electricity of 750,000 electric vehicles — about six months of Tesla sales. The requested 90 data centers in Ohio are the power equivalent of 45 years of current Tesla sales. The numbers that support this calculation are readily available and are based on an average of 10,000 miles of driving per year.