Fueled by the rapid rise in artificial intelligence, data centers could triple their energy use by 2028, accounting for as much as 12 percent of the country’s electricity consumption, according to a new report backed by the Department of Energy.
The findings from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory add to the flurry of warnings about the toll that data centers could take on the nation’s electric grid. But administration officials say they’re not concerned about the grid’s ability to handle the needs of the growing industry.
“This is a success story in American innovation and investment. This is a new technology that has enabled economic growth and it does create an opportunity for us to meet the moment and provide the amount of energy that is demanded,” said Avi Shultz, director of DOE’s Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office. “We do have the technologies and the suite of strategies to meet the moment.”
The report, which was requested by Congress, finds that data center energy use was generally stable between 2014 and 2016. That changed in 2017, when the base of installed servers started growing and companies started using servers for energy-intensive data center uses. In 2018, the report found, data centers used the equivalent to 1.9 percent of the country’s electricity use, growing to 4.4 percent by 2023.
