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How much electricity do data centers use?

Updated

General information, not a substitute for the advice of an attorney.

Short answer: About 4.4% of US electricity. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's 2024 Report on U.S. Data Center Energy Use, prepared for the Department of Energy, estimates that data centers consumed 176 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2023, up from 58 TWh in 2014, and projects 325 to 580 TWh by 2028, or 6.7% to 12% of total US electricity, depending on how fast the economy and AI adoption grow (Berkeley Lab, January 15, 2025).

The numbers

  • 2014: 58 TWh (LBNL).
  • 2023: 176 TWh, 4.4% of total US electricity (LBNL).
  • 2028 projection: 325 to 580 TWh, 6.7% to 12% of total US electricity (LBNL).
  • Between 2017 and 2023, data center demand more than doubled, which the lab attributes largely to growth in AI servers (LBNL).

Why the range is so wide

The 2028 figures span almost a factor of two because the lab modeled scenarios rather than a single forecast. The driver it names is AI: increasingly powerful chips and the intense cooling they require push energy demand up, and how many of those servers get built and how hard they run is the open variable (LBNL). The report was led by staff scientist Arman Shehabi at Berkeley Lab's Center of Expertise for Energy Efficiency in Data Centers and sponsored by DOE's Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office, which announced it on December 20, 2024 (LBNL). The news release does not give the 2018 figure or water use, so neither appears here.

How that compares to the grid

For scale, the 2024 edition of NERC's Long-Term Reliability Assessment projected aggregate summer peak demand across its assessment areas rising 15% over ten years (132 GW, up from an 80 GW projection a year earlier) and winter peak demand rising almost 18% (149 GW), and it singled out the size and speed with which data centers, including crypto and AI, can be built and connected as a unique challenge (NERC 2024 LTRA). In Texas, ERCOT told the Senate in July 2026 that roughly 474 GW of large loads were seeking interconnection, about 90% of it data centers, against a system whose all-time peak demand is 85,508 MW (ERCOT, July 29, 2026; ERCOT fact sheet). Requests are not the same as buildings; see the question on whether data centers will raise bills or cause blackouts for how much of that queue is real.

See data centers and land, the ERCOT queue, grid interconnection by market, and substation vs. transmission line.

General information from the sources linked above, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

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