Artificial intelligence is expected to double global energy demand, but it may also simultaneously become one of the world’s most powerful tools for efficiency and emissions reduction, members of a panel hosted by the El Sewedy University of Technology and attended by EnterpriseAM said last week. Under the theme AI and Energy: Two Sides of the Same Coin?, academics, energy companies, and tech players discussed the delicate balance Egypt, like many other countries, is trying to understand between AI’s energy-intensive nature and the ways in which it can support greening the economy.

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AI demand is rewriting global power-consumption curves. The session opened with projections from the International Energy Agency showing that electricity consumption by data centers could quadruple by 2030 — driven by the explosive rise of AI models and the scale of data required to run them. Meanwhile, the AI market itself is expanding at breakneck speed, expected to jump from some USD 137 bn in 2022 to USD 1.8 tn by 2030. This simultaneous surge in energy demand and AI deployment creates — as participants put it — an environmental and regulatory challenge with no precedent.

But can AI offset the energy surge it creates? AI will unavoidably increase electricity consumption at a drastic rate, but it can also optimize renewable-energy use through load forecasting, demand scheduling, and improving performance across factories and urban buildings, said Elsewedy Electric Group Chief AI and Data Officer Hazem Shatila. The environmental paradox, he added, is striking: AI consumes enormous amounts of energy, yet it is also one of the key solutions to reducing it. AI systems can forecast solar and wind output, manage smart grids in real time, minimize losses and leakages, and improve efficiency in heavy industries — even extending asset lifetimes through predictive maintenance. “This ecosystem makes AI one of the most important emerging tools supporting the green transition,” Shatila said.

A single data center running AI models can consume as much electricity as 10 aluminum smelting plants, said Elsewedy Electric Senior Vice President Wael Hamdy. In just three years, he noted, GCC nations are seeing a surge in new power generation capacity equivalent to what was built over the past 25 years, largely due to the boom in data centers and cloud computing.

This concentration of demand raises intertwined engineering and environmental challenges. How do we generate this much electricity sustainably? How do we manage it efficiently within limited spatial footprints? And how do we build flexible generation capacity that can adapt to second-by-second load variations? Elsewedy Electric has been preparing by expanding smart-grid systems, deploying high-efficiency power technologies, and investing in joint research on boosting plant performance, Hamdy said.

Still, the human factor will make or break the transition. Behavioral change inside institutions, participants agreed, is the launchpad for any green transformation. Some 70% of AI projects in industry fail — not because of technology, but because of resistance to change, Shatila said. Transformation, he argued, starts with AI adoption before AI transformation. Universities face the same barrier, said El Sewedy University of Technology President Ahmed Youssef. “Fear of the new is the core obstacle. Overcoming that fear only happens through knowledge and hands-on practice,” he said.

And here, the academic and environmental missions intersect — raising environmental and technological awareness, training talent to manage technology responsibly, embedding sustainability and AI concepts into curricula, and building students’ decision-making and critical-analysis skills. Cooperation between El Sewedy University of Technology, Politecnico di Milano, Elsewedy Electric, and Enppi is not a traditional academic partnership, but a model for designing programs directly tied to real energy and technology needs, according to the participants.

This approach is also a vehicle for transferring industrial know-how to students early, supporting applied research in energy efficiency and smart-grid systems, and developing local solutions to industrial energy-consumption challenges. Youssef noted that private-sector partners assign first-year students real engineering projects, while the university runs applied research to enhance cable and generator performance, and offers short technical-training programs for the energy and AI sectors.

Scientific diplomacy is becoming an important driver of regional and international partnerships that support innovation in renewables and energy efficiency, said UNESCO chair of energy for sustainable development and Politecnico di Milano Rector’s Delegate to Science Diplomacy Emanuela Colombo. Europe and Africa, she noted, have jointly identified AI and energy as strategic priorities for the coming years.

The need to develop clear governance frameworks for AI use in energy was also highlighted, including setting energy-efficiency standards for data centers, limiting the environmental footprint of large-scale AI training, assessing the carbon impact of every application, and regulating the relationship between companies and consumers to ensure energy justice, transparency, and ethical responsibility in model design.

Future energy leaders must now speak the language of tech, said Enppi Training and Development General Manager Manal Soliman. This will require new skill sets, including deep understanding of digital technologies, the ability to make data-driven decisions, and the capacity to manage institutional transformation while balancing operational needs with energy-efficiency goals, he explained.

Egypt’s energy future is inseparable from AI. The discussion made clear that Egypt is standing at a pivotal moment — global energy demand is rising due to AI, industries are transforming, universities are rebuilding curricula, and the private sector is investing in smarter, more efficient energy solutions. Sustainability, participants concluded, will not be achieved by energy systems alone nor by technology alone, but through a fully integrated interaction between the two, led by a new generation of engineers, researchers, and innovators.

Today’s moment is one of possibility, not fear, said the participants. They urged young people to embrace challenges, view failure as an essential part of learning and innovation, and recognize their unique readiness to engage with emerging technologies. They also underscored the importance of preserving language and identity as anchors that no technology can replace. The session ended with a call for students to lift their ambitions beyond what previous generations achieved — to become leaders of the green transition and builders of the future.

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