The Stanford Energy Seminar has been a mainstay of energy engagement at Stanford for nearly 20 years and is one of the flagship programs of the Precourt Institute for Energy. We aim to bring a wide variety of perspectives to the Stanford community – academics, entrepreneurs, utilities, non-profits, and more.

Talk Abstract: AI and Cloud computing’s power growth will increase US electric power consumption by 2% (2026) and to 8% (2030) (EIA,GS). Jevon’s paradox has overcome 50 years of energy efficiency improvements, driving computing power consumption to TerawattHours (BIG!). This growth both power grid stability and decarbonization, datacenters are slowing the retirement of and even adding new fossil fuel generation. In short, the climate change impact of computing is poised to grow rapidly. We discuss how computing flexibility (power, reliability) can help the grid decarbonize (Zero-carbon cloud), and how generative AI applications such as ChatGPT can be greened. The key is cooperation to manage reliability and to balance power load with variable generation. It depends on redesigning the service model for cooperation between datacenter loads and power grids. This approach can support both corporate goals (efficient computing) and societal goals (power grid decarbonization), and is a key to preventing AI from accelerating climate change. More information is available at http://zccloud.cs.uchicago.edu/.

Speaker bio: Andrew A Chien is the William Eckhardt Distinguished Service Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago and Senior Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. He is currently visiting Stanford on sabbatical. Chien has led the Zero-carbon Cloud project since 2015, and is well-known for his research on datacenters, renewable energy and sustainability, cloud resource management and software, large-scale system architecture, and graph computing architecture. He is leader of the IARPA-funded “UpDown System Project”, designing breakthrough scalable graph analytics systems. Chien has received numerous recognitions for his research. Dr. Chien currently serves on the NSF CISE Advisory Committee, NSF Advisory Committee on Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, and DARPA ISAT. He is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and AAAS. He served as EiC of Communications of the ACM, 2017-2022, and Vice President of Research at Intel Corporation from 2005-2010. He has served on the Faculty of the University of Illinois and as SAIC Chair Professor of University of California, San Diego. He received BS, MS, and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

More information about the seminar:

Anyone with an interest in energy is welcome to join! You can enjoy seminars in the following ways:

• Attend live. The auditorium may change quarter by quarter, so check each seminar event to confirm the location. Explore the current quarter's schedule.
• Watch live in a browser livestream if available. Check each seminar event for its unique livestream URL.
• Watch recordings of past seminars 
  • Available on the Past Energy Seminars page and the Energy Seminars playlist of the Stanford Energy YouTube channel
• (For students) Take the seminar as a 1-unit class (CEE 301/ENERGY 301/MS&E 494)

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