Data Centre Magazine September 2025 | Page 133

ENERGY & POWER
CREDIT: AVK
Global data centre electricity consumption which stood at 460 TWh in 2022, could more than double by 2026 to over

1,000 TWh

electricity consumption, which stood at 460 terawatt-hours( TWh) in 2022, could more than double to over 1,000 TWh by 2026 – a demand equivalent to the entire annual electricity consumption of Japan.
This exponential growth curve is being driven almost entirely by AI as an accelerator. AI workloads, particularly the training of large language models, are orders of magnitude more power-intensive than traditional computing.
This has led to a consensus among analysts that the era of flat energy growth is over.
Goldman Sachs Research forecasts a 165 % increase in global data centre power demand by 2030, while McKinsey & Company projects that power consumption by US data
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