via: sansnom

Already energy-hungry, data centers have redoubled their appetite with the recent development of generative AI, which requires colossal computing capacities to process the information accumulated in gigantic databases. In 2024, these infrastructures will only account for around 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption (415 terawatt-hours, TWh), but this has already increased by 12% per year over the last five years. And there’s more to come.

“Electricity demand from data centers worldwide is expected to more than double by 2030 to around 945 TWh, slightly more than Japan’s total electricity consumption today,” according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) published on Thursday, April 10. Locally, “a 100-megawatt data center can consume as much electricity as 100,000 households” annually, but tomorrow, “the largest data centers under construction today will consume twenty times as much”, equivalent to the consumption of two million households.

Together, the USA, Europe and China currently account for around 85% of data center consumption. The first challenge is to find affordable and abundant electricity. Anxious to outstrip Beijing in terms of AI, US President Donald Trump has launched the creation of a “National Council for Energy Dominance” to boost electricity production.

According to the IEA, “a wide range of energy sources will be used to meet growing needs”, including coal, which today supplies 30% of data center requirements. The race to build data centers will inevitably lead to a rise in emissions linked to electricity consumption, from 180 million tonnes of CO2 today to 300 million tonnes by 2035…

(Excerpt from Le Monde, April 10, 2025)

Location of the 159 data centers in operation in the Île-de-France region.