Electricity 2024 - Analysis and Forecast to 2026

Overview

The report is a general outlook for electricity markets to 2026, and data centres are one section of it. Global electricity demand grew 2.2% in 2023 (2.4% in 2022) and is expected to grow 3.4% a year on average to 2026, with about 85% of additional demand from outside advanced economies. Electricity's share of final energy use reached 20% in 2023, up from 18% in 2015. The report is organised into global trends (demand, supply, emissions, prices, reliability) and regional focus sections for Asia Pacific, the Americas, Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East and Africa.

The data-centre section's central finding: data centres, cryptocurrencies and AI used about 460 TWh worldwide in 2022, almost 2% of global demand. For 2026 the range is 620-1,050 TWh with a base case just above 800 TWh, which is an extra 160 to 590 TWh over 2022, from at least one Sweden to at most one Germany. The top end is roughly Japan's electricity use. The estimate excludes data transmission networks.

On composition and regions, the IEA estimates a data centre's electricity splits about 40% computing, about 40% cooling and about 20% other IT equipment. US consumption rises from about 200 TWh in 2022 (4%) to about 260 TWh in 2026 (6%); the EU goes from just under 100 TWh to about 150 TWh and China reaches about 300 TWh. In Ireland data centres used 5.3 TWh in 2022, 17% of national electricity, and in a high case could reach 32% in 2026; Ireland's grid-connection criteria are location, on-site dispatchable generation or storage, and demand flexibility.

On AI and crypto: a typical Google search uses 0.3 Wh against 2.9 Wh for a ChatGPT request, and with 9 billion daily searches that would need almost 10 TWh more a year. The 100,000 NVIDIA units shipped in 2023 use 7.3 TWh a year on average. Cryptocurrencies used about 110 TWh in 2022 (0.4% of global demand) and rise to about 160 TWh by 2026 in the base case. On regulation, the revised EU Energy Efficiency Directive brings reporting duties from 2024 and, where feasible, waste-heat recovery; the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact targets climate neutrality by 2030; and Chinese rules require public-sector data centres to run fully on renewables by 2032.

Other results give non-data-centre background: renewables overtake coal in 2025 as the largest source of global generation (30% share in 2023 to 37% in 2026), low-emissions sources cover all demand growth, power-sector CO2 emissions fall by more than 2% in 2024 and wholesale prices ease from record highs. In the United States data centres are expected to be more than one-third of additional demand to 2026, and in the EU electric vehicles, heat pumps and data centres together make half of expected gains. The document provides market context, not design-level data.

Key points

1. Data centres, cryptocurrencies and AI used about 460 TWh in 2022, almost 2% of global demand.
2. The 2026 range is 620-1,050 TWh with a base case just above 800 TWh; the top end is roughly Japan's consumption.
3. IEA estimate: about 40% of data-centre electricity is computing, about 40% cooling and about 20% other IT equipment.
4. US data centres rise from about 200 TWh (4%) in 2022 to about 260 TWh (6%) in 2026 and make over one-third of additional US demand.
5. EU data centres go from just under 100 TWh (about 4%) in 2022 to about 150 TWh in 2026; China reaches about 300 TWh.
6. Irish data centres used 5.3 TWh in 2022, 17% of national electricity, and could reach 32% in 2026 in a high case.
7. Ireland's grid-connection criteria are location, on-site dispatchable generation or storage, and demand flexibility.
8. A typical Google search uses 0.3 Wh against 2.9 Wh for a ChatGPT request; 100,000 NVIDIA units shipped in 2023 use about 7.3 TWh a year.
9. Cryptocurrencies used about 110 TWh in 2022 (0.4%) and about 160 TWh by 2026 in the base case.
10. The revised EU Energy Efficiency Directive requires reporting from 2024 and waste-heat recovery where feasible.

Using it in design

• Use this document as benchmark and context only, not as a source of default values.
• The 40/40/20 split is a generic average with a much higher cooling share than efficient modern designs, so the tool should not use it as a default.
• For grid-connection assessments, cite the Irish criteria (location, on-site generation or storage, demand flexibility) as an example connection strategy.
• For EU projects, add energy-use reporting and, where feasible, waste-heat recovery to the compliance checklist.
• Use the 2022-2026 estimates for the US, EU, China, Ireland and Denmark as regional demand-share context.

Who should read it

Planners, investors and policy makers who need the place of data-centre demand within national electricity systems.

Document contents

1. Executive summary
2. Global trends
3. Demand: Global electricity use posts strong growth to 2026
4. Emerging economies are the engines of global electricity demand growth
5. Global electricity demand from data centres could double towards 2026
6. Rising self-consumption in distributed systems and data collection challenges
7. Supply: Clean electricity to meet all additional demand out to 2026
8. Emissions: CO2 from electricity sector entering a structural decline
9. Prices: Wholesale electricity prices fall from record highs
10. Reliability: Monitoring electricity security remains essential
11. Regional focus
12. Annexes

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Publication details

Authors

International Energy Agency

Publisher

International Energy Agency

Year

2024

Document language

English

Source type

Government / public

Access

Open licence — downloadable

Licence

CC BY 4.0 — share with attribution

Licence evidence

www.iea.org

Citation