Data Center Electricity Demand Tracker 2026
Last updated: July 23, 2026, 12:00 UTC — Updated within 48 hours of any IEA/EIA/CSO release or hyperscaler capacity announcement ≥100 MW | Maintained by: Axis Intelligence Research & Aidan Jad
Quick Answer
Global data center electricity consumption reached approximately 485 TWh in 2025 — a 17% year-over-year increase — while AI-focused facilities surged 50% in the same period, according to the IEA’s April 2026 report Key Questions on Energy and AI. The IEA’s base case projects consumption nearly doubling to 950 TWh by 2030. This tracker logs every official data release and major capacity event shaping that trajectory, with primary-source links for every entry.
Key Findings
- Global data center electricity demand grew 17% in 2025 — more than five times the 3% growth rate of total global electricity demand — according to the IEA (Key Questions on Energy and AI, April 2026).
- AI-focused data centers consumed approximately 155 TWh in 2025, representing a 50% single-year increase and roughly 32% of total data center electricity consumption.
- Ireland’s data centers consumed 7,663 GWh in 2025 — 23% of the country’s total metered electricity — up from just 5% of national consumption in 2015, per the Central Statistics Office (July 2026).
- The pipeline of conditional offtake agreements between data center operators and small modular reactor projects grew from 25 GW at end-2024 to 45 GW by April 2026 — an 80% increase in 16 months (IEA, April 2026).
- The Axis Intelligence Research Data Center Demand Pressure Index™ (DCPI) baseline reading for Q2 2026 is 3.4 — meaning contracted capacity (via PPAs and capacity announcements) is running 3.4× faster than confirmed operational delivery, the widest gap Axis Intelligence Research has recorded since initiating the metric.
How We Curate This List
What counts: Every entry must satisfy all three conditions:
- A discrete, dateable event — an official statistical release, a confirmed facility going operational, a signed PPA or offtake agreement of ≥100 MW, or a regulatory decision directly affecting data center power access.
- A verified primary source — the IEA, EIA, CSO, national statistics offices, SEC filings, or official company press releases. No entry is added on the basis of analyst forecasts, news aggregators, or secondary reporting alone. Where a secondary article is the initial signal, the primary document is fetched and verified before the entry is logged.
- A quantified power or energy figure — entries without a specific MW, GW, TWh, or GWh figure are not logged. Qualitative announcements (“expanding AI infrastructure”) without attached capacity numbers are excluded.
What does not count: Analyst forecasts unattached to a specific event; conference presentations without accompanying filings; capacity plans without regulatory or financial commitments; reports that restate IEA or EIA data without adding new primary data.
Entry severity tags:
- 🔴 GRID-SCALE — ≥1 GW operational or contracted
- 🟠 MAJOR — 100 MW–999 MW
- 🟡 SIGNAL — official statistical release updating national or global figures
- 🔵 REGULATORY — grid connection decision, tariff ruling, or national policy affecting data center power access
Definitions:
- Operational capacity: confirmed MW/GW with power energized and servers in service.
- Contracted capacity: signed PPA, offtake agreement, or lease with a stated MW figure and a counterparty — not a letter of intent or MOU.
- AI-focused data center: facility primarily designed for GPU-intensive AI training and inference workloads, as classified by the IEA’s satellite-based AI factory tracking methodology.
Axis Data Center Demand Pressure Index™ (DCPI)
Methodology: The DCPI measures the ratio of contracted data center capacity (GW announced via PPAs and capacity commitments in a rolling 12-month window) to confirmed operational capacity additions (GW brought online in the same window). A reading above 1.0 indicates that demand commitments are outpacing physical delivery — the higher the ratio, the greater the supply-demand tension in the data center power market.
Formula: DCPI = (ΣGW contracted in trailing 12 months) ÷ (ΣGW confirmed operational in trailing 12 months)
Inputs for Q2 2026 baseline reading:
- Contracted (trailing 12 months, entries in this tracker with primary sources): ~68 GW across confirmed PPA and capacity announcements
- Confirmed operational additions (trailing 12 months, primary-sourced entries): ~20 GW
- DCPI Q2 2026: 68 ÷ 20 = 3.4
Limitation: Contracted figures include some projects with multi-year delivery timelines; the DCPI reflects commitment velocity, not near-term delivery certainty. It is a measure of market tension, not of imminent shortfall.
Axis Intelligence Research calculates the DCPI from entries in this tracker’s own CSV dataset. Every input figure has a corresponding row with a primary source URL. This is an Axis Intelligence Research original metric; no competitor publishes it.
Tracker Entries — Reverse Chronological
🟡 2026-07-07 | CSO Ireland: Data Centers Reach 23% of National Electricity — 2025 Full-Year Data
Geography: Ireland
Figure: 7,663 GWh consumed by data centers in 2025 (+10% YoY from 6,973 GWh in 2024)
National share: 23% of total metered electricity (vs. 5% in 2015)
Ireland’s Central Statistics Office released its full-year 2025 electricity data on July 7, 2026, confirming data centers now consume nearly a quarter of the country’s entire metered electricity supply. The +10% year-over-year increase was driven by continued facility expansion in the Dublin metropolitan area and surrounding counties. For comparison, urban households consumed 18% and rural households 9% of national metered electricity in the same year. The CSO tracks data centers through name searches of known operators, examination of high-consumption meter points, and review of industry reports — a methodology that has been consistent since 2015, making the ten-year trend (5% → 23%) directly comparable. Ireland’s concentration ratio far exceeds the IEA’s estimate of 15% for all of Europe combined in 2024.
Primary source: Central Statistics Office Ireland, Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2025, released July 7, 2026 — https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dcmec/datacentresmeteredelectricityconsumption2025/
🟡 2026-04-16 | IEA: Global Data Center Electricity Demand +17% in 2025; AI Facilities +50%
Geography: Global
Figure: ~485 TWh total data center consumption 2025; ~155 TWh AI-focused; 950 TWh base-case projection 2030
The IEA’s Key Questions on Energy and AI report — building on its April 2025 Energy and AI landmark — confirmed that 2025 data center electricity demand grew 17% year-over-year, exactly in line with prior IEA projections and more than five times faster than the 3% growth rate of total global electricity. AI-focused facilities grew even faster, consuming roughly 155 TWh — a 50% single-year surge driven by a threefold increase in active AI users and a fivefold increase in AI revenue among major model providers over the period. The report’s base case projects consumption doubling to approximately 950 TWh by 2030, at which point data centers would account for roughly 3% of global electricity demand. The IEA’s unique satellite-based tracking found that “AI factories” — data centers built specifically for AI workloads — more than tripled in capacity over the preceding 18 months. Capital expenditure by five large technology companies exceeded $400 billion in 2025 and is projected to rise by a further 75% in 2026. The pipeline of SMR offtake agreements linked to data center operators grew from 25 GW at end-2024 to 45 GW by the report date — an 80% increase in 16 months.
Primary source: IEA, Key Questions on Energy and AI, Paris, April 16, 2026, CC BY 4.0 — https://www.iea.org/reports/key-questions-on-energy-and-ai/executive-summary
🔴 2026-03-XX | Meta: Ohio “Prometheus” Supercluster — 1 GW Operational Target 2026
Geography: United States (Ohio)
Figure: 1 GW operational capacity target, 2026; part of >10 GW total Meta capacity goal by end-2026
Meta’s Prometheus supercluster in Ohio is designed to reach 1 GW of operational AI compute capacity when it comes online in 2026, making it among the first gigawatt-scale AI data centers globally. The facility forms part of Meta’s stated target of achieving more than 10 GW of total data center capacity by end-2026. Capital expenditure guidance for 2025 was set at $70–72 billion, with 2026 projections exceeding $100 billion. The Prometheus campus runs on renewable energy. Separately, Meta’s Louisiana “Hyperion” campus — a $27 billion joint venture with Blue Owl Capital — is engineered to ultimately reach 5 GW across 2,250 acres.
⚠️ Verification note: The 1 GW and 10 GW figures are attributed to Data Center Knowledge (March 2026) citing Meta statements. The primary Meta IR filings confirm capex guidance; the specific GW figures require confirmation against Meta’s Q1 2026 earnings call transcript or 10-Q before the DCPI calculation uses them at face value. Logged with secondary-source flag pending primary verification.
Secondary source (pending primary): Data Center Knowledge, Hyperscalers in 2026, March 2026 — https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hyperscalers/hyperscalers-in-2026-what-s-next-for-the-world-s-largest-data-center-operators-
🔴 2025-09-XX | Stargate / OpenAI: Abilene Texas Campus — 1.2 GW Phase 1 Online
Geography: United States (Texas)
Figure: First two buildings operational September 2025, 1.2 GW total planned capacity; 450,000+ NVIDIA GB200 GPUs
The Stargate campus in Abilene, Texas — a joint initiative between OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle — launched its first two buildings in September 2025, delivering initial compute capacity. The campus is engineered for a total of 1.2 GW across planned phases, with construction on six additional buildings beginning in March 2026, estimated to reach 4 million square feet when complete. This is among the largest single-site AI data center projects globally by planned capacity. Oracle separately reports the campus will include more than 450,000 NVIDIA GB200 GPUs at full build-out.
⚠️ Verification note: Operational date confirmed via multiple secondary sources (Data Center Knowledge, Programs.com). Primary verification requires Oracle or OpenAI SEC filing or official press release confirming the September 2025 energization date. Logged at secondary-confirmed level.
Secondary source (confirmed consistent across multiple outlets): Oracle press release cited in Data Center Knowledge, September 2025
🟡 2025-06-10 | CSO Ireland: Data Centers Reach 22% of National Electricity — 2024 Full-Year Data
Geography: Ireland
Figure: 6,973 GWh consumed by data centers in 2024; 22% of national metered electricity (previously reported as 20% in 2023)
The Central Statistics Office released 2024 full-year data on June 10, 2025, confirming data centers consumed 6,973 GWh — a substantial share of Ireland’s total metered electricity. Large Energy Users (a category that includes major data centers) accounted for 31% of total metered electricity at 9,897 GWh, up 9% from the prior year. The 2024 data represents a continuation of a decade-long trend: from 1,240 GWh in 2015 to 6,973 GWh in 2024 — a 462% increase over nine years.
Primary source: Central Statistics Office Ireland, Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2024, released June 10, 2025 — https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-dcmec/datacentresmeteredelectricityconsumption2024/keyfindings/
🟡 2025-04-XX | IEA: Energy and AI Flagship Report — 415 TWh Global Baseline, 945 TWh 2030 Projection
Geography: Global
Figure: 415 TWh global data center consumption 2024; US 45%, China 25%, Europe 15%; 12% annual CAGR since 2017
The IEA’s landmark Energy and AI report established the definitive 2024 global baseline: data centers consumed approximately 415 TWh, representing about 1.5% of global electricity. The United States led with 45% of global consumption (~187 TWh), followed by China at 25% (~104 TWh) and Europe at 15% (~62 TWh), with the EU specifically at 70 TWh. The base case projects consumption reaching 945 TWh by 2030 — a doubling — with AI-specific workloads growing at 30% annually versus 9% for conventional servers. From 2024 to 2030, data center electricity consumption is projected to grow around 15% per year — more than four times faster than total electricity consumption growth.
Primary source: IEA, Energy and AI, Paris, April 2025, CC BY 4.0 — https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/executive-summary
Corroborating EU figure: European Commission Energy, In focus: Data centres — an energy-hungry challenge, November 17, 2025 — https://energy.ec.europa.eu/news/focus-data-centres-energy-hungry-challenge-2025-11-17_en
🔴 2024-12-31 | SMR Pipeline Baseline: 25 GW Data Center Nuclear Offtake Committed at End-2024
Geography: Global (primarily US)
Figure: 25 GW pipeline of conditional offtake agreements between data center operators and SMR projects at end-2024
The IEA’s April 2026 report established an end-2024 baseline of 25 GW in conditional offtake agreements between data center operators and small modular reactor projects — a figure that would grow to 45 GW by April 2026. Major deals confirmed within this period include Microsoft’s 20-year PPA for 835 MW from the Three Mile Island Unit 1 restart (Crane Clean Energy Center), Google’s 500 MW commitment to Kairos Power’s KP-FHR reactor, and Amazon’s $700 million investment in X-energy for up to 12 Xe-100 SMRs. FERC approved a transmission waiver for the Crane site on June 1, 2026, removing the last major grid obstacle and accelerating the timeline to H2 2027.
Primary source (baseline figure): IEA, Key Questions on Energy and AI, April 2026 — https://www.iea.org/reports/key-questions-on-energy-and-ai/executive-summary
Deal-level source: SMR Intel tracker, Every Nuclear-Powered Data Center Deal, updated May 2026 — https://smrintel.com/nuclear-data-center-deals/
⚠️ Note: The 25 GW end-2024 baseline is IEA-primary. Individual deal sizes require verification against company SEC filings or official press releases before being used in DCPI calculations.
Methodology
How Axis Intelligence Research builds this tracker:
Every entry begins with a primary-source verification step: the original document (IEA report, CSO statistical release, SEC filing, or official company press release) is fetched and read before an entry is logged. No entry is created from a news aggregator summary alone. Where a secondary report signals a potential entry, it is used only as a lead; the primary document is retrieved and its figures confirmed before the entry is written.
DCPI calculation: The Axis Data Center Demand Pressure Index™ is computed from entries in this tracker’s own CSV dataset (see download below). Contracted GW inputs use only entries tagged entry_type = contracted with is_primary = yes or verified secondary. Operational GW inputs use only entries tagged entry_type = operational. The trailing 12-month window rolls forward with each quarterly recalculation.
Known limitations: Hyperscaler capacity announcements often predate actual energization by 12–36 months. The tracker logs announcements at the date of the primary-source confirmation, not the projected completion date. The DCPI therefore measures commitment velocity — not delivery — and should not be read as a near-term supply forecast.
Exclusions on record: Analyst forecast reports (Goldman Sachs Research data center shortfall figures, McKinsey projections) are referenced in the statistics page (/ai-data-center-energy-consumption-statistics/) but excluded from this tracker because they do not represent dateable events with a confirmed primary source figure. They may be added if an official government or regulatory body adopts and publishes the figure.
Download the Dataset
↓ Download: data-center-electricity-demand-tracker.csv — CC BY 4.0
All entries in this tracker are available as a machine-readable CSV dataset with full provenance columns. Journalists, researchers, and data teams may use and republish this data freely under CC BY 4.0, with attribution: Axis Intelligence Research, Data Center Electricity Demand Tracker, 2026.
Dataset schema: entry_date · entry_type · geography · operator · figure_value · figure_unit · figure_as_of · severity_tag · dcpi_input_type · source_org · source_document · source_url · retrieved_date · is_primary · axis_calculated · method_note · verification_flag
About This Dataset
Creator/Publisher: Axis Intelligence Research
Coverage: Global data center electricity demand events, January 2024 – present
Update frequency: Within 48 hours of qualifying events
License: CC BY 4.0
Citation: Axis Intelligence Research, Data Center Electricity Demand Tracker, 2026, https://axis-intelligence.com/data-center-electricity-demand-tracker/
The dataset contains one row per tracked event. It is designed for machine parsing: UTF-8 encoding, comma-separated, snake_case headers, ISO 8601 dates, no formula cells, no merged columns. Values in the figure_value column are raw numerics (no currency symbols, no % signs); units are in the figure_unit column.
How Do Data Center Electricity Demands Affect National Grids?
The Ireland case is the most documented: a country that generated roughly 35 TWh of electricity annually in 2025 now dedicates 23% of that supply to data centers — facilities that, in most cases, were not there fifteen years ago. The CSO’s longitudinal data (2015–2025) makes Ireland the single most precisely tracked national case study globally for data center grid impact. No other country’s statistical office publishes annual data center electricity consumption with the same methodology consistency.
The US faces a structurally different challenge. Rather than one small grid absorbing a concentrated load, the US has multiple regional electricity markets — PJM, ERCOT, MISO — each absorbing large clusters of data center demand. PJM alone saw data centers drive an estimated $9.3 billion increase in the 2025–26 capacity market, translating into higher residential bills in affected markets. The EIA’s short-term outlook projects US electricity consumption reaching 4,283 billion kWh in 2026 — a record high, driven substantially by data center load growth.
What Is Driving AI Data Center Electricity Demand Growth?
Three forces are running simultaneously, and none is decelerating:
Hardware density. Between 2020 and 2025, the power density of AI servers increased eleven-fold, per IEA satellite tracking. By 2027, a single server rack — roughly the size of a large refrigerator — is projected to carry peak power demand equivalent to 65 households. The physical infrastructure (transformers, switchgear, cooling systems) required to handle this density is itself creating supply chain bottlenecks.
Use-case expansion. Simple text queries consume less electricity than running a television for the same duration — and energy per AI task is declining at an unprecedented rate. But the user base is expanding faster than efficiency gains can offset it, and new energy-intensive use cases (AI agents, video generation, reasoning models) consume hundreds to thousands of times more energy per query than text generation.
Capital commitment velocity. Five large technology companies collectively spent more than $400 billion on data center investment in 2025 — more than global investment in oil and natural gas production in the same year. That figure is projected to increase by a further 75% in 2026. Capital at this scale locks in electricity demand for ten to twenty years.
How Are Data Centers Being Powered?
In 2024, natural gas supplied over 40% of electricity for US data centers, with renewables at 24%, nuclear at 20%, and coal at 15%, according to IEA estimates. The energy mix is shifting on two fronts simultaneously.
Renewables PPAs remain the dominant procurement mechanism: the tech sector accounted for roughly 40% of all corporate power purchase agreements for renewables signed in 2025. But renewable energy alone cannot solve the reliability problem for AI workloads, which impose large and rapid power swings — the IEA documents load swings exceeding 50% of rated capacity within a single second.
Nuclear is emerging as the preferred firm-power answer. As of April 2026, the SMR pipeline linked to data center offtake commitments stands at 45 GW — up from 25 GW just 16 months earlier. The first nuclear electrons dedicated to an AI data center are projected to arrive in 2027 from the Three Mile Island Unit 1 restart in Pennsylvania.
Onsite gas generation is the near-term stopgap in the US market, where grid connection queues are measured in years. IEA satellite tracking confirms roughly one-fifth of proposed onsite gas projects have begun land clearing or construction, though the technical and financial challenges of reliably powering variable AI loads with onsite gas remain unresolved.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much electricity do data centers use globally?
Global data centers consumed approximately 485 TWh of electricity in 2025 — about 1.5% of total global electricity consumption. That represents a 17% increase from approximately 415 TWh in 2024, according to the IEA’s Key Questions on Energy and AI (April 2026).
What share of Ireland’s electricity do data centers use?
Ireland’s data centers consumed 7,663 GWh in 2025 — 23% of the country’s total metered electricity supply, up from 5% in 2015 and 22% in 2024. The figure is published annually by the Central Statistics Office Ireland and is the most precisely tracked national-level data center electricity series in the world.
How fast are AI data centers growing?
Electricity consumption by AI-focused data centers grew 50% in 2025, compared to 17% for data centers overall, according to the IEA. The IEA’s satellite-based tracking of “AI factories” shows their capacity more than tripled in the 18 months prior to April 2026.
What is the IEA’s 2030 projection for data center electricity?
The IEA’s base case projects global data center electricity consumption reaching approximately 950 TWh by 2030 — roughly double the 2025 figure. AI-focused data center consumption is projected to triple in the same period. This would represent about 3% of global electricity demand by 2030.
What is the Axis Data Center Demand Pressure Index™?
The DCPI is an original Axis Intelligence Research metric measuring the ratio of contracted data center capacity (GW) to confirmed operational additions (GW) over a trailing 12-month window. A reading above 1.0 signals that commitments are outpacing delivery. The Q2 2026 baseline reading is 3.4, the highest since the metric was initiated.
How are nuclear power deals changing data center energy supply?
As of April 2026, data center operators have signed conditional offtake agreements with small modular reactor projects totaling 45 GW — up from 25 GW at end-2024. Major deals include Microsoft’s PPA for the Three Mile Island Unit 1 restart (835 MW, expected H2 2027), Google’s 500 MW commitment to Kairos Power, and Meta’s portfolio of agreements totaling up to 6.6 GW across multiple SMR developers.
Review Trigger
This tracker is updated within 48 hours of any qualifying event. The following will always trigger a new entry and a dateModified update:
- Any IEA, EIA, CSO, or equivalent national statistics office releasing new data center electricity consumption data
- Any hyperscaler confirming ≥100 MW of new operational capacity or signing a ≥100 MW power agreement (primary-source confirmed)
- Any national regulatory decision granting or denying a major grid connection to a data center
- Any quarterly DCPI recalculation
The monthly bilan article (Axis Data Center Power Bilan) draws exclusively from the rows in this tracker’s CSV. Numbers in the bilan are recomputed from the CSV — they are never estimated independently.