Growing demand for artificial intelligence computing is expected to push global data centre electricity consumption to 565 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2026, a 26.4% increase from 447 TWh in 2025, according to forecasts from Gartner. The research firm estimates that AI-optimised servers will account for nearly one-third of total data centre power consumption next year and are on track to consume more electricity than conventional servers by 2027.
Worldwide data centre power demand is forecast to reach 132 gigawatts (GW) in 2026, up from 104 GW in 2025. Gartner projects that demand will continue to rise over the remainder of the decade, reaching 290 GW by 2030 as the adoption of generative AI expands.
According to Gartner, AI-optimised servers are becoming a growing contributor to overall electricity use in data centres. The company estimates that these systems will account for 31% of total data centre power consumption in 2026. Electricity consumption from AI-optimised servers is projected to increase from 95 TWh in 2025 to 175 TWh in 2026, before rising to 258 TWh in 2027.
Conventional servers are expected to consume 195 TWh of electricity in 2026, up from 193 TWh in 2025. Gartner forecasts that power consumption from conventional servers will reach 200 TWh in 2027, at which point AI-optimised servers will have overtaken them as the largest server-related source of electricity demand.
Electricity consumption associated with cooling systems and other supporting infrastructure is also expected to increase, rising from 159 TWh in 2025 to 195 TWh in 2026 and 243 TWh in 2027.
Linglan Wang, Director Analyst at Gartner, said demand for compute-intensive AI workloads is driving rapid growth in data centre power requirements while power availability is increasingly becoming a constraint on AI expansion.
Gartner estimates that data centre electricity consumption could exceed 1,200 TWh by 2030. The company said limitations in grid capacity could affect future data centre development and operations, requiring infrastructure and operations teams to focus on efficiency improvements, securing access to power supplies, deploying more efficient cooling technologies and expanding edge computing capabilities.
The forecasts are contained in Gartner’s report, “Forecast: Data Center Power Capacity and Consumption, Worldwide, 2024–2030, 1Q26.”
