How much electricity do data centers use today
How much electricity do data centers use today is a number that keeps forcing revisions upward. Gartner projects that global data center electricity consumption will grow 26% in 2026 alone, reaching 565 terawatt hours, a terawatt hour equal to 1 billion kilowatt hours. In the United States, the Energy Information Administration, the federal agency that tracks United States energy supply, says in its own September 2026 outlook that total electricity sales will reach 4,135 billion kilowatt hours in 2026 and 4,211 billion kilowatt hours in 2027, driven partly by data center development and a manufacturing expansion. The commercial sector, the category that includes data centers, drives 63% of that increase in 2026 and 56% in 2027. Reading the outlook directly turns up a detail no summary carries, that even though new data center projects paused connecting to the grid in Texas, the West South Central region, which includes Texas, still holds the largest share of total sales growth in the agency own forecast.
Every forecast about United States data centers keeps changing
United States data centers used about 4.4% of total United States electricity in 2023, according to a report the Department of Energy commissioned from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, up from 58 terawatt hours of use in 2014 to 176 terawatt hours in 2023. The report, released in December 2024, projected total data center electricity use could reach 325 to 580 terawatt hours by 2028, 6.7% to 12% of total United States electricity. Jennifer M. Granholm, who held the title of United States Energy Secretary when the report came out and has since left that office, said at the time that the country had seen an incredible investment in artificial intelligence and breakthrough technologies, creating greater demand on the domestic energy supply, source 2. By mid 2026, the research firm BloombergNEF put data center share of total United States electricity at about 5.9%, heading toward 12% by 2030 and 20% by 2035 in its own estimate, a separate year and a separate organization from the 2023 Department of Energy figure, not an update to it.
These are BloombergNEF own estimates, 1 for roughly the present and 2 for future years, not measured history.
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| Today, 2026 | 5.9 |
| 2030 forecast | 12 |
| 2035 forecast | 20 |
The industry own forecast for 2035 keeps rising fast
The sharpest sign that planners keep being surprised by their own subject is BloombergNEF own forecast for how much electricity United States data centers will need in the year 2035. The firm put that number at about 78 gigawatts in an April 2025 forecast, then 106 gigawatts in a December 2025 forecast, 36% higher, then 194 gigawatts in a July 2026 forecast, 83% higher again. That is the same target year, 2035, revised 3 times inside about 15 months by the same firm, not 3 different years of demand. BloombergNEF also estimates that even a record pace of new data center grid connections, sustained every year for a decade, would still leave a 19 gigawatt shortfall against that demand.
All 3 bars forecast the same target year, 2035. They show how the forecast itself changed over time, not 3 different years of demand.
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| April 2025 forecast | 78 |
| December 2025 forecast | 106 |
| July 2026 forecast | 194 |
Every other national forecast points the same way
Grid Strategies, an industry research group that tracks utility long term load forecasts filed across the country, found the national 5 year load forecast had reached 166 gigawatts of growth by 2030, 6 times the flat growth utilities were still forecasting as recently as 2022. The group compares that total to 15 times the peak electricity load of New York City, and names data centers, alongside manufacturing and electrification, as the lead cause.