How Much Electricity Do US Data Centers Use? 192 TWh in 2024, With Forecasts Up to 843 TWh by 2030

U.S. data centers used about 192 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2024, or 4.7% of the nation’s total, per the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) 2025 update published in June 2026 with Department of Energy support. For 2030, that update’s scenarios project 521 to 843 TWh, or 9.5% to 15.3% of U.S. electricity, with a Reference Case of 649 TWh. Those 2030 figures are projections, not measurements.

Everything below is stated as of Nov. 10, 2026. Nobody meters every data center in the country, so all of these totals are modeled estimates.

What data centers have used so far

LBNL builds its totals from equipment shipments, estimates of how much power each server draws, and models of cooling and other facility overhead. Cryptocurrency mining is not counted. Here are the estimates it has published for past years:

The Dec. 2024 report, per DOE’s announcement, found use rose from 58 TWh in 2014 to 176 TWh in 2023. By our arithmetic that is a little over triple. Use was flat at about 60 TWh from 2014 to 2016, then climbed as servers built for artificial intelligence spread, according to the report itself, which is listed on Berkeley Lab’s site.

The 2025 update revised earlier years slightly downward, mainly because fewer AI chips shipped in 2023 and 2024 than first reported, per the update. It puts the 2023 to 2024 increase at 14%. By our arithmetic, that implies roughly 168 TWh for 2023, below the 176 TWh first published.

The 2028 forecast: 325 to 580 TWh

The Dec. 2024 report did not make a single prediction. It gave a scenario range for 2028 of roughly 325 to 580 TWh, or 6.7% to 12.0% of projected U.S. electricity use, per DOE. Those are projections. The scenarios vary how many AI chips ship, how hard and how long AI servers run, and which cooling systems are used.

By our arithmetic, that range is about 1.8 to 3.3 times the 2023 level. The report describes annual growth of 13% to 27% from 2023 to 2028, and says that at a 50% capacity utilization rate the range equals 74 to 132 gigawatts of power demand.

The newer forecast: 2030 scenarios

The June 2026 update extends the horizon to 2030 and splits the forecast into named scenarios. All are projections, per LBNL:

The shares use the forecast in the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s long-term assessment as the denominator. The Reference Case for 2028 is 464 TWh, which LBNL says falls in the middle of its earlier range. It also shows growth of 22% from 2024 to 2025 and 29% from 2025 to 2026, which by our arithmetic means roughly 234 TWh and 302 TWh.

LBNL says the scenarios follow current industry trends and do not model big shifts such as technology breakthroughs or grid limits. The high and low bounds stack every extreme at once, which the authors call a stress test, not a likely outcome.

What the IEA projects

The International Energy Agency’s Energy and AI report (April 2025) estimates data centers used about 415 TWh worldwide in 2024, with the United States at 45% of that, per the IEA’s executive summary. In its Base Case, U.S. data center consumption rises by around 240 TWh, up 130% from the 2024 level, by 2030.

In the IEA passage cited here, the U.S. projection is expressed as an increase of around 240 TWh, or 130%, rather than an explicit national total for 2030. By our arithmetic, a 240 TWh rise that equals 130% implies roughly 185 TWh in 2024 and about 425 TWh in 2030. That is an inference from rounded numbers, not an IEA figure. The IEA also says data centers account for nearly half of U.S. electricity demand growth to 2030, and its announcement stresses that major uncertainties remain.

The two organizations differ: LBNL’s lowest 2030 scenario, 521 TWh, sits above the roughly 425 TWh we infer for the IEA’s Base Case. They use different methods, and the IEA report is more than a year older than LBNL’s.

What EIA and DOE add

DOE supported and published the LBNL reports, so they are the department’s main data center estimates. The Energy Information Administration does not report data centers as their own category. Its October 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook says commercial-sector electricity demand, which includes data centers, should grow 2.8% in 2027, and an earlier EIA analysis notes that much of the recent growth in U.S. consumption is coming from the commercial sector. EIA updates this outlook monthly (the next release was due Nov. 10), so these figures may have changed since the October edition.

For related coverage of how AI companies are approaching the communities that host these facilities, see our report on OpenAI’s data center community commitments.

Caveats

LBNL’s own copy of the Dec. 2024 report was blocked to our tools, so the 2018 and 2023 figures come from a mirrored copy of the report, and the 2014 figure from DOE’s announcement. We did not find a direct U.S. 2024 or 2030 total in the IEA text.