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EnergyPrimary
US data centres used 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023 — on Berkeley Lab's measurement, 4.4% of the country's total
Verified 2026-08-01
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- 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
- EIA modelled what would happen if data-centre power demand grew faster than forecast. Its February 2026 baseline had US coal generation falling 9.3% between 2025 and 2027; in the higher-demand scenario, coal plants run on their existing spare capacity and the decline shrinks to a 5.0% fall in US coal generation instead of 9.3%
- EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2026 estimates that data-centre servers alone, before any cooling or other building load, already accounted for 7% of all US commercial-sector electricity in 2025