Accelerating Better Decision Making

US electricity demand hit its all-time high in 2021, at more than 4,200 terawatt-hours. The US has never used more electricity than it does right now. But, it also uses barely more electricity today than it did fifteen years ago. The previous record year for electricity consumption was all the way back in 2007. To put it another way, US electricity demand was post-growth for most of this century. Even 2022’s record power consumption was less than two percent higher than it was 15 years earlier.

If you care about energy, or technology, the growth in electricity demand from data center operations is inescapable. If you care about both, it is elemental. AI-driven data center demand is a, if not the, main driver of electricity demand growth in many US electricity markets, and is one of the prime movers of global electricity demand growth this decade. The combined capital expenditures to develop AI from the four ‘hyperscalers’ (Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft) will exceed $200 billion in 2024.