1、Ericsson White PaperGFMC-25:000140 UenApril 2025ICT energy evolution:Telecom,data centers,and AIICT energy evolution:Telecom,data centers,and AIContentApril 20252ContentExecutive summary 3Introduction 4Historic and current electricity use 5Why is energy use not growing exponentially?8What about the

2、future?11Conclusion 14References 16Authors 17ICT energy evolution:Telecom,data centers,and AIExecutive summaryApril 20253Executive summaryOver the past decade,there has been considerable discussion about the electricity use of the information and communication technology(ICT)industry.There are conce

3、rns that the sectors electricity consumption might increase significantly due to increased digitalization and growing data volumes,processing,and storage.Looking back,most ICT studies have greatly overestimated future electricity use because they primarily relied on the assumption that larger data v

4、olumes would proportionally require more electricity to transmit and process the data.Ericssons research 1 shows that while the total data traffic has increased exponentially by about 80 times between 2007 and 2023,the ICT electricity consumption in the use phase has increased only 1.4 times.It is c

5、lear that data transmission and electricity use are not directly proportionate.Forecasting future ICT electricity use needs to rely on an understanding of hardware market statistics together with actual company-reported electricity consumption figures to more reliably identify existing and future en

6、ergy trends.It is anticipated that electricity use of networks and data centers will continue to increase during the coming years.However,Ericssons analyses do not predict an exponential rise in electricity consumption as a result of increased digitalization,network expansions,and the growth of trad