The United States has the highest per-capita electricity consumption from data centers of any region in the world, and the gap is widening. Data centers in the U.S. consumed roughly 540 kilowatt-hours per capita in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency's Energy and AI report, a figure the agency projects will more than double to exceed 1,200 kilowatt-hours per capita by 2030, equal to roughly 10 percent of an average American household's annual electricity use.

The United States and China together account for nearly 80 percent of the global growth in data center electricity consumption expected through 2030. U.S. consumption alone is projected to rise by about 240 terawatt-hours, a 130 percent increase from 2024 levels. Globally, data center electricity use is projected to double to roughly 945 terawatt-hours by 2030, reaching just under 3 percent of total worldwide electricity demand, up from about 1.5 percent in 2024.

Within a typical data center, servers account for roughly 60 percent of electricity demand, while cooling systems range from about 7 percent in efficient hyperscale facilities to more than 30 percent in less efficient enterprise data centers. Electricity used by AI-optimized accelerated servers is growing at approximately 30 percent annually, more than three times the 9 percent growth rate for conventional servers, and now represents nearly half of the net increase in global data center electricity consumption. The IEA notes that while data centers remain a modest share of total electricity demand growth worldwide, their geographic concentration in specific markets creates outsized strain on local power grids.

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