Report evaluates increase in electricity demand from data centers

A recent report produced by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), which outlines the energy use of data centers from 2014 to 2028, estimates that data center load growth has tripled over the past decade and is projected to double or triple by 2028.

The 2024 Report on U.S. Data Center Energy Use, which was announced by the U.S. Department of Energy on Dec. 20, also found that U.S. electricity demand is projected to account for data center expansion and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, domestic manufacturing growth, and electrification of different industries.

“There’s so much difference in the industry between when we looked at it in 2016 and when we look at it now,” said the report’s lead researcher, Arman Shehabi, a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area. “By showing what the energy use is and, more importantly, what’s causing the growth in energy use, it helps us think about what opportunities there are for efficiencies.”

Among the report’s key findings:

• Data centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and, depending upon how much the rest of the economy grows, are expected to consume between 6.7 and 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028.
• The total data center electricity usage climbed from 58 TWh in 2014 to 176 TWh in 2023 and is estimated to increase between 325 to 580 TWh by 2028.
• Between 2017 and 2023, data-center power demand more than doubled, largely due to the growth in AI servers.
• AI requires increasingly powerful chips and intense cooling systems, driving energy demand growth.

The Department of Energy announcement outlines several DOE strategies for meeting data center energy demand, including enabling data center flexibility through onsite power generation, storage solutions and leveraging energy community opportunities, engaging with stakeholders on innovative rate structures, and commercializing key enabling technologies.