United States accounts for nearly 40 percent of global data center electricity consumption. According to the Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy data centers in the country used approximately 312.6 terawatt hours of electricity last year. This amount equals the annual usage of roughly 29 million average American households. It represents about 39.7 percent of worldwide data center power demand.
This positions the United States well ahead of other nations. China ranked second with 205.7 terawatt hours or 26.1 percent of the global total. United States data centers therefore consumed about 52 percent more electricity than those in China. Europe came in third at 144.6 terawatt hours or 18.4 percent.
The Asia Pacific region excluding China used 63.2 terawatt hours. The Middle East and Africa accounted for 29.9 terawatt hours while South and Central America used 25.6 terawatt hours. These figures illustrate the heavy concentration of data center electricity demand. The United States and China together represent nearly two thirds of the worldwide total.
Rapid growth stems primarily from efforts to expand artificial intelligence infrastructure. Between 2022 and 2025 major technology firms boosted spending on AI related infrastructure by more than 175 percent increasing from 162 billion dollars to 448 billion dollars. A large share of this investment supports expansive data centers filled with servers dedicated to training and operating AI models. Such facilities demand continuous power for computation cooling backup systems and network operations.
The expansion has already placed noticeable strain on electrical grids. In 2025 data centers comprised around 6.6 percent of total United States electricity generation. From 2020 to 2025 data center consumption grew by 80.9 percent while overall electricity production rose by only 11.3 percent.
This disparity has led energy specialists to caution that power availability may limit further artificial intelligence development in the coming years.
