Aniket Shah, Jefferies’ head of sustainability and energy-transition strategy, argues that Wall Street’s growing fixation on AI data centers’ carbon emissions is misdirected and risks overshadowing bigger climate priorities heading into New York Climate Week. He cites International Energy Agency projections that data centers will represent only about 3% of global electricity demand by 2030 and roughly 2% of power-sector emissions by 2035, far below transport and heavy industry. Shah warns that this fixation could pull attention and capital away from sectors responsible for much larger shares of the roughly 50 billion tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions that need to reach zero.
