international-organisation

International Energy Agency

Intergovernmental energy agency measuring data-centre and AI electricity demand for policymakers.

Policy questions

Recorded interests

Compute & energy

Should AI data centres face growth controls?

Electricity, water, local consent and national competitiveness are turning compute infrastructure into a policy fight.

Policy asks

Connected outcomes

introduced

Pause new large AI data centres pending resource and security review

Pause construction or upgrading of covered AI data centres until Congress enacts specified safeguards and expressly terminates the moratorium.

adopted

Publish authoritative AI data-centre electricity demand projections

Maintain public, method-stated projections of data-centre and AI-focused electricity demand for grid and infrastructure planning.

Policy vehicles

guidance · Published

IEA Key Questions on Energy and AI

IEA analytical report updating data-centre electricity demand growth for 2025 and projections to 2030.

Event history

Recorded actions

2026-06-01
IEA publishes Key Questions on Energy and AI
The IEA released updated analysis of data-centre electricity demand growth and 2030 projections.

Evidence

Passages linked to this actor

Direct sourceOpen evidence record

IEA reports data-centre electricity demand grew 17% in 2025

The IEA executive summary states global data-centre electricity demand grew 17% in 2025 and AI-focused centres grew 50%.

The global electricity demand of data centres – the critical infrastructure for training and running AI models – grew by 17% in 2025, in line with IEA projections. Electricity consumption from AI-focused data centres grew even faster, surging 50% in 2025.

International Energy Agency · IEA Key Questions on Energy and AI · Executive summary

Direct sourceOpen evidence record

IEA projects data-centre electricity near 950 TWh by 2030

The IEA central projection roughly doubles data-centre electricity from 485 TWh in 2025 to 950 TWh in 2030.

Our updated projections see electricity consumption from data centres roughly doubling from 485 TWh in 2025 to 950 TWh in 2030, accounting for around 3% of global electricity demand by that date.

International Energy Agency · IEA Key Questions on Energy and AI · Executive summary