Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's data-centre energy researchers found that US data-centre electricity use nearly tripled between 2016 and 2023, and its United States Data Center Energy Usage Report projects that by 2028, data centres could account for as much as 12% of all US electricity consumption
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's United States Data Center Energy Usage Report covers the electricity and water needs of US data centres from 2014 through 2028. It found that data centre electricity use nearly tripled between 2016 and 2023. By 2028, the report's authors project data centres could account for as much as 12% of US electricity consumption.
Verified 2026-09-29
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Data centres could become a meaningful slice of US electricity use, raising questions about grid capacity and bills.
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- American Electric Power, one of the largest US utilities, which counts hyperscalers and manufacturers among its new large customers, signed fresh load commitments in the third quarter of 2026 and now expects its contracted extra load to reach 84 GW by 2031 AEP signed 15 GW of new load commitments in a single quarter
- AI data centres worldwide reached a power capacity comparable to New York State at peak demand in 2025, which Stanford's AI Index puts at 29.6 gigawatts
- OpenAI does not disclose GPT-4o's resource footprint, so Stanford's 2026 AI Index Report turned to independent researchers' estimates of the water needed to cool the servers behind it — as much as 1.58 million kilolitres a year — more than 1.2 million people drink annually
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