Data centres could consume 12% of US electricity within 4 years

The rise of artificial intelligence is prompting an unprecedented expansion in data centre infrastructure and power consumption in the US: up to 12% of the country’s electricity generation could be used by data centres in 2028. 

This rapid growth is raising questions around emissions, with about 60% of US electricity generation currently coming from fossil fuels. Already, the AI boom has led to carbon footprint increases among most Big Tech firms, including Microsoft and Google.

“The United States has seen an incredible investment in artificial intelligence and other breakthrough technologies over the last decade and a half, and this industrial renaissance has created greater demand on our domestic energy supply,” said US Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm, suggesting that the country “can meet this growth with clean energy”.

DOE strategy to meet rising power demand

The Department of Energy (DOE) says it is leveraging its resources to meet the increasing electricity demand caused by data centre expansion, while improving critical infrastructure.

Its strategy involves four steps. First, the Department plans to incentivise data centre developers to build on-site power generation and energy storage solutions, leveraging policies like the Onsite Energy Programme and the new Industrial Energy Storage Systems Prize, “so data centers can be a grid asset rather than a burden”.  

Most of the renewable energy used by data centres at the moment comes from power purchase agreements (with solar or wind power stations located off-site) rather than on-site generation. But it looks like tech giants are exploring the latter possibility: early last year, Microsoft hired a Director of Nuclear Technologies, with a plan to start installing small modular reactors at data centres.

Then, the DOE hopes to leverage opportunities to reuse infrastructure at retired coal facilities for data centres and associated power infrastructure.  It also plans to engage with stakeholders on “innovative rate structures” to support data centre expansion while maintaining affordability. 

Finally, the DOE will support the commercialisation of key enabling technologies, such as next-generation geothermal, advanced nuclear, long-duration storage, and efficient semiconductor technologies.  

Data centre power consumption has tripled since 2014

Data centres’ power consumption has tripled over the past decade, going from around 60 TWh in 2014 to 176 TWh by 2023. It currently represents about 4.4% of US electricity consumption, according to the report released by the Department of Energy and produced by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

To calculate the future energy demand of data centres, the laboratory used different scenarios capturing a range of future equipment shipments (such as graphic processing units of GPUs), operational practices and cooling system efficiencies. 

On the low end of the spectrum, data centres would consume around 325 TWh by 2028 – double their current demand. On the high end, this would reach 580 TWh.

“Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s report on data centre energy usage crucially underscores why the Department of Energy has developed and is deploying technologies to enable continued economic growth across American industries,” added Granholm.