Data center electricity use is projected to rise by 530 terawatt-hours between 2024 and 2030, an increase equal to the annual electricity consumption of roughly 50 million households. The figure places data centers fifth among sectors driving electricity demand growth over that period, behind electric transport, appliances, and space cooling.

Non-heavy industries lead the ranking with an additional 1,533 terawatt-hours, an amount comparable to what about 145 million average US households consume in a year. The comparison gives a sense of scale for a sector that has drawn heavy attention because of artificial intelligence workloads.

Under the base case, 8 percent of the increase in global electricity demand through 2030 traces to data centers. A scenario with faster AI adoption lifts that share to as much as 12 percent by 2030, and data centers would then represent as much as 4.4 percent of overall global electricity demand by 2035. A higher efficiency scenario cuts the 2035 figure to 2.6 percent. If AI use stops expanding much beyond current levels, the share stays below 2 percent by 2035, against 3.2 percent in the base case for that year and 1.5 percent today.

The wider picture is an economy that is electrifying across many fronts at once. Vehicles are shifting to electric power, and industrial operators are scaling production while treating electrification as a route to lower and steadier energy costs. Falling prices for renewable installations and volatility in world fuel markets have both pushed that shift along.

Source: Statista - https://www.statista.com/chart/36004/data-centers-rising-energy-demand/