New Delhi, June 10 (IANS). Global electricity demand for data centers is projected to grow 26.4 percent in 2026, with consumption expected to rise from 447 terawatt hours to 565 terawatt hours by 2025. This information was given in the report released on Wednesday.
Business and technology insights company Gartner, Inc. According to the report, the projected increase in consumption is due to compute-intensive artificial intelligence workloads, which will cause electricity demand to reach new highs.
“AI capability now depends on power availability, so data center power security has become a new critical issue to advance and maintain profits in the global AI race,” said Linglan Wang, director analyst at Gartner.
According to the report, power consumption in data centers is continuously increasing due to AI-optimized servers. In 2026, AI-optimized servers will account for 31 percent of total data center power consumption, and by 2027, their power consumption will exceed that of traditional servers.
Data center electricity consumption is projected to exceed 1,200TWh by 2030. In such a situation, the grid supply will fall short to meet the needs of future data centers, which will affect all data center users.
Wang said, “Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders must prioritize improved work efficiency and secure grid access. They also need to invest in high-efficiency cooling systems and edge computing to overcome power outages and ensure sustainable and scalable growth.”
The needs of cooling and other infrastructure are also increasing rapidly, which is estimated to increase by 22.6 percent in 2026 and 24.6 percent in 2027.
Another recent report said that last year data centers consumed as much electricity as Saudi Arabia. If electricity use doubles by 2030, 6.7 billion trees will have to be planted in ten years to offset the resulting carbon footprint.
–IANS
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