US Data Centers to Consume 1 in 5 Electric Kilowatt Hours by 2035

BloombergNEF forecasts that US data centers will consume a staggering 20% of the nation's electricity by 2035, up from around 5.9% today.

This represents a massive surge in power demand, with BloombergNEF projecting that US data center power demand will reach 106 GW by 2035, a 36% increase from their previous forecast of 78 GW.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has modeled high-growth scenarios where data center electricity consumption could reach 10% to 20% of US demand by 2035, with cryptocurrency mining and AI-driven compute being key drivers behind this trend.

Many new data center projects in the pipeline exceed 500 MW in capacity, and some analysts estimate that up to 20% of Bitcoin miners' capacity may pivot toward AI workloads by the end of 2027.