The surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI) is fuelling growth in datacentre markets across the world, with figures from Gartner highlighting the twin impact of these trends on global electricity supply and demand patterns.

Projections released by the IT analyst house suggest the electricity demands of datacentres will grow by 16% this year and are on course to double by 2030. At the same time, Gartner analysts estimate that the amount of electricity consumed by the global datacentre market will hit 448 terrawatt hours (TWh) in 2025, rising to 980 TWh by 2030, with much of this energy consumed by power-hungry AI workloads hosted in these datacentres. Its figures show that AI-optimised servers are expected to account for 21% of the total amount of power consumed by datacentres this year, rising to 44% by 2030, when they will also represent 64% of the incremental power demand for datacentres.  

“While conventional servers and supporting infrastructure contribute to overall datacentre electricity consumption, the rapid rise of AI-optimised servers is fuelling the increase in datacentre power consumption,” said Gartner research director Linglan Wang. “Their electricity usage is set to rise nearly fivefold, from 93 TWh in 2025 to 432 TWh in 2030.” 

On a region-by-region basis, Gartner said the US and China are expected to account for more than two-thirds of the global electricity demand generated by datacentres. Specifically, Gartner said US  datacentre electricity usage is projected to rise from 4% to 7.8% of regional consumption between 2025 and 2030, with Europe increasing from 2.7% to 5%.

Growth in China and in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to be more moderate, because – as Gartner terms it – the area favours the use of more power-efficient servers and benefits from “superior infrastructure planning”.

With governments across the world, including the UK, trying to become AI leaders, there has been much talk about the need from various countries to accelerate the build-out of their datacentre infrastructure in support of these plans. This has prompted concerns about how these datacentres will be powered, particularly in the UK where energy security in the popular London datacentre hub is a known issue, and whether it will be possible to do so sustainably.

Gartner said the current situation, whereby large swathes of the world’s datacentres are powered by fossil fuels, is not sustainable, but the situation is improving.

“New clean on-site power alternatives – such as green hydrogen, geothermal and small modular reactors – are beginning to emerge and will become viable fuel alternatives for datacentre microgrids by the end of the decade,” said Gartner in a research note.

In the near-term, however, Tony Harvey, vice-president analyst at Gartner, said natural gas is likely to remain the main power source for datacentres, adding: “In the next three-to-five years, we anticipate rapid growth in battery energy storage systems to balance the fluctuations of solar and wind energy. While geothermal microgrids offer great promise, its high initial costs and permitting challenges will likely keep it a niche option for now.” 

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