The latest report by the International Energy Agency projects that The energy consumption of the data centers will double in 2030 compared to current levels. No one will surprise that the main person will be the AI.
If energy consumption was already one of the big problems for Data Center, artificial intelligence systems have aggravated the situation, since they are avid consumers of computational resources And to feed them they need a huge number of components, especially accelerators, but also storage, memory or high -speed networks.
Although models such as Deepseek promise that Modies of much more efficient and economical can be trained and used, hardware needs remain huge. All this needs advanced cooling systems and as a whole consume a huge amount of energy.
Energy consumption of data centers
The IEA report covers the current energy footprint of the data centers and forecasts their future needs, which could help governments, companies and local communities to plan infrastructure and IA implementation.
The models project that the data centers will consume 945 Teravatios-Hora (TWH) in 2030approximately the equivalent of current annual consumption of electricity in Japan. In comparison, the data centers consumed 415 TWH in 2024, approximately 1.5 % of world electricity consumption and less than half of the consumption calculated for the next decade.
The projections focus mainly on data centers, which also execute computer tasks other than AI. Although the agency estimated the proportion of servers in data centers dedicated to AI, it was discovered that servers for AI represented 24 % of the demand for electricity of the servers and 15 % of the total energy demand of the data centers in 2024. This data is expected to increase in great ways.
More energy and not all clean
The IEA report concludes that the United States, Europe and China are, together, responsible for the 85% of the current energy consumption of data centers. Of the expected growth of consumption, developing economies will represent around 5 % by 2030, while advanced economies will represent more than 20 %.
Countries are building power plants and modernizing their electrical networks to meet the energy demand planned for data centers. However, the agency estimates that 20% of the planned centers could suffer delays in their network connection. The authors write that projections entail uncertainty, partly because it is not clear to what extent people will use AI applications in the future. Some authors insist that everything in AI is widely overvalued.
And more problems. The increase in electricity consumption of data centers «It could mean a serious risk for our ability to achieve our climatic goals«they explain. While two thirds of the planned electrical capacity will come from renewable sources, the agency reports that the new gas plants in the US will also boost an expansion of natural gas capacity. “We are going to increase our dependence, or at least to expand it, of fossil fuels”recalcan.
