Daily Dose / Nov 1, 2026 / Data Centres

The Hum Doubles

Every search, stream and chatbot reply runs through a building full of servers. Those buildings already use about 1.5% of the world's electricity, and AI is pushing that up fast.

945TWh

Projected global data-centre electricity use in 2030, up from 415 TWh in 2024. That's slightly more than all of Japan uses today.
IEA base-case projection

01 · The spectrum

Where the hum is loudest

Data centres' share of electricity use. Worldwide it's a sliver; in a few hubs it's around a quarter of the grid.

1.5%World · 2024

4.4%United States · 2023

22%Ireland · 2024

≈26%Virginia · 2023

0%10%20%30% of electricity use

02 · The trend

Ireland's share went from 5% to 22% in nine years

Data centres' share of Ireland's metered electricity, 2015–2024. They now use more than every urban home in the country combined.

6,969 GWh

used by Irish data centres in 2024, up 10% in a year and more than five times the 1,238 GWh of 2015.

22% vs 18%

Data centres vs all urban households (rural homes: 10%). Source: CSO, 2025.

03 · The forecast

The US could double or triple its data-centre load by 2028

US data-centre electricity, measured for 2014 and 2023, and Berkeley Lab's projected range for 2028.

4.4% → 6.7–12%

Share of all US electricity used by data centres in 2023, and the projected share by 2028.

×3

Growth from 2014 to 2023, 58 to 176 TWh. Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Dec 2024.

04 · The comparison

A Japan-sized load, built one campus at a time

Global data-centre electricity use, measured and projected, next to the scale of a single site.

World data centres · TWh per year

2024 · measured

415

2030 · projected

945

2035 · projected

≈1,200

Hatched = IEA base-case projection. Demand grew 12% a year over 2019–2024.

One site · in households' worth of power

Typical AI data centre

100,000

Largest being built

≈2,000,000

The biggest campuses under construction would draw about 20 times a typical AI facility (IEA, 2025).

05 · The single request

Each prompt is tiny. There are billions of them.

Google's own measurement of a median Gemini text prompt, published August 2025. These are company-reported figures and cover text only, not images or video.

0.24 Wh

energy: roughly nine seconds of TV

0.26 mL

water: about five drops

0.03 g CO₂e

emissions per prompt

Google says per-prompt energy fell 33-fold and carbon 44-fold in one year. Better efficiency hasn't stopped total demand from climbing.

06 · The stakes

What the load costs a grid

Power plants, water and grid connections all have to keep up with the curve.

≈½

of all US electricity-demand growth to 2030 will come from data centres (IEA, 2025)

66 bn L

of water consumed on-site by US data centres in 2023, about 17 billion gallons (LBNL, 2024)

12%

a year: global data-centre demand growth over the past five years (IEA, 2025)

39–57%

projected data-centre share of Virginia's electricity by 2030 (EPRI, 2026 scenario range)

Why it matters · What you can do

The cloud is a physical building

Ask where your provider's power comes from. The big cloud firms publish hourly or annual carbon-free-energy figures by region.
Pick the smallest tool that does the job. A text answer costs a fraction of what generating an image or video does.
Follow local siting decisions. New campuses need grid upgrades and water permits, and those costs can land on ratepayers.
Treat single numbers with care. Per-prompt figures are falling quickly while total demand rises, and both are true.