- Research firm IDC predicts that datacentre electricity consumption worldwide will more than double between 2023 and 2028, reaching 857 terawatt hours.
- Increasingly power-hungry AI workloads are a major factor
- Rising electricity prices and growing carbon emissions add an urgency for datacentre efficiencies to be increased and greener energy sourced
- AWS, Equinix, Google, Microsoft are among those keeping the nuclear option alive
Datacentre electricity consumption is going to skyrocket. According to a new report from research firm IDC, it will more than double between 2023 and 2028, notching up a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.5% over the five-year period.
In 2028, calculates IDC, global datacentre electricity consumption will reach 857 terawatt hours (TWh). By way of comparison and to help illustrate the enormity of that figure, the UK’s entire electricity consumption was 266 TWh in 2023.
Power-hungry AI workloads will account for a growing portion of total datacentre electricity use. IDC forecasts they will gobble up 146.2 TWh by 2027 (a CAGR of 44.7%).
As it stands, electricity is the largest ongoing expense in keeping datacentres humming: It accounts for 46% of total spending for enterprise datacentres, and 60% for service provider datacentres. “Rising consumption and increased energy costs will make datacentres considerably more expensive to operate,” warned the research firm, “but how much is uncertain.” Burgeoning carbon emissions is of course another major concern.
