The International Energy Agency found that global power demand from data centers alone will more than double in the next five years, driven mostly by the growth of artificial intelligence in the United States.
The findings join a growing stack of research projecting massive increases in power demand in the U.S. and across the world driven by a combination of data centers, electrification and domestic manufacturing. And the report comes days after a suite of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump aimed in part at meeting rising power demand from data centers with coal-fired power.
U.S. power demand overall is expected to grow 16 percent in the next five years — a staggering fivefold increase of demand projections from just two years ago.
But the IEA’s U.S. projections are far less than what Trump has cited. In unveiling his executive orders on coal earlier this week, the president said the U.S. needs “more than double … the electricity that we currently have.”
