The IEA publishes its first global analysis of energy and AI
The International Energy Agency's Energy and AI report put global data-centre electricity consumption at about 415 terawatt-hours in 2024 — roughly 1.5% of world electricity — and projected it to more than double to around 945 TWh by 2030. It was the first analysis of its kind from the body that publishes the reference series for global energy, and it converted a diffuse anxiety about AI energy use into a number that could be argued with.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Data-centre electricity demand · physical quantity · not located
- Growth in frontier training compute · phenomenon · not located
- International Energy Agency · organisation · France · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Energy and AI (World Energy Outlook Special Report), with the IEA's subsequent data-centre demand update
Data centres accounted for about 415 TWh, or roughly 1.5% of world electricity, in 2024, projected by the IEA to more than double to about 945 TWh by 2030; the IEA's subsequent update reports demand rising about 17% in 2025 to roughly 485 TWh against about 3% growth in global electricity demand, with AI-focused data centres growing considerably faster, and projects roughly 950 TWh and about 3% of world electricity by 2030. V55 verification basis: iea.org was not fetched. The 2024 figures and the 945 TWh projection were carried in search results attributing them explicitly to the April 2025 Energy and AI report, and are taken as verified. The 2025 update figures were carried with attribution to IEA news and to Key Questions on Energy and AI, but the publication date of that update was NOT resolved in this run and the AI-specific share of data-centre demand is an estimate in every source retrieved.
International Energy Agency · 2025-04, with a later update · Partly verified
IEA, Energy and AI, April 2025, https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai — executive summary and "Energy demand from AI"; IEA news, "Data centre electricity use surged in 2025, even with tightening bottlenecks driving a scramble for solutions"; IEA, Key Questions on Energy and AI
Recorded on Data-centre electricity demand
- The IEA publishes its first global analysis of energy and AI
- The IEA reports data-centre electricity demand up about 17% in 2025
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.