Who Will Power the 21st Century? — with Hannah Ritchie

“I think people have this sense that we’re not making any progress on clean energy or decarbonisation,” says Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist and deputy editor at Our World in Data. “We actually have made substantial progress on many of these metrics. And I think that’s only accelerating.” In a conversation with Scott Galloway, Ritchie walks through the numbers behind the energy transition, explaining why the conventional narrative of doom is often wrong, where the real bottlenecks lie, and why the US risks falling behind not because of its energy mix but because of its slow adoption of electrification.

The Real Energy Story of AI

The recent frenzy around AI has been partly an energy story, with headlines warning that data centers will overwhelm the grid. Ritchie offers a more measured take. According to International Energy Agency estimates, all data centers currently consume about 1.5% of global electricity, with AI-specific facilities accounting for roughly half a percent. While that number will almost certainly grow, the more pressing issue is geographic concentration. “Almost all of the world’s demand has been served by a very few select locations,” she says, which puts intense pressure on local grids even if the global share remains small. The real challenge, then, is not the absolute quantity of energy AI will need but whether the US and Europe can build out infr