Research on energy and climate for those who really want to get the numbers right
For more than a decade, since my old friend Richard Hirsh and I wrote this article for the Electricity Journal (Hirsh and Koomey 2015), we've compiled Energy Information Administration data every year to track recent developments for the US. This compilation can be tricky because of quirks in
My talk , titled "A rapid tour of recent developments in solar, wind, batteries and enhanced geothermal power generation" summarizes recent progress with renewables. The key slide is this one, from EMBER : What many fail to understand is just how powerful manufacturing scale economies, network externalities, learning by doing,
I’m proud to share a report we created in collaboration with Gridlab , released today, Monday March 23, 2026, 9am PT. Below is a link to the final report. Koomey, Jonathan, Zachary Schmidt, Priya Sreedharan, Nikhil Kumar, and Taylor McNair. 2026.  Separating fact from fiction in data
On February 10th, Veolia and Microsoft released a report on AI and energy, water, and waste management . One of the short chapters in that report is a framing article about AI and energy use by me and Eric Masanet at UC Santa Barbara. The article distinguishes three ways AI might
In the previous post , we announced our new Python package that helps modelers explore the key greenhouse gas emissions drivers in their scenarios. This post shows examples of visual dashboards that these tools allow you to create. There are three main dashboards, as documented in Koomey et al. 2019 and
TLDR: Below you can download a new open-source python package for calculating and comparing key drivers of emissions using outputs from Integrated Assessment Models. In 2004-2006 I served on the dissertation committee of Holmes Hummel at Stanford University. Holmes's thesis showed how a commonly used identity
With recent growth in the data center industry has come increasing scrutiny about direct water use in these facilities [1]. Data center water use varies by facility type, location, and operational choices [2, 3]. These facilities use water because it’s usually more energy efficient to cool
This report is the result of a collaboration between Koomey Analytics and the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, DC. Summary : Recent reports of unprecedented growth in electricity demand from data centers have appeared in many major news outlets. These headlines encapsulate two widely expressed concerns. First, that rising energy demand
When we first created the Koomey.com site circa 2010, we used Tumblr , which was a capable blogging site. We customized the site (with some difficulty) but it mostly performed well for a long time (almost 15 years). This past summer we started investigating other options, and soon settled on
The modern data center lies at the heart of today’s digital global economy, performing computing tasks like e-commerce, communications, search, financial modeling, and artificial intelligence (AI). Data centers undergo constant change, both in the workloads they run 24x7 and the hardware that runs those applications. Lack of
Our new article in Joule on data needs for understanding AI electricity use came out online today in Joule (link will be good until October 8, 2024). Here’s the summary section: As the famous quote from George Box goes, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.
My friend and colleague Danny Cullenward and I were on KQED Forum this morning, talking about the environmental impacts of our digital lives . Lesley McClurg was the host. You shouldn’t worry at all about your digital footprint, as we discussed in the show. It’s small and
The frenzy over new projections of electricity growth continues to escalate. This excellent episode of the Energy Transition Show is the best counterweight to that crisis mentality that I’ve found. The show notes themselves are extensive for those who want to dig in further. Short summary : There are
I worked with a stellar team of the world’s top experts on computing’s effect on energy and emissions to craft this commentary for Nature , which came out today (April 22, 2024): Luers, Amy, Jonathan Koomey, Eric Masanet, Owen Gaffney, Felix Creutzig, Juan Lavista Ferres, and Eric
This conversation was a fun one. here’s the description: Will the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence break the climate system? In recent months, utilities and tech companies have argued that soaring use of AI will overwhelm electricity markets. Is that true — or is it a