# Unshifted compute load Data centres can't shift work to cheaper, cleaner hours Problem 0003 · Energy · Theme: Measurement · What it would take: A hackathon · Scope: Global · Editorial grade: High · Framed 21 September 2026 · Updated 22 September 2026 · Framed from public reporting Training runs, batch inference and analytics are scheduled around deadlines and cluster availability, almost never around what electricity costs or emits at that hour. Much of this work is genuinely movable, a few hours either way or a different region entirely, but the information needed to move it lives in a different system from the scheduler, and in most organisations nothing joins them. So flexible load behaves like inflexible load. ## Who lives with it Platform and infrastructure teams · sustainability leads with compute in their inventory · grid operators courting flexible demand ## Why now The IEA's April 2025 Energy and AI report puts data centre electricity use at around 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global consumption, and projects roughly a doubling by 2030 with accelerated servers accounting for almost half the increase: a load growing fast and, unusually for industrial demand, substantially time- and place-shiftable. ## Why it matters A large and rapidly growing load is being treated as though it had no flexibility, when a meaningful share of it does. Making compute schedulable against grid signals is a software problem sitting between two industries that do not yet share a vocabulary. ## From public reporting - [Energy demand from AI (Energy and AI)](https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from-ai), International Energy Agency, 10 April 2025 ## Cite it “Data centres can't shift work to cheaper, cleaner hours.” Ainna Problem Radar, problem 0003, 21 September 2026. https://ainna.ai/problems/data-centres-cant-shift-work-to-cheaper-cleaner-hours --- Page: https://ainna.ai/problems/data-centres-cant-shift-work-to-cheaper-cleaner-hours · The whole Index as Markdown: https://ainna.ai/problems.md