American data centers, the large buildings full of computers that run online services and AI systems, will consume about one-fifth of all electricity generated in the U.S. by 2035, according to a new report from BloombergNEF published July 21, 2026. That is roughly four times the current level. The consultancy says AI is the main driver, with nearly half of all data center capacity expected to go toward building and running AI models.

Think of a data center as a giant warehouse packed with thousands of powerful computers running around the clock. Each of those computers needs electricity to run and to stay cool. As companies build bigger AI systems, they need more of these computers, and each one draws more power than the computers that came before.

The revised BNEF estimate for 2035 electricity demand is 83% higher than what the consultancy predicted just seven months earlier in December 2025. This continues a pattern of upward revisions across the energy forecasting community. EPRI more than doubled its 2024 estimate for data center electricity demand, and S&P raised its forecast by more than a third between October and April. The U.S. Department of Energy now states data centers could consume up to 9% of U.S. electricity generation annually by 2030, up from 4% of total load in 2023, while EPRI projects a range of 9% to 17% of national electricity by that same year EPRI.

BNEF's April 2025 baseline forecast had U.S. data-center power demand rising from almost 35 gigawatts in 2024 to 78 gigawatts by 2035. By December 2025, the consultancy issued a more aggressive scenario in which demand could reach 106 gigawatts. The current report pushes the projection to nearly 200 gigawatts, reflecting what BNEF describes as an aggressive AI adoption trajectory. For scale, one gigawatt is enough electricity to power roughly 750,000 homes.

The impact on regional power grids is concrete. PJM, the organization that manages electricity across a region spanning Virginia to Illinois, will see 34% of its electricity go to data centers in the coming decade. ERCOT, which manages the grid covering most of Texas, will need to devote 22% of its generating capacity to data centers. By 2033, the U.S. will host 64% of global AI chips by power demand.

Globally, BNEF's aggressive scenario projects data centers will create 1,935 terawatt-hours of new electricity demand by 2033, nearly as much as India uses annually. The IEA reports that global electricity generation supplying data centers was 460 terawatt-hours in 2024. Its Base Case projects that figure growing to over 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2030 and reaching 1,300 terawatt-hours in 2035, with data centre electricity consumption roughly doubling from 485 terawatt-hours in 2025 to 950 terawatt-hours in 2030, accounting for around 3% of global electricity consumption. Under the IEA's high case, 2035 demand could exceed 1,700 terawatt-hours, roughly 45% above the Base Case. A worst-case scenario reviewed by the IEA 4E Technology Collaboration Programme projects consumption nearing 8,000 terawatt-hours by 2030.

The scale of individual facilities is also shifting. Bloom Energy's 2026 Data Center Power Report projects that by 2030, about one in five data center campuses will exceed gigawatt scale, rising to about one in three by 2035 Bloom Energy. A study hosted on SSRN projects data center electricity consumption rising from 23 terawatt-hours in 2025 to 371.8 terawatt-hours by 2035 under a high-growth scenario.

The pace of these forecast revisions is itself the story. Multiple independent consultancies and agencies, each using different methods, have all moved their numbers sharply upward within the past 18 months. BNEF's 83% upward revision in a single reporting cycle is not a small tweak.

The broader concern is that this reflects a fundamental reassessment of how much computing power AI will demand and how quickly the electricity system must respond. When a single category of electricity user absorbs over a third of a regional grid's supply, as the PJM and ERCOT figures suggest, it stops being just another customer and becomes something grid planners have to build around. Power grid upgrades, new power plants, and transmission lines are typically planned on timelines of ten years or more. Data centers are being built faster than that.

The concentration of AI computing in the U.S. also has geopolitical dimensions. Hosting 64% of global AI compute by power demand means the U.S. grid bears a disproportionate share of the energy cost of the AI transition. That concentration creates exposure, both to grid reliability events and to the political risk that other countries may impose data sovereignty or carbon-border requirements that fragment the global compute landscape.

There is reason for cautious optimism on the supply side. The same data center buildout driving demand is also accelerating investment in new power generation, including nuclear, solar plus battery storage, and power generated on-site at the data centers themselves. Bloom Energy's projection of gigawatt-scale campuses suggests that the industry is already moving toward designs, on-site generation, and dedicated power contracts that bypass the traditional grid. The 200-gigawatt question is not whether the demand materializes. It is whether the new power plants and transmission lines can be built in the right places at the right times to meet it.