Global data center power consumption reached almost 800 terawatt-hours in 2025, nearly double the just-over-400-terawatt-hour level recorded in 2020, according to Statista. The United States remains the largest single market, with data center electricity demand exceeding 300 terawatt-hours in 2025.
Statista projects that global data center electricity consumption will roughly double again by 2030, climbing past 1,500 terawatt-hours, a volume equivalent to total US residential electricity use in 2025. The surge is tied directly to the buildout of AI training and inference infrastructure, which requires far more power per rack than traditional enterprise computing.
Geographically, Northern Virginia remains the world's largest data center market ranked by electricity consumption capacity, followed by Beijing, underscoring how concentrated the industry's power demand still is around a handful of hub markets even as growth accelerates elsewhere, including the US Southeast.
The pace of this growth is now the central planning challenge for utilities and grid operators nationwide, many of which have had to revise long-term capacity forecasts upward multiple times in the past two years as hyperscale and AI-focused projects have moved from planning stages into active construction.
Source: Statista - https://www.statista.com/chart/36384/global-data-center-electricity-demand/