ES-1 is the most important figure, though? As you say, it is a summary, and the authors consider it their best estimate, hence they put it first, and in the executive summary.

Figure 1.1 does show a single source from 2018 (Shehabi et al) that estimates almost flat growth up to 2017, that's true, but the same graph shows other sources with overlap on the same time frame as well, and their estimates differ (though they don't span enough years to really tell one way or another).

I still wouldn't say that your assertion that data center energy use was fairly flat until 2022 is true. Even in Figure 1.2, for global data center usage, tracks more in line with the estimates in the executive summary. It just seems like the run-of-the-mill exponential increase with the same rate since at least 2014, a good amount of time before genAI was used heavily.

The energy impact of crypto is rather exaggerated. Most estimates on this front are aiming to demonstrate as a high value as possible, and so should be taken as higher upper bound, and yet even that upper bound is 'only' around 200TWh a year. Annual energy consumption is in the 24,000TWh range with growth averaging around 2% or so per year.

So if you looked at a graph of energy consumption, you wouldn't even notice crypto. In fact even LLM stuff will just look like a blip unless it scales up substantially more than its currently trending. We use vastly more more energy than most appreciate. And this is only electrical energy consumption. All energy consumption is something like 185,000 TWh. [1]

[1] - https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption

It looks like the number of internet users ~doubled in that time as well: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?end=2022...