Commercial Computing Electricity Usage Projected to Increase Significantly by 2050: EIA

Commercial computing electricity consumption is expected to increase at a faster rate than any other end use in buildings by 2050, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Computing accounted for a projected eight percent of commercial sector electricity usage during 2024 and is expected to increase to 20 percent by 2050. The agency forecasts that more electricity could be used by computing than for any other end use in the commercial sector, including ventilation, space cooling, refrigeration and lighting.

The agency expects commercial computing growth will surpass computing efficiency enhancements, which have previously muted the growth in electricity usage associated with computers. Computing includes energy usage from laptop and desktop computers, data center servers, and monitors in commercial spaces. Data center computing is considerably more energy intensive than computing in general.

Data centers produce heat and require additional air exchange, and as a result the increase in data center computing also necessitates additional space cooling and commercial ventilation. These uses are sensitive to the agency’s assumptions about the weather and population migration. In the absence of computing demand, space cooling and ventilation would still increase albeit at a slower pace.

Majority of the growth in data centers is in office buildings and in the other building category, which includes standalone data centers. In terms of regions, Texas, due its relatively low costs for electricity and land, has attracted a high concentration of data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations. North Dakota has also witnessed significant electricity demand growth, an increase of 2.6 billion kilowatthours or 37 percent between 2019 and 2023, attributed to the establishment of large computing facilities in the state.

Across the U.S., unprecedented projections for electricity demand growth driven by data centers has prompted calls for additional capacity to maintain grid reliability. Data centers are expected to consume 6.7 to 12 percent of total U.S. electricity by 2028, up from about 4.4 percent in 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Department.