Electricity consumption by data centers is on course to roughly double by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency, with the United States driving the largest share of the increase. Global data center energy use is projected to reach about 945 terawatt hours by 2030, up from current levels, in the agency Energy and AI analysis.

In the United States, consumption is expected to rise by up to 240 terawatt hours, an increase of about 130 percent compared with 2024 levels, lifting US data center consumption to well over 400 terawatt hours by 2030 in the base case. That places the United States ahead of every other country in absolute growth, followed closely by China.

The pull on the broader power system is significant. In the United States, data centers are on track to account for almost half of the growth in total electricity demand between now and 2030. The agency attributes most of the increase to artificial intelligence, projecting that electricity demand from AI optimized data centers will more than quadruple by the end of the decade.

The figures illustrate how quickly computing has become a major load on national grids. With AI training and inference workloads expanding, the concentration of new demand in a relatively small number of large facilities is reshaping how utilities and grid operators plan for capacity, a shift the agency describes as one of the defining energy trends of the decade.

Source: International Energy Agency - https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from-ai