Forum Keynote 3: Tina Kaarsberg, US DOE

Increasing Computing Energy Efficiency is a Key Requirement for Sustainability
The future has arrived for climate change and unsustainable computing energy use. Experts confirm that the globe warmed 1.5 degrees C–the threshold for dangerous human climate interference–in 2023, and each successive month has set temperature records. 

Then, in March 2024, front-page stories in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal documented AI-driven exponentially increasing energy demands for computing (e.g., data centers) that are quadrupling forecasts for electricity use. Other drivers of exponentially increasing microelectronics energy use–such as the proliferation of web-connected smart devices and the build-up to 6G and beyond in wireless communications, have yet to manifest.

Against this backdrop, our 2022 DOE initiative on microelectronics Energy Efficiency Scaling over 2 Decades (EES2)–the topic of this talk–seems prescient. When launched–one month after the CHIPS and Science Act was signed–DOE’s Undersecretary Richmond declared that we could not reach Climate goals without it. It counters exponential increases in microelectronics electricity use with exponential increases in energy efficiency over the next 20 years. The talk will detail our efforts in the DOE’s Advanced Materials & Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO) to develop an RD&D plan in 2023.

The next steps are to get public input and deploy the technologies–including at least a dozen commercially ready–as quickly as possible, starting by the end of 2024. In addition to spreading the word on the EES2 RD&D Roadmap and the workforce needed to perform the RD&D and manufacture the technologies–we will use the bully pulpit of the EES2 Initiative, which so far includes 61 organizations that have pledged to join the DOE to stay on the path of doubling microelectronics’ energy efficiency every two years. 

See the DOE EES2 Pledge.