Data Center Energy Consumption Statistics 2026: AI, PUE and Water

US data centers used 192 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2024, accounting for 4.7% of total U.S. electricity consumption, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s 2025 Update report. The lab’s Reference Case projects 649 TWh in 2030, and the same report puts data centers at 11.8% of total U.S. electricity by 2030, within a scenario range of 9.5 to 15.3%. Those two Berkeley Lab figures frame the data center energy consumption statistics that follow.

The International Energy Agency estimates data centres used 485 TWh in 2025, roughly doubling to 950 TWh in 2030 in its central projection. The figures below cover US and global consumption, AI server demand, power usage effectiveness (PUE), water, grid interconnection queues and emissions, each with its source, base year and forecast year. Projections are scenario estimates from named forecasters, never measured values.

Key Takeaways

• Berkeley Lab now forecasts 464 TWh of US data center use in 2028, in the middle of the range presented in the 2024 Report, which spanned about 325 and 580 TWh in 2028.
• Data centers would be responsible for 33% of total US load growth over the six-year period from 2024 to 2030 in the lab’s Reference Case.
• Global data centre electricity demand grew by 17% in 2025, while consumption from AI-focused data centres surged 50%, per the IEA.
• The US national average PUE improved from 1.55 to 1.45 between 2018 and 2024, while Google reported a 2025 fleet-wide average PUE of 1.09.
• US data centers’ indirect water footprint from electricity was nearly 800 billion liters, against a direct water total of 66 billion liters in 2023.
• ERCOT is weighing approximately over 474 gigawatts of grid connection requests, and approximately 90% of the new power requests are data centers, per the Texas governor’s office.

Editor’s Choice

• US data center electricity, 2023: 176 TWh, or 4.4% of total U.S. electricity consumption.
• Global data centre electricity, 2024: 415 TWh, around 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption.
• IEA Base Case for 2030: around 945 TWh, more than doubling from the 2024 level.
• Berkeley Lab 2030 range: 521 to 843 TWh of US data center electricity.
• Uptime Institute survey average PUE, 2025: 1.54.
• US data center capacity in service, end of 2025: more than 50 GW.

US Data Center Energy Consumption Statistics

• US data center energy use remained stable between 2014 and 2016 at about 60 TWh, then began rising as GPU-accelerated AI servers entered the server stock.
• By 2018, data centers consumed about 76 TWh, representing 1.9% of total annual U.S. electricity consumption.
• Total data center electricity usage climbed from 58 TWh in 2014 to 176 TWh in 2023, according to Berkeley Lab.
• Between 2017 and 2023, data-center power demand more than doubled, largely due to the growth in AI servers.
• The 2025 Update puts 2024 use at 192 TWh, which falls at the low end of the estimated range in the 2024 Report, after revised estimates for prior years.
• The energy use of cryptocurrency mining is not included in the scope of either Berkeley Lab report.
• The 2025 Update’s Reference Case of 649 TWh in 2030 represents 11.8% of forecasted 2030 U.S. electricity use as presented by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).

Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report and 2025 Update

About This Data

• 17 sources: 9 from US government agencies and Berkeley Lab, 2 IEA reports, 1 grid operator notice, 4 Google and Microsoft disclosures, and 1 industry survey.
• Publication window: December 2024 to September 2026.
• Selection: Government, intergovernmental, grid-operator, company, and survey publishers only; market-research sellers excluded.
• Figures are reviewed on a rolling basis and updated when sources publish new editions.

How much electricity do data centers use?

US data centers used 192 TWh in 2024, 4.7% of total U.S. electricity consumption, per Berkeley Lab. Global data centres used 485 TWh in 2025, according to the IEA. The two totals use different models and scopes, so the US figure is not a fixed share of the global one.

US Data Center Electricity Forecast for 2030

• Berkeley Lab’s 2030 scenarios yield a Compounded Uncertainty Range of 521 to 843 TWh, equal to 9.5 to 15.3% of total U.S. electricity use in 2030.
• The High Inference Energy scenario reaches 782 TWh, or 14.2% of 2030 U.S. electricity, the highest single-parameter case.
• The Consolidated Deployment scenario reaches 578 TWh, or 10.5%.
• The earlier 2024 Report range was 6.7% to 12.0% of total U.S. electricity by 2028.
• The 2024 Report’s 2028 range covered about 325 and 580 TWh, representing 6.7% to 12.0% of total U.S. electricity consumption.
• Non-data center load is forecast to increase by 926 TWh (24%) from 2024 to 2030, based on NERC’s forecast.

Recent Developments

• September 29, 2026: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an Order that accepts PJM’s proposed Reliability Backstop Procurement but suspends it for five months, with an effective date of Feb. 28, 2027.
• September 29, 2026: PJM said it will not proceed with the Reliability Backstop Procurement on Sept. 30 as originally planned; new supply resources in the process must commence commercial operation no later than June 1, 2032.
• September 9, 2026: The EIA forecast that U.S. electricity generation will grow 2.2% to a record 4,368 billion kilowatt-hours this year, citing data center development.
• September 9, 2026: The EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook forecast commercial sector electricity sales will increase by 3.3% in 2026 and 2.7% in 2027.
• August 3, 2026: Governor Greg Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to audit all data centers advancing through ERCOT’s interconnection process before any project moves forward.

Global Data Center Electricity Consumption

• Data centres accounted for around 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024, or 415 TWh, per the IEA’s Energy and AI report.
• Global data centre electricity consumption has grown by around 12% per year since 2017, more than four times faster than the rate of total electricity consumption.
• The United States held the largest share of 2024 consumption at 45%, followed by China (25%) and Europe (15%).
• The IEA’s April 2026 update projects consumption roughly doubling from 485 TWh in 2025 to 950 TWh in 2030, accounting for around 3% of global electricity demand.
• Electricity consumption from AI-focused data centres grows much faster than overall data centre electricity consumption, tripling in this period.
• Nearly half of data centre capacity in the United States is in five regional clusters.

By the numbers: The IEA counts 415 TWh of data centre use in 2024, with the United States at 45%, China at 25% and Europe at 15%. Three regions hold most of the load, so where those three build next does much to set the global total.

Data Center Electricity Growth by Region to 2030

• China and the United States are the most significant regions for data centre electricity consumption growth, accounting for nearly 80% of global growth to 2030.
• US consumption increases by around 240 TWh (up 130%) compared with the 2024 level.
• China’s consumption increases by around 175 TWh (up 170%), the fastest of the four regions.
• Europe’s consumption grows by more than 45 TWh (up 70%), and Japan’s increases by around 15 TWh, up 80% on its 2024 level.
• By 2035, the range of data centre electricity demand across the IEA’s cases spans from 700 to 1 700 TWh.
• The increase in gas-fired power to meet data centre demand in the Lift-Off Case is four times higher than in the Headwinds Case.

AI Servers and Data Center Power Demand

• US server energy usage grew from about 30 TWh in 2014 to nearly 100 TWh in 2023, more than tripling.
• GPU-accelerated AI servers grew in energy usage from less than 2 TWh in 2017 to more than 40 TWh in 2023.
• In Berkeley Lab’s 2030 Reference Case, AI servers account for 84% of total server energy use and 55% of total data center energy use.
• The current Blackwell architecture has a rated power of 1 000 W per chip and 72 chips per rack, with a power density of 130 kW per rack.
• The announced Rubin architecture will reach a power density of 600 kW per rack, according to the IEA.
• Between 2020 and 2025, the power density of AI servers increased by 11 times; by 2027, it is set to see a further fourfold increase.

Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2024 Report and 2025 Update; International Energy Agency, Key Questions on Energy and AI, April 2026

Power, not floor space, is the unit that matters here, which is why data center construction and capacity statistics are reported in megawatts. With the announced Rubin architecture, a box the size of a household fridge would have a peak power draw equivalent to that of around 65 households.

Data Centers and US Commercial Electricity

• The EIA estimates servers alone accounted for an estimated 7% of commercial sector electricity consumption in 2025.
• Data center server electricity use grows to 22% to 33% of commercial building electricity use by 2050 across the EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2026 cases.
• By 2050, server consumption alone reaches between 446 billion kilowatt-hours (BkWh) and 818 BkWh.
• The EIA assumes space cooling requirements in data center floorspace are as much as 2.9 times as energy intensive as non-data center floorspace, on average.
• Commercial sales growth is forecast to account for 63% and 56% of the increase in electricity sales in 2026 and 2027.
• Although Texas has paused the connection of new data centers to the grid, the West South Central region still accounts for the largest regional share of growth in total electricity sales.

Source: US Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2026 and Short-Term Energy Outlook, September 2026

Data Center PUE Statistics

• Berkeley Lab estimates infrastructure consumes 36% of total data center electricity in 2018, declining to 31% in 2024 as the national average PUE improves from 1.55 to 1.45.
• Aggregate PUE continues to decline, reaching 1.36 in 2030 in the Reference Case.
• According to the Uptime Institute’s 2025 Global Data Center Survey, the global average PUE of respondents’ data centers was 1.54.
• The Uptime Institute reports that average PUE levels show little change for the sixth consecutive year.
• Google says its data centers operate with a 2025 fleet-wide average PUE of 1.09 and use 83% less overhead energy than the industry average.
• Google also reports its data centers delivered over 3 times more compute performance per unit of energy than five years ago.

Key finding: Google’s overhead energy use of 0.09 against the industry average overhead energy use of 0.54 gives its 83% comparison. Survey PUE stalled while Berkeley Lab’s national average fell, which points to new hyperscale and liquid-cooled capacity pulling the US mean down rather than older sites getting better.

What is a good PUE for a data center?

PUE is total facility energy divided by the energy that powers IT equipment, so a reading closer to 1.0 means less overhead for cooling and power delivery. Google’s fleet figure covers all large-scale data centers (once they reach stable operations), in all seasons, including all sources of overhead. Against that scale, the Uptime Institute’s 2025 survey average was 1.54, while Berkeley Lab puts the national average PUE at 1.45 in 2024.

Google Data Center PUE by Campus

• Google’s fleet recorded a quarterly PUE of 1.10 and a trailing twelve-month PUE of 1.09 in the second quarter of 2026.
• Lancaster, Ohio posted 1.04 in the quarter.
• Mesa, Arizona posted 1.28 in the quarter.
• Fort Wayne, Indiana recorded 1.05 in the quarter, with no trailing twelve-month figure listed.

The fleet number rises mid-year. Google’s quarterly fleet PUE across 2025 ran 1.08, 1.10, 1.11, and 1.08, with the second and third quarters highest.

Hyperscaler Electricity Use

• Google’s purchased electricity rose from 18,002,100 MWh in 2021 to 43,476,000 MWh in 2025, per its 2026 Environmental Report.
• Google’s total energy consumption reached 44,046,500 MWh in 2025.
• Google described its largest load growth in history, a 37% annual increase in electricity demand, in 2025.
• In 2025, Google signed agreements for over 12 GW of net-new clean energy.
• From 2010 to 2025, Google signed more than 240 agreements to purchase nearly 35 GW of net-new clean energy.
• Google reports matching 100% of its electricity consumption with renewable energy purchases for the ninth consecutive year.

Company totals cover offices as well as data centers and are not comparable with Berkeley Lab’s national model, so they show one buyer’s trajectory, not a market share. The customer side of the same buildout, how many organizations run workloads in the cloud, sits in cloud computing adoption statistics.

Data Center Water Consumption

• In 2014, data centers consumed 21.2 billion liters of water, with 64% in internal data centers.
• By 2023, hyperscale and colocation account for 84% of the 66 billion liters total, while internal data centers fell to just 12%.
• Berkeley Lab expects hyperscale data centers in 2028 to consume between 60 and 124 billion liters.
• The national average site water use effectiveness (WUE) stays just over 0.36 L/kWh through 2023 and after 2023 rises slightly, reaching between 0.45 and 0.48 L/kWh.
• Microsoft reports its average WUE has decreased from 2.3 L/kWh to 0.27 L/kWh in 2025.
• Google’s 2025 data center water consumption was 10,523 million gallons of its company-wide total.

Direct cooling water is only part of the footprint. Berkeley Lab’s national model sets the on-site total against the water consumed at power plants, and the indirect side is larger.

Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report

Why it matters: Berkeley Lab puts the total indirect water footprint of U.S. data centers at nearly 800 billion liters, based on the regional electricity grid mix. That is about 12 times the direct total, so where a site buys power matters more for water than how it cools.

How much water do data centers use?

US data centers consumed a direct water total of 66 billion liters in 2023, per Berkeley Lab, plus nearly 800 billion liters consumed indirectly through electricity use. Google replenished approximately 7.7 billion gallons of water in 2025, roughly 78% of its 2025 freshwater consumption.

Cooling Water by Climate

Microsoft says its cooling design relies on water only when outside temperatures exceed 85°F. The share of the year that water is needed rises with heat.

Source: Microsoft, Inside Microsoft’s two-decade push to cut water intensity, June 2026

Data Centers and Grid Interconnection Pressure

• FERC staff estimate data centers with a collective capacity of more than 50 GW were in service at the end of 2025, representing 24% compound annual growth since 2020.
• The region with the fastest data center capacity growth was MISO (43% compound annual growth), followed by ERCOT, SPP, and the Southeast (between 28% to 30% compound annual growth).
• ERCOT’s requests of approximately over 474 gigawatts are more than five times Texas’ record peak electricity demand for ERCOT.
• The EIA forecast that ERCOT and PJM annual electricity load growth averages 10% and 3%, respectively, between 2025 and 2027.
• Between 2020 and 2025, U.S. electricity demand grew about 1.7% annually compared with 0.1% annual growth between 2005 and 2019.
• The EIA’s September outlook expects the West South Central region to account for nearly 20% of nationwide growth in 2026 and nearly 40% in 2027.

Source: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 2025 State of the Markets; Office of the Texas Governor, August 2026; US Energy Information Administration, March 2026

Worth noting: Approximately 90% of the new power requests are data centers, per the Texas governor’s office. A request is a claim on future grid capacity, not a built load, so the queue measures how many developers want power rather than how much data centers will draw.

Data Center Carbon Emissions

• Berkeley Lab estimates total GHG emissions for the 2023 electricity grid mix would be 61 billion kilograms of CO2 equivalent for US data centers.
• Energy consumption by a data center translates to a national average of 4.52 L/kWh of indirect water consumption, along with 0.34 kg/kWh emissions in 2023.
• The IEA projects emissions from electricity use by data centres grow from 180 million tonnes (Mt) today to 300 Mt in the Base Case by 2035, and up to 500 Mt in the Lift-Off Case.
• These emissions remain below 1.5% of the total energy sector emissions in this period, per the IEA.
• Google reports it reduced its operational emissions by 2% in 2025 while its electricity demand grew.

Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2024 Report; International Energy Agency, Energy and AI, April 2025

Training and running models is the main source of new load in these projections, and the workload side of that trend is tracked in machine learning statistics.

Conclusion

US data centers used 192 TWh in 2024, or 4.7% of total U.S. electricity consumption, and Berkeley Lab’s Reference Case puts them at 11.8% of total U.S. electricity by 2030. The IEA expects global data centre use to roughly double from 485 TWh to 950 TWh by 2030. Utilities, grid operators and ratepayers carry most of that change, while the PUE gap between Google’s fleet and the industry survey average shows how much of the load efficiency can still offset.

The next markers are FERC’s review of PJM’s backstop procurement and the Texas audit of ERCOT’s queue; both decide how fast forecast demand turns into connected load, and every 2030 figure above remains a scenario until then.