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Pew Research data center energy
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High(4)High quality. Established institution or organization with editorial oversight and accountability.
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Useful accessible reference for understanding the energy and environmental footprint of AI infrastructure scaling; relevant for policy discussions around compute governance and AI's physical resource constraints.
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Importance: 42/100news articleanalysis
Summary
Pew Research Center examines the rapid growth of U.S. data center infrastructure driven by AI adoption, analyzing electricity consumption trends, geographic concentration, and environmental implications. The report synthesizes available data on how AI workloads are dramatically increasing energy demands. It provides accessible public-facing analysis of a key infrastructure challenge tied to AI scaling.
Key Points
- •AI-driven demand is accelerating data center energy consumption significantly beyond pre-AI trends in the U.S.
- •Data centers are geographically concentrated in specific states, creating regional grid and water resource pressures.
- •Energy use projections for AI data centers raise concerns about carbon emissions and grid reliability.
- •The report synthesizes government, industry, and academic sources to assess the scale of the infrastructure challenge.
- •Growing data center footprint highlights the intersection of AI capabilities growth with environmental and energy policy concerns.
Review
The research provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging data center landscape in the United States, highlighting the substantial energy and infrastructure demands driven by artificial intelligence development. The study reveals that data centers consumed 183 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024, representing over 4% of the country's total electricity consumption, with projections indicating a 133% growth by 2030. The analysis offers critical insights into the geographical concentration of data centers, with Virginia, Texas, and California hosting a third of the nation's facilities. The research also explores the complex energy ecosystem of these centers, noting that server processing consumes about 60% of electricity, with cooling systems representing a significant additional energy drain. The study raises important questions about the environmental and economic implications of this expansion, including potential electricity bill increases for consumers and the evolving energy sources powering these critical infrastructure components.
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US data centers’ energy use amid the artificial intelligence boom | Pew Research Center
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October 24, 2025
What we know about energy use at U.S. data centers amid the AI boom
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By Rebecca Leppert
An Amazon Web Services data center is shown near a neighborhood in Stone Ridge, Virginia, in 2024. Northern Virginia is the top data center market in the U.S. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
Artificial intelligence has developed rapidly in recent years, with tech companies investing billions of dollars in data centers to help train and run AI models. The expansion of data centers has raised questions on several fronts, including the effect these facilities may have on energy and the environment as the United States seeks an edge in the global AI race.
In this analysis, we’ll take a closer look at data centers and what we know about their potential impact in these areas.
This analysis explores the following questions:
What’s a data center?
How many data centers are in the U.S., and where are they?
Why are states competing for data centers?
How much energy do data centers use?
What is energy used for at U.S. data centers?
What are the main energy sources for data centers?
How could data centers affect Americans’ electricity bills?
What do Americans think about AI’s potential impact on the environment?
How we did this
With the rapid development of data centers in the United States, Pew Research Center conducted this study to learn more about energy use at these facilities and its potential impact on Americans. The Center has studied Americans’ attitudes toward and engagement with artificial intelligence , as well as their views on energy issues , for more than a decade.
This analysis is primarily based on data from the “ Energy and AI ” report published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in April 2025. Projected estimates on energy use at data centers are based on the IEA’s more conservative “base case” scenario, which assumes current industry forecasts and regulatory conditions persist.
Data on the number and location of U.S. data centers comes from Data Center Map , an industry database designed to connect service providers and buyers. Counts are current as of Oct. 20, 2025, and include data centers that are planned, under development or currently operational. The database was created in 2007 and is based on information submitted voluntarily by operators, as well as other resources. Read more about the Data Center Map methodology .
Information on the change in U.S. households’ average monthly electricity costs comes
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