Data Centres Emit About 180 Million Tonnes a Year Through Their Power Use, the IEA Says. That Is 0.5% of the Total and One of the Few Rising Lines
The International Energy Agency's report Energy and AI, released on 10 April 2025, is the agency's most detailed attempt so far to quantify how the growth of artificial intelligence affects electricity demand and emissions. On the emissions side, its headline numbers are smaller than some public discussion has suggested, but the trend runs in the opposite direction to most other sectors. According to the IEA, data centres used about 415 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity consumption.
The IEA's Base Case projects data centre electricity demand reaching about 1,200 TWh by 2035. The agency stresses that data centres are among the few sectors, along with road transport and aviation, whose combined direct and indirect emissions rise through 2030 in its projections. The report finds that data centre growth is concentrated in a small number of countries, led by the United States and China. Within countries, data centres also cluster in particular regions, such as Northern Virginia in the United States, and their local grid effects can be much larger than national averages suggest.
The IEA's report also examines how AI might reduce emissions elsewhere in the energy system. The agency estimates that adoption of existing AI applications in end-use sectors could reduce emissions by about 1,400 million tonnes of CO2 in 2035 in what it calls a Widespread Adoption Case. The 180 million tonne estimate for data centre emissions is comparable to the annual energy-related emissions of a mid-sized industrial economy. The IEA's figures also differ from emissions reported by technology companies themselves.
For electricity markets, the emissions question is linked to the question of which generation will serve new data centre load. The IEA's report suggests that the emissions trajectory of data centres will depend less on the data centres themselves than on how fast grids decarbonise. Technology companies will publish their annual sustainability reports over the coming months, giving updated figures on electricity use and reported emissions.