Artificial intelligence (AI) has undergone a rapid expansion in recent years.
Tech leaders have hailed an “AI revolution” – predicting “transformative” effects for humanity – while some governments have set their sights on AI-driven economic growth.
Yet, the industry is also facing scrutiny on many fronts, from inaccuracies in AI outputs through to the threat it poses to democracy.
One major critique concerns the environmental impact of AI, particularly the intensive energy use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of the data centres that power it.
Campaigners, journalists and researchers have warned that the rapid expansion of data centres could slow down or even reverse the global shift towards net-zero.
The topic is complex, not least because the future of AI – and the role it could play in increasing or potentially helping to reduce emissions – remains highly uncertain.
Below, Carbon Brief takes a look at some of the best available figures, largely from the International Energy Agency (IEA), to explore the energy and emissions impact of AI.
- Data centres currently account for a small share of global emissions and electricity use
- Around a tenth of the electricity demand growth by 2030 is set to be driven by data centres
- Data centres could account for half of electricity demand growth in some countries
- Fossil-fuel use will likely expand to power data centres, but clean-energy supplies are set to grow faster
- There is a lot of uncertainty about how much data centres will expand
1. Data centres currently account for a small share of global emissions and electricity use
The process of training and deploying AI models relies on data centres – large, energy-intensive facilities that house computing infrastructure.
Data centres already underpin the internet, among other things, making them essential for modern life. But as hype around AI has grown in recent years, investment in new data centres has ballooned.
The global electricity consumption of expanding data centres has grown by around 12% each year since 2017, according to the IEA’s recent “energy and AI” report.
Concerns about “skyrocketing” electricity demand have also prompted warnings of data centres driving up CO2 emissions, as fossil fuels still generate much of the world’s power.
Indeed, companies, such as Google, Meta and Microsoft, have reported large emissions spikes over the past few years due to data-centre expansion, despite their net-zero pledges.
One research paper concludes that the electricity demand of AI “runs counter to the massive efficiency gains that are needed to achieve net-zero”. Others have voiced concerns that data centres will “overwhelm” and “undermine” both national and company-level climate targets.
Reporting often mentions the electricity demand of data centres – or their emissions – “doubling”, “tripling” or increasing by some other large percentage in the coming years.
But these increases, while potentially dramatic in relative terms, are starting from a low baseline. As shown in the chart below, data centres are currently responsible for just over 1% of global electricity demand and 0.5% of CO2 emissions, according to IEA data.
Given this starting point, even as data centres expand, the IEA suggests that they will make a relatively small contribution to climate change, in the short term.
The agency estimates that data-centre emissions will reach 1% of CO2 emissions by 2030 in its central scenario, or 1.4% in a faster-growth scenario.
Nevertheless, it notes that this is one of the few sectors where emissions are set to grow – alongside road transport and aviation – as most will likely decarbonise in the coming years.
2. Around a tenth of the electricity demand growth by 2030 is set to be driven by data centres
The world is entering what the IEA describes as a “new age of electricity”, in which the electrification of transport, buildings and industry drives a surge in demand for power.
Along with electric cars and factories, data centres are frequently highlighted by analysts as a key “emerging driver” of this demand.
Under the IEA’s central scenario for data-centre growth, the sector’s global electricity consumption would more than double between 2024 and 2030, reaching 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) by the end of the decade. This is equivalent to the current electricity demand of Japan.
The IEA describes AI as “the most important driver of this growth”.
As it stands, AI has been responsible for around 5-15% of data-centre power use in recent years, but this could increase to 35-50% by 2030, according to another report prepared for the IEA.
However, the 530TWh rise in electricity demand in data centres by 2030 would only be 8% of the overall increase in demand that the IEA projects, as shown in the chart below.
This is less than electric vehicles (838TWh) or air conditioning (651TWh). It is considerably less than the 1,936TWh growth expected in industrial sectors by 2030.
If data-centre electricity use rose in line with the IEA’s faster-growth scenario, the facilities would be responsible for around 12% of global demand growth overall.
While the IEA says “uncertainties widen” when considering electricity demand growth beyond 2030, it expects a continued – albeit slower – increase to 1,193TWh by 2035.
This would mean annual demand growth roughly halving, from around 90TWh per year out to 2030, down to less than 50TWh a year out to 2035.
3. Data centres could account for half of electricity demand growth in some countries
While the global picture suggests a relatively modest role for data centres in driving near-future electricity demand growth, it could be far more pronounced in some countries.
Data centres are very geographically concentrated, both in terms of their global distribution and within leading countries. Today, nearly half of their electricity consumption takes place in the US, 25% in China and 15% in Europe, according to the IEA.
US data centres used around 4% of the nation’s electricity in 2023 and this is set to rise to 7-12% by 2028, according to analysis by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
In Ireland – regarded as a European “tech hub” – around 21% of the nation’s electricity is used for data centres. The IEA estimates that this share could rise to 32% by 2026.
Data-centre electricity demand tends to be further localised in certain regions. In the US state of Virginia, these facilities already consume 26% of electricity, while in the Irish capital, Dublin, the figure is 79%, according to analysis by Oeko-Institute.
Much of the commentary on AI threatening climate goals comes from “advanced economies” in the global north, where the IEA estimates that, on average, a quarter of electricity demand growth by 2030 will be driven by data centres.
(In many of these countries, electricity demand has previously been flat or falling for years.)
Roughly half of the power demand growth in the US and Japan over the next five years is expected to come from data centres, according to the IEA, as shown in the figure below.
While there are some notable exceptions, such as Malaysia, data centres are set to be a relatively small portion of electricity demand growth in developing and emerging markets.
Around the world, electricity grids are under strain, with many developed countries, in particular, seeing long wait times for grid connections and new transmission lines. Data-centre growth is raising this pressure.
There are also growing concerns, notably in the US, about the impact data-centre growth could have on energy bills.
The IEA says that demand growth presents “advanced economies” with a “wake-up call” for the electricity sector to invest in infrastructure, otherwise “there is a risk that meeting data-centre load growth could entail trade-offs with other goals, such as electrification”.
4. Fossil-fuel use will likely expand to power data centres, but clean-energy supplies are set to grow faster
The extent to which data-centre growth increases emissions depends on which energy sources power those data centres.
Data centres can use power from the grid, in which case their electricity mix will reflect that of the region they are in and could therefore become cleaner as nations decarbonise.
They can also be powered by “captive” sources, built to supply specific facilities, such as solar panels, small nuclear reactors or gas turbines.
There are concerns that data-centre expansion will be used to justify the prolonged use of fossil fuels, “locking in” a future of elevated emissions.
Indeed, the likes of Shell have framed AI in such terms and some data-centre operators have been explicitly seeking gas connections to meet their electricity needs.
Currently, coal is the biggest single electricity source for data centres globally, largely due to the numerous facilities in China.
Overall, fossil fuels provide nearly 60% of power to data centres, according to the IEA. Renewables meet 27% of their electricity demand and nuclear another 15%.
(These figures are based on the electricity these facilities consume, rather than any contracts they have to buy clean energy credits.)
In the IEA’s central scenario, by 2035 the ratio of the data-centre electricity mix switches from around 60% fossil fuels and 40% clean power to 60% clean power and 40% fossil fuels, as shown in the chart below.
This is expected to be driven primarily by the wider global expansion of renewables, although some projects will be funded directly by data-centre companies.
However, the IEA says significantly more gas and coal power would likely still be required to meet data-centre demand, both from ramping up existing plants and building new ones.
Gas-power generation for data centres is expected to more than double from 120TWh in 2024 to 293TWh in 2035, with much of this growth in the US, according to the IEA.
About 38GW of captive gas plants currently “in development” – roughly a quarter of all such projects – are planned to power data centres, according to Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
The US has doubled the amount of gas- and oil-fired capacity it has in development over the past year, driven partly by the energy demand of the “burgeoning AI industry”, according to GEM.
However, these projects are facing long lead times and “sharply” rising costs, with GEM noting, as a result, that many may never materialise.
5. There is a lot of uncertainty about how much data centres will expand
Currently, there are no comprehensive global datasets available on data-centre electricity consumption or emissions, with few governments mandating any reporting of such numbers.
All figures concerning the energy and climate impact of AI are therefore estimates.
The IEA has assessed hundreds of available estimates and forecasts, noting that even historical data can be “widely divergent”, due in part to a lack of common definitions.
On top of this, there are major uncertainties, including over how quickly AI will be adopted. Despite the enthusiastic uptake of generative AI by individuals and companies, some argue that the business case for continued, rapid growth may be weaker than suggested.
Another uncertainty is how energy-efficient AI will be. Experts have already identified efficiency improvements resulting from better chips, more efficient training algorithms and larger data centres, all of which could continue curbing electricity demand.
(Google has also reported a substantial drop in the electricity use required for individual AI search queries, which is already small compared to the power needed to train AI models.)
A final uncertainty is over how many proposed data centres will actually get built, with some speculative requests for grid capacity relating to plans that may never materialise.
As a result of these knowledge gaps, there have been numerous estimates of short-term electricity demand growth from data centres, which have produced very different results, as shown in the chart below.
Some estimates – such as one from the Gas Exporting Countries Forum arguing that more gas exports will be needed to fuel meteoric rises in electricity demand for AI – have been deemed less credible in reviews by independent experts.
Another area of great uncertainty concerns the impact that the application of AI could have on electricity use and emissions.
Some researchers have attempted to calculate how much AI could curb emissions, by helping to identify efficiency gains in other parts of the energy system, or by making technological breakthroughs.
In some “exploratory” analysis, the IEA says such gains could cancel out any extra data-centre emissions due to the growth of AI.
However, it adds that despite the AI hype, “there is currently no existing momentum of AI adoption that would unlock these emissions reductions”.
The post AI: Five charts that put data-centre energy use – and emissions – into context appeared first on Carbon Brief.
AI: Five charts that put data-centre energy use – and emissions – into context
Climate Change
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UK, Europe and India battle heatwaves
‘MIND-BOGGLING’ MAY: The UK and continental Europe have set “mind-boggingly crazy” temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reported the Financial Times. According to the Associated Press, the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. The newswire added that records “also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west”. On Wednesday, Portugal hit a record May temperature of 40.3C, said BBC News.
‘BRUTAL REMINDER’: In parts of Italy, the heatwave triggered blackouts, reported Reuters. The heatwave has also been linked to more than a dozen deaths in the UK and France, including from people drowning and suffering heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said ABC News. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the intense heatwaves were a “brutal reminder” of the cost of global warming, reported Politico. Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the record-shattering heatwave.
INDIA’S DEADLY HEAT: In the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than 100 people died within three days following an intense heatwave, reported the Khaleej Times. The publication noted that authorities urged people to stay indoors and avoid direct exposure to the heat. Meanwhile, some parts of India are “grappling with power cuts as record-breaking heat has pushed electricity demand to an all-time high”, reported Reuters.
Around the world
- CRUDE DIPS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said global investments in oil projects will fall below $500bn in 2026, continuing a three-year decline, reported Bloomberg. Carbon Brief’s analysis of the data shows the US’s “data-centre boom” means it is now investing more in fossil-fuel power than China.
- DODGING NET-ZERO: The world’s biggest miner, Australian giant BHP, has backtracked on climate action by halting or delaying projects to cut “vast” amounts of emissions, according to a Guardian investigation.
- SOLAR SLIP: China’s new solar installations dropped for a fourth straight month, reflecting weakening domestic demand, said Bloomberg.
- NO LOGGING: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a new report, said Agence France-Presse.
- EXECUTIVE ACTION: Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency to fight a surge in coastal erosion, citing the need to protect natural resources and vulnerable communities, reported the Associated Press.
Four million
The number of homes in the UK with air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, reported the Guardian. There are 29m households in the UK.
Latest climate research
- Carbon Brief will soon be launching a new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free today.
- LGBTQ+ households in the US are “significantly more likely” to face energy poverty and insecurity than the general population | Energy Research & Social Science
- Global rice-paddy greenhouse gas emissions have doubled over the past six decades | Nature Food
- Vegetation greening and human-caused warming are the “main drivers” of a surge in flash floods over the last decade | Science Advances
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
A Carbon Brief investigation has shed light on the impact of weather-related flooding on National Health Service (NHS) facilities across the UK. At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding. The chart above shows sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site.
Spotlight
How solar mini-grids can ‘help boost’ Nigeria’s economy
This week, Carbon Brief covers a new report on Nigeria’s solar mini-grid industry.
Amid the impact of the US-Iran war on the Nigerian economy, a new report has argued that solar-mini grids can help to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and create more than 200,000 jobs.
In Nigeria, Africa’s third-largest economy, the war has led to an increase in energy prices and a decrease in petrol consumption. Petrol is one of the country’s main sources of transport and household fuel. According to one estimate, prices have surged by up to 40% since the conflict commenced in February.
Although the Nigerian treasury has benefited from rising crude oil prices – the country is a major exporter of oil and gas – the impact has been most visible on the wider population.
Rising energy prices “have affected the purchasing power of workers”, Agnes Funmi Sessi, a labour union leader in Lagos, told Carbon Brief.
However, scaling the deployment of solar “mini-grids” could help the country move away from fossil fuels, stimulate rural economies and improve livelihoods, according to the new report authored by the thinktank, the Africa Policy Research Institute.
“We estimate that, by deploying over 10,000 mini-grids, the sector could create 212,688 direct full-time informal and productive-use jobs across the off-grid and under-grid market segments,” the report said.
A nascent industry
Solar “mini-grids” are small-scale, localised electricity generation and distribution systems powered by solar panels.
The report positioned Nigeria’s mini-grid sector as one of the fastest-growing in Africa, with the country having just 11 mini-grids in 2015 and 155 by 2024, along with at least 42 active developers.
Many of the companies within the sector are young and apply novel local techniques in their deployment of solar technology, the report said.
However, access to finance remains a huge barrier. According to the report, the sector may require up to $8bn to connect 35.4 million people to mini-grids.
“Most Nigerians want solar power in their homes, but it is a capital intensive business for vendors and customers,” Dr Ben Iheagwara, a renewable energy entrepreneur and policy analyst, told Carbon Brief.
The report urged the Nigerian government and its international partners to “attract private capital by de-risking investments and ensuring regulatory clarity and long-term planning”.
Other key recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders include investment in skills development and paying attention to the gender gap.
Powering rural communities
Many rural communities, which make up about 37% of the country, are disconnected from the national grid system, so often have to generate their own electricity through mini-grid systems.
According to Nigeria’s electricity regulator, NERC, a mini-grid is defined as a power generating system with an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.
A mini-grid can be powered by fossil fuels such as diesel or petrol, but solar power is now considered a cheaper and cleaner source.
With more than 80 million people lacking access to electricity in Nigeria, solar mini-grids are increasingly viewed as the lowest-cost electrification solution, the report said.
Watch, read, listen
MOVING FORWARD: The Energy Transition Show dug into electricity reform in South Africa, discussing the country’s coal legacy and the role of renewables.
ENERGY POVERTY: In an opinion article for Project Syndicate, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, Saliem Fakir, argued that the energy transition in emerging and developing economies is driven by economics and security rather than emissions targets.
VANISHING CITY: BBC News reported on a coastal community in Nigeria where the ocean has “already swallowed more than half of the town”.
Coming up
- 31 May: Colombia presidential elections
- 31 May-5 June: Global Environment Facility council meeting, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 2-5 June: The Venice Agreement for Peatlands workshop, Kisumu, Kenya
Pick of the jobs
- National Oceanography Centre, engagement assistant (external communications) | Salary: £28,254. Location: Southampton, UK
- Dangote Industries, decarbonisation specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Lagos, Nigeria
- City of New York, chief decarbonization officer | Salary: $261,469. Location: New York City
- Climate Central, writer and associate editor | Salary: $72,000-$75,000. Location: US (Remote)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids appeared first on Carbon Brief.
At the African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meetings this week, several African leaders called for investments in electricity infrastructure which go beyond lighting homes to powering economies.
Applauding the AfDB for its energy programmes like Mission 300 – which aims to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030 – the Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera said that without power supply “we will not be able to achieve development”.
Speaking alongside him, the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso echoed this, saying that “as we need to help our people to turn towards agriculture, to turn towards livestock rearing, we also need to provide power to them.”
As the Mission 300 initiative advances, attention is increasingly shifting from simply connecting households to ensuring that electricity access translates into economic opportunities and livelihoods. That shift is driving the launch of a new Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy being developed under Mission 300 by the philanthropically funded Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP).
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Africa’s solar power installations have increased sharply, driven by utility-scale projects and privately financed rooftop and commercial systems
In an interview with Climate Home News, Carol Koech, GEAPP’s vice president for Africa, said the initiative is designed to ensure that electrification supports income generation, agriculture and local economic development rather than only basic household access.
Q: What is the Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy aiming to achieve with Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 is increasingly being seen as a job platform and so the role of the Centre of Excellence in translating those electricity connections to jobs. So we want the centre to do four things. First, as a delivery engine, which enables countries to embed a cross-institutional advisor that supports the electrification components, but also other components that are happening in the country.
Second, we want the centre to be an innovation and strategy hub. Today, there’s really no place where you can go to find the state of the industry for productive use of energy across the globe, and we want to make the centre of excellence the place where you can go and get information about what technologies are available, where deployment is happening and how much is being deployed.
(Photo: Lighting Global/SunCulture/World Bank)
The third pillar is to coordinate and mobilise capital. We anticipate the centre coordinating internally within the ecosystem but also mobilising additional financing to help productivity. The last piece is how to scale businesses, enterprises and partnerships around this centre because we anticipate that as we grow this space, new industries will emerge and those industries will need to be supported.
Q: Why is productive use of energy becoming important under Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 gave us a bigger platform to demonstrate that energy is truly an enabler for economic development. It’s not sufficient to just provide a connection, but it is required that that connection truly translates to economic development for the communities that benefit.
We shouldn’t bring electricity and then start thinking about what people can do with it. We need to think about both at the same time and ensure electricity arrives together with the things that will make a difference in people’s lives. Historically, we’ve brought electricity and imagined a miracle would happen, but we know that hasn’t been the case.
The question is how to ensure universal access in the cheapest way while still transforming communities. Some mini-grids have been deployed in places where demand is extremely low, making them too expensive to sustain. But when mini-grids are paired with productive uses, the economics start to change. If businesses currently running on fossil fuel generators move to solar or renewable energy, operating costs fall and the business case for mini-grids becomes much stronger.
Q: How could this work in practice for agriculture and rural communities?
A: I’ll give you a practical example in our pilot country Zambia. Zambia has two programmes, they have the ASCENT programme for energy access and they also have the Zambia agribusiness and trade platform (ZATP). Some of the components of the ZATP programme – which is an agri-business program to help farmers to be productive – have a productive use component but don’t have an energy supply component. So we’re offering things like mills, processing facilities, irrigation and others. In some parts of Zambia, these productive use equipment has been supplied but has not been powered, so communities are not benefiting from that.
So the whole point is if we coordinate where the agribusiness programme is deployed together with where the energy access programme is deployed and layer those two programmes together in one place, then you could solve the energy access problem and solve productive use together and therefore have really meaningful outcomes for communities.
Q: How will the centre help both households and small businesses use electricity productively?
A: The question on whether we should electrify households or businesses is neither here nor there. We need to electrify all. The argument is really once we electrify businesses, the owners of those businesses will be able to pay what they need for their households as well as increase production for their businesses.
Electricity consumption is usually an indicator of economic development and by pushing productive use into households, especially where households are also smallholder farmers, the question becomes: how can electricity access translate to additional economic development for them? If you are connected onto a mini-grid, then you can actually use that connection to run irrigation, put in a dryer, or a cold storage system, whatever you require to improve your income but the fact that you have energy means that you can access productive use. Now, we need to ask ourselves how do these farmers or these households then get access to these appliances, because that’s another barrier.
Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom?
The cost of these appliances is usually extremely high, and when you have programmes such as the ZATP running in Zambia, that’s already a public funding approach to making these appliances available and potentially reachable for farmers, either at household level, at farm level or at community level.
Q: How does this complement the already existing Mission 300 national energy compacts designed by countries?
A: Each of the national energy compacts have a productive use component, a pillar that talks about distributed renewable energy, productive use, and clean cooking. This is actually complementing the work of the countries, and this centre is like an available support, back office for countries to tap into as they implement their national energy compacts, if they have specific requirements and support for that pillar three.
So the advisers that will be embedded into countries, their role is to coordinate within country programs that are running where energy could make a difference. The advisers will be sourced from the country and so they will make sure that the donor money is coordinated to benefit the country fully. Their role will include going to ministries of agriculture or any related ministries and understanding where they are prioritising programmes that require electrification. In many cases, programmes and money have already been allocated, but this component is about how do we deploy it in a way that it actually truly brings a difference, so those advisers will do that.
Q: How will the centre address financing and private sector investment challenges?
A: What we’re really looking at is different financing mechanisms. In the past, we have provided subsidies and results-based financing to suppliers, distributors and manufacturers to help create markets for productive-use appliances. I see this as one mechanism the centre could use, but the bigger opportunity is aligning public funding across different programmes so that more of it can support productive uses, either through direct funding or subsidies.
Nigerians bet on solar as global oil shock hits wallets and power supplies
When it comes to private sector investment, the reality is that Africa’s energy sector still faces serious constraints. Most private investment has gone into power generation, particularly through independent power producers, and even then that has only been possible in places where the off-takers, usually utilities, are bankable.
To unlock more private capital, countries need the right policies, reforms and regulations, but even more importantly, utilities must become financially viable. If the off-taker is not bankable, then the project is not bankable.
Another major question is how to attract private investment into transmission infrastructure. There are different models being explored, but the reality is that public funding alone is not sufficient to achieve Mission 300, so finding new ways to mobilise private capital will be critical.
The post Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
The “data-centre boom” is driving a surge in gas investment in the US, pushing its fossil-power spending ahead of China, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
A rapid expansion of data centres across the nation is at the heart of the US tech sector’s plans to continue “dominat[ing]” the global artificial intelligence (AI) industry.
High demand for electricity to power these data centres has led to companies rushing to build new gas-fired power plants across the country.
This trend, combined with “soaring” gas-turbine prices, drove a threefold increase in US gas‑power investment in 2025 – and the IEA expects this to continue throughout 2026.
As the chart below shows, Chinese investment in coal- and gas-fired power is expected to drop this year, amid domestic policy changes and the Iran war sending gas prices spiralling.
Together, these trends mean the IEA expects US investment in fossil-fuelled power plants to overtake China’s in 2026.
The IEA’s latest world energy investment report shows that spending on renewables and electricity grids continues to dominate at the global scale.
In the US, Trump administration policies such as the phase-out of tax credits for renewables has led to the IEA revising its forecast for new wind and solar power downwards.
At the same time, US electricity demand is expected to rise by an average of 2% per year from 2026 to 2030, with data centres contributing half of the overall increase.
This is leading to what the IEA calls an “AI-driven push” to build new gas-power plants in the US, the world’s largest data-centre market and largest gas producer.
Globally, orders for new gas-power plants increased to 130 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 – a 25-year high – and US demand was a “major factor” in this, according to the IEA.
Much of the demand is coming from tech companies in the US seeking to bypass grid connection queues by building “captive” gas-power plants.
As the chart below shows, since the start of 2025 these US captive data centres alone have signed off on more investment in new gas turbines than any country in the world – aside from the US itself.
Overall, investment in grid upgrades, power equipment and electricity generation to support the buildout of data-centre infrastructure around the world hit $105bn in 2025, according to the IEA.
This is more than the total invested in the energy sector across the whole of Africa – a continent where more than 600 million people do not have access to electricity.
The IEA notes that strong demand for gas-power plants for data centres in the US – and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East – is “limiting the availability of turbines for near-term deployment elsewhere in the world”.
The agency also points out that as the tech sector becomes a “major energy investor”, accounting for around 40% of all corporate power-purchase agreements, it is also “underpinning momentum” for emerging clean technologies, such as small modular nuclear reactors and advanced geothermal.
The post AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China appeared first on Carbon Brief.
AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
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