Technologies

AI Is the ‘Biggest Driver’ of Electricity Use in North America, a New Energy Report Shows

By 2040, AI data centers alone will account for 12% of North American electricity consumption, according to a report on the global energy transition.

As Meta, Amazon, Google and OpenAI race to build more, and more massive, data centers across the US to support their generative AI efforts, AI is expected to be the «biggest driver of electricity consumption» in North America over the next five years, a new energy report finds.

Those data centers, which pack in thousands of computers to handle everything from training AI models to fielding your ChatGPT, Gemini and Sora requests, will gobble up not just megawatts of electricity but also millions of gallons of water and thousands of acres of land.

By 2040, overall data center energy use around the globe — including both general-purpose (think cloud storage and video streaming) and AI-focused data centers — will quintuple to become 5% of all electricity use, with AI accounting for more than half of that, according to the report from DNV, an international assurance and risk management firm. But that’s a global average. In North America, AI data centers alone will account for 12% of electricity consumption in 2040, DNV says.

In taking a broad look at what it calls the global energy transition to cleaner sources of power, DNV says that the world is still moving «too slow to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement» on climate change for achieving net zero emissions and staving off dangerous warming in this century.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

In July, the Trump administration issued what it calls America’s AI Action Plan, urging haste in building data centers, with regulatory concerns taking a back seat. «America’s environmental permitting system and other regulations make it almost impossible to build this infrastructure in the United States with the speed that is required.»

But despite AI’s swift advancement and the Trump administration backpedaling on environmental regulations in the US, the firm forecasts that global emissions will drop 63% by 2060. The report estimates that what’s happening in the US will have more of an effect at home, with emissions reductions set back about five years, and not so much on the world’s clean energy goals.

«The US accounts for one-seventh of global primary energy use and thus exerts some influence on the overall picture,» the DNV report says. «However, massive scale decarbonization of the Chinese economy continues, coupled with low-cost electro-technology exports from China to other regions.»

With many countries embracing those resources, the report says, «Chinese clean tech exports continue to propel the transition in the rest of the world.»

Meanwhile, the rapid growth in AI’s energy use is expected to taper off. «We find that AI’s initial exponential growth in power demand will give way to a more linear pattern over time,» the report says.

DNV projects that even in 2040, AI’s power demands will remain a smaller portion of global electricity use than EV charging and space cooling.

Technologies

A Hacker Threat Is Hiding in Your Car’s Tire Pressure System

A new study reveals that a car’s tire pressure monitoring system can be easily accessed by hackers.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Friday, Feb. 27

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Feb. 27.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Was today’s Mini Crossword too short for you? The New York Times now has a Midi Crossword, which is not as big as the original NYT Crossword, but longer than the Mini. Read on for the answers to today’s Mini Crossword. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Lacking locks
Answer: BALD

5A clue: One of the Great Lakes
Answer: ERIE

6A clue: Movie with the fake newspaper headline «Wonder Elephant Soars to Fame!»
Answer: DUMBO

8A clue: Live tweeter?
Answer: BIRD

9A clue: The slightest bit
Answer: ATAD

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Hard thing to leave on a cold day
Answer: BED

2D clue: Caribbean island northwest of Curaçao
Answer: ARUBA

3D clue: The sky, in a saying
Answer: LIMIT

4D clue: Actress Messing
Answer: DEBRA

7D clue: Like this clue number
Answer: ODD

Technologies

Smartphone Sales to Plummet 13% in 2026 Due to RAM Crisis, Says IDC

AI-fueled memory scarcity is hitting the phone market hard this year, particularly for inexpensive, low-end devices.

The projected shortage of memory chips worldwide will have a more serious impact on smartphone sales in 2026 than previously projected, according to new data from International Data Corporation Worldwide. Whereas the company just in November had estimated a drop of between 0.9% and 5.2% (the latter being its «pessimistic scenario»), now it sees a 12.9% decline this year, based on its Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

«What we are witnessing is not a temporary squeeze, but a tsunami-like shock originating in the memory supply chain, with ripple effects spreading across the entire consumer electronics industry,» Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for Worldwide Client Devices at IDC, said in a statement.

The hardest-hit companies are expected to be those selling to the lower end of the market, which can’t absorb the higher component costs while maintaining profitable margins. As a result, Jeronimo says, many of those players will pass the added costs on to consumers.

That also includes regional markets like the Middle East and Africa that sell mostly inexpensive smartphones, which could see a steep 20.6% drop year-over-year.

By contrast, IDC expects Apple and Samsung to be better able to withstand the crisis. «As smaller and low-end-positioned Android vendors struggle with rising costs, Apple and Samsung could not only weather the storm but potentially expand market share as the competitive landscape tightens,» said Jeronimo.

Memory has become scarce due to the insatiable demand to feed generative AI. Essentially all of the memory set to be manufactured this year is already earmarked. What started as a demand for graphics processors has expanded to other components. For example, hard drive manufacturer Western Digital announced in early February that it had already sold out of its supply for 2026.

«We expect consolidation as smaller players exit, and low-end vendors face sharp shipment declines amid supply constraints and lower demand at higher price points,» said Nabila Popal, senior research director at IDC, projecting a 14% rise in the average selling price of smartphones to $523.

Popal expects memory prices to stabilize by the middle of 2027, but doesn’t see them coming down to earlier levels. The sub-$100 segment, made up of approximately 171 million devices, will be «permanently uneconomical,» she said. «In short, there is no return to business as usual for vendors and consumers.»