Oded Gour-Lavie, CEO and Co-Founder of nT-Tao, says our AI-fuelled appetite for digital power is pushing the planet toward an energy crisis that the leaders who agreed the Paris Climate Agreement never saw coming.

In 2015, world leaders gathered in Paris to make history. They stood shoulder to shoulder, hailed as visionaries for crafting a global pact to cut emissions and phase out fossil fuels. The Paris Agreement was supposed to be a bold step forward – a blueprint for saving the planet. The agreement’s primary objective was to limit global temperature rise to ‘well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels’ while striving to restrict the increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. 

In recent years, international leaders have emphasised the critical importance of not exceeding the 1.5°C threshold by the end of the century. This heightened urgency stems from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s findings that surpassing 1.5°C would trigger more extreme climate impacts, including intensified droughts, heatwaves, and precipitation events. 

Meeting this target requires global greenhouse gas emissions to reach their peak by 2025 and decrease by 43% within the following five years. But like many grand plans forged in conference rooms, it came with a fatal flaw: it assumed, back in 2015, we knew what the future would look like. Spoiler alert—we didn’t.

The rise of AI

Back in 2015, nobody imagined the energy demands of today’s world. AI and crypto mining were niche pursuits barely out of the lab. Data centres were growing but far from the energy gluttons they are now. 

Fast forward to 2025, and the energy landscape is unrecognisable. Crypto mining and AI models demand unfathomable computational power, and data centres alone now consume 340 TWh of electricity globally—more than the entire energy use of some countries. In the US, these centres could devour up to 12% of total electricity consumption by 2028. None of this was factored into the Paris Agreement. It was a deal for a world that no longer exists.

Consider the numbers. Between 2013 and 2023, global energy demand rose by 15%, with only 40% of that growth being met by clean energy sources like renewables and nuclear. Fossil fuels still dominate 80% of the global energy mix. 

In advanced economies, demand has dropped slightly – about 0.5% per year due to technological efficiency improvements – but that’s dwarfed by surging consumption in emerging markets, where energy use has grown by 2.6% annually. These nations, home to 85% of the global population, have added 720 million people and boosted industrial output by 40% over the past decade.

The nuclear option

The key to achieving the Paris Agreement’s mitigation goals lies in addressing this surging demand with energy solutions that are both scalable and carbon-free. Nuclear energy, both fission and fusion, is uniquely positioned to meet these criteria. 

Nuclear can provide the reliable baseload power needed to stabilise grids while supporting the rapid growth of digital infrastructure. Expanding nuclear energy capacity would allow nations to significantly cut emissions without compromising on the energy required for economic growth – a crucial balance for developing economies striving to improve quality of life.

This transition, however, requires more than technological innovation – it demands financial commitment. Climate finance, long discussed but inconsistently delivered, must play a central role in enabling developing economies to adopt nuclear alongside renewables. Countries facing mounting energy demand can’t afford the upfront costs of nuclear infrastructure without international support. Expanding nuclear energy must therefore become a priority for climate finance mechanisms, aligning financial resources with the most impactful mitigation strategies.

And yet, what are Western nations doing? Closing nuclear plants, dragging their feet with delays, cancellations, and lack of momentum in new nuclear energy projects, such as the delayed plants in Poland and Turkey, or the long-anticipated US Plant Vogtle, finished seven years late, and clinging to outdated assumptions about what renewables can deliver. 

Germany shut down its last nuclear reactors in 2023, leaving itself more dependent on coal and natural gas just as energy prices spiked and geopolitics became unstable. France, once a nuclear powerhouse, has been bogged down by delays and cost overruns in upgrading its aging reactors. Meanwhile, in the US., new nuclear projects have been paralysed by regulatory hurdles and public scepticism. Only a handful of reactors have come online in the past decade.

China – a global energy powerhouse? 

While the West dithers, China races ahead. In 2022, Beijing approved six new nuclear reactors, and by 2023, it had over 20 under construction, and they’re actively approving new nuclear reactor projects, including the recent approval of 11 new reactors in 2023. 

China’s aggressive nuclear strategy isn’t just about energy – it’s about power. As the West debates, delays, and decommissions, China is setting itself up as the energy hub of the 21st century. Its combination of nuclear expansion and leadership in renewables could soon make it the global epicenter of clean energy production, leaving Western nations trailing in its wake.

This isn’t just bad energy policy – it’s a geopolitical disaster in the making. Energy is power, in every sense of the word. Nations that control their energy future control their economic and strategic destiny. By failing to embrace nuclear energy, Western countries aren’t just putting their economies at risk; they’re ceding strategic ground to a rival that’s playing the long game.

And here’s the truth: renewables alone won’t save us. Wind and solar are vital but intermittent. Battery storage isn’t advancing fast enough to provide the 24/7 reliability modern economies need. Nuclear energy is the only scalable, carbon-free option that can provide the baseload power to support both our existing grid and the explosive growth of AI and digital infrastructure. 

Nuclear fusion, though still in development, holds the promise of limitless clean energy. Yet Western leaders treat nuclear power as an afterthought, while the Paris Agreement remains frozen in a pre-AI world.

Time to update the Paris Agreement? 

Updating the Paris Agreement isn’t just a matter of tweaking targets or extending timelines. It requires a wholesale rethinking of our energy future. We need binding commitments to expand nuclear capacity, not just vague pledges to build more wind farms. Governments must streamline regulations, cut through the red tape strangling nuclear projects, and invest in public education to counter decades of misinformation about nuclear energy.

The World Energy Outlook 2024 paints an optimistic picture of clean energy replacing fossil fuels by mid-century. But optimism without realism is a recipe for failure. If we’ve learned anything from the last decade, it’s that energy demand evolves in ways we can’t predict. AI and data centres were the curveballs of the past decade. What’s coming next – autonomous vehicles? Quantum computing? Whatever it is, one thing is certain: our energy policies are not ready for it.

The Paris Agreement was a noble start, but the world has moved on. If Western leaders don’t wake up, they’ll find themselves living in a future shaped by nations that were faster, bolder, and smarter about energy. This isn’t just about climate goals or keeping the lights on – it’s about whether the West can remain competitive in a world where energy dominance defines global power. Right now, the answer isn’t looking good.