Planned data center construction shows no signs of slowing down, with new additions requiring 2.7 times (almost three times) the sector’s current electricity demand over the next 10 years, according to a new report from BloombergNEF.
By 2035, data centers will consume 106 gigawatts of power, a significant increase from the 40 gigawatts used today. BloombergNEF said much of that growth will occur in more rural areas as facilities expand in size and land near urban areas becomes scarce.
Part of the growth driver is the huge scale of the planned data centers. Today, only 10% of data centers consume more than 50 megawatts of power, but over the next 10 years, the average power for new facilities will be well over 100 megawatts. The largest sites help skew the data. Almost a quarter exceed 500 megawatts, and some exceed 1 gigawatt.
At the same time, utilization across all data centers is expected to increase from 59% to 69% as AI training and inference increases to nearly 40% of total datacenter compute.
In some ways, the new report’s findings are not surprising. AI companies are racing to build more powerful data centers, with global investment in facilities reaching up to $580 billion this year. This is more than the world spends to find new sources of oil.
Still, a new report shows how quickly the situation is changing. This is a significant upward revision from a document published by the group in April. This rise was driven by a surge in new projects announced since then. “The average timeline for a project to come online is seven years, so early-stage development has the greatest impact on the final stage of our forecasts,” the new report says.
Early-stage projects more than doubled from early 2024 to early 2025, but these are different from projects that are committed or currently under construction.
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Much of that new capacity is planned for Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and New Jersey. They are located in areas known to industry experts for PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization tasked with operating the power grids in those states and others, including Delaware, West Virginia, and parts of Kentucky and North Carolina. There will also be a number of additions to the Arcot Texas grid.
The report arrives as the PJM interconnect comes under the radar of its independent monitor, Monitoring Analytics. The group filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), arguing that PJM has the authority to approve new data center connections only if there is sufficient capacity on the grid.
“As part of its obligation to maintain reliability, PJM has the authority to require that new large data center loads be waited on the system until it can reliably handle the load,” Monitoring Analytics wrote. “PJM has permission to create load queues.”
Additionally, data centers are responsible for today’s high electricity prices in the region, the group said.
“It is unjust and unreasonable for PJM to fail to clarify and enforce existing rules and protect reliable and affordable service at PJM,” the group said.
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