U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY TAKES ACTION In the United States, several factors are driving a significant surge in electric load growth. These include the rising energy demands of data centers, the transition to clean energy sources for manufacturing, industrial onshoring efforts, and the electrification of trans- portation systems. The combination of these elements is creating clusters of new, large point loads that are challenging the capacity and responsiveness of electric utility providers to meet this rising demand. Data centers have emerged as one of the fastest- growing sectors globally, driven by the unprecedented reliance on digital services. Notably, between 2017 and 2021, the electricity consumption of industry giants such as Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google—key players in cloud computing and digital services— essentially doubled. The increase raises significant implications for energy infrastructure and resource allocation across the country.
The explosive growth of generative AI, underpinned by transformer-based architectures, will necessitate a substantial increase in the deployment of transformers, generators, and a variety of equally critical electrical and cooling equipment. The International Energy Agency (IEA) in its Electricity 2024 report has indicated that by 2026, AI-driven data centers are expected to demand approximately 90 terawatt-hours (TWh) of power. This staggering figure translates to around 10 Gigawatts (GW) of data center critical IT power capacity, which is comparable to the power capabilities of 7.3 million H100 GPUs. Additionally, the report anticipates that Nvidia alone will have shipped accelerators that require the energy equivalent of more than 5 million H100s from 2021 through the end of 2024. As the industries evolve, the capacity demands of AI-driven data centers are projected to surpass 10 GW by early 2025, marking a pivotal moment for energy management and sustainability.
FIGURE 1: Projections of potential electricity consumption by U.S. data centers: 2023–2030. % of 2030 electricity consumption projections assume that all other (non-data center) load increases at 1% annually. (Source: EPRI May 2024)
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