AI data centres’ consumption of electricity unsustainable

It is estimated that data centre consumption is likely to almost double by 2030 – from 485 Terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025 to 950 TWh by 2030, equivalent to three per cent of global demand, according to the intergovernmental International Energy Agency (IEA). As against this, investment in data centre infrastructure worldwide was expected to roughly double only by 2050 – from around $800 billion per year in 2026 to $1.8 trillion per year in 2050, as these centres and other energy-intensive facilities are being built much faster than the power grids needed to supply them.

It takes two to five years for a large facility to be built and connected, whereas it can take more than ten years to expand transmission lines and other grid infrastructure. Electricity demand from AI datacentres is volatile and can spike unexpectedly: grids that rely on renewable energies cannot adjust in real time, syas Geneva-based UN’s economic commission for Europe (UNECE).

European countries have already started placing restrictions. Ireland, which has one of the highest concentrations of data centres in the world, has introduced connection restrictions in Dublin, and the Netherlands has introduced constraints on where data centres can be built.

“Connecting large data centres can require significant infrastructure investment, but there is no consistent framework determining how these costs should be divided between data-centre developers, electricity companies and consumers. Without clear rules, necessary investment may be delayed,” says the report.

There is a lack of proper regulation and guidelines as to where data centres should be located. These power-intensive facilities naturally chose places  offering favourable connectivity and regulatory conditions, concentrating demand in places where local grids may not have the capacity to support it.

Environmental regulation is also beginning to expand beyond electricity consumption to the wider impacts of data centres on water use, emissions and local resources, but UNECE warns that these rules remain too fragmented, and underlines that regulators also lack sufficient information about how large facilities use electricity in real time, making it harder to anticipate their impact on the grid.