AI Boom Set to Push Data Center Electricity Use Up 4x by 2035, New Report Warns
Quick Reads
- Data center electricity use in the US could roughly quadruple by 2035, driven mainly by AI
- BloombergNEF projects data centers will account for about 20% of total US electricity consumption by 2035, up from just 5.9% today
- States like Virginia and Texas, where data centers cluster, will see even higher shares of local power use
- Other analysts, including EPRI and Rhodium Group, project similarly steep increases through 2030 and 2035
The numbers behind the AI boom keep getting bigger, and now so does the electricity bill. A new report warns that data center electricity use in the US is on track to roughly quadruple over the next decade, as artificial intelligence pushes computing demand to levels the power grid has never had to handle before.
Data centers in the US will account for about 20% of the nation’s electricity consumption in 2035, up from 5.9% today, according to BloombergNEF. That compares with an estimated 12% in 2030. To put that in perspective, one out of every five units of electricity generated in the country would soon be going toward running the servers, chips, and cooling systems behind AI training and everyday digital services. And the growth in data center electricity use won’t be spread evenly. In states such as Virginia and Texas where data centers are concentrated, their share of electricity use will be even higher, meaning some local grids will feel the AI boom’s power appetite far more intensely than the national average suggests.
This Isn’t Just One Analyst Sounding The Alarm.
Other energy researchers are landing in a similar ballpark. High-end projections now show data centers potentially consuming up to 20% of total US electricity by 2035 in aggressive scenarios, roughly a four- to five-fold increase from today’s roughly 4-5% share. The Electric Power Research Institute puts the range at 9-17% by 2030 and 10-20% by 2035, while Rhodium Group’s high-growth scenario points to 14% by 2030 and 18% by 2035. Even with different methodologies, the overall picture holds steady: data center electricity use is climbing faster than almost any other sector of the economy.
What’s driving it isn’t just more data centers, but bigger, hungrier ones. Newer AI models require more memory and processing power per query, and even efficiency gains in the chips themselves aren’t enough to offset the sheer scale of buildout. Think of it like adding more lanes to a highway only to have traffic grow even faster than the extra space can handle. Efficiency helps, but it isn’t winning the race against demand.
The implications reach beyond tech company balance sheets. As data center electricity use rises, questions about grid capacity, rising utility bills for everyday households, and how quickly new power generation, including nuclear and natural gas, can come online are becoming central to the AI conversation. What was once framed as purely a computing story is increasingly becoming an energy policy story, one that utilities, regulators, and consumers alike will be watching closely as 2035 approaches.
