What’s driving electricity demand? It isn’t just AI and data centers.

Take the US, for example. The IEA report points to other research showing that the 10 states hosting the most data center growth saw a 10% increase in electricity demand between 2019 and 2023. Demand in the other 40 states declined by about 3% over the same period. One caveat here is that nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen with data centers in the future, particularly those needed to run AI. Projections are all over the place, and small changes could drastically alter the amount of energy required for the technology. (See the DeepSeek drama.) One bit I found interesting here is that China could see data centers emerge as yet another source of growing electricity demand in the future, with demand projected to double between now and 2027 (though, again, it’s all quite uncertain). What this all means for climate change is complicated. Growth in electricity demand can be seen as a good thing for our climate. Using a heat pump rather than a natural-gas heating system can help ... Read full article.