U.S. data centers are projected to consume more than 250 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2026, according to the International Energy Agency, as artificial intelligence workloads drive up power use across the sector. Globally, data center electricity consumption could top 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026.

The growth has been rapid. Worldwide data center electricity use amounted to about 415 terawatt-hours in 2024, roughly 1.5 percent of global consumption, and has grown at 12 percent per year over the past five years. The IEA projects global consumption will nearly double to around 945 terawatt-hours by 2030, representing just under 3 percent of world electricity use.

Artificial intelligence is the primary engine. Electricity use by accelerated servers, the specialized hardware that runs AI workloads, is projected to grow about 30 percent annually in the agency's base case. That concentration of demand is why a single facility can require as much power as a small city.

The strain is uneven across regions. The IEA estimates that in some smaller markets, data centers already consume an outsized share of national electricity. For the United States, the more than 250 terawatt-hour forecast places data centers among the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand, a trend that is reshaping how utilities plan generation and transmission investment.

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