US commercial electricity sector consumption is expected to grow by three percent in 2025 and by five in 2026
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has forecast that electricity demand will continue to rise in the nation, partially due to data centers.
Overall power demand is expected to rise to 4,193 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2025 and 4,283bn kWh in 2026 from a record 4,097bn kWh in 2024.
Commercial electricity sector consumption is forecast to grow by 3 percent in 2025 and by five in 2026 - up on a prediction of an annual average of 2 percent in a previous EIA report.
"The revisions are most notable in the commercial sector, where data centers are an expanding source of demand," the EIA said in its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) update.
Total US electricity generation this summer is expected to increase by one percent, compared with the summer of 2024, as a result of growing power demand from the commercial and industrial sectors.
The EIA added: "We expect higher natural gas prices this summer will result in less generation from natural gas-fired power plants compared with last summer, which is expected to be offset by more generation from coal, solar, and hydro."
While data centers have embraced natural gas, its broader share of power generation is expected to drop from 42 percent in 2024 to 40 percent in 2025 and 2026.
Coal's share will stick at 16 percent in 2025, and then drop 1 percent in 2026 as renewable energy grows, despite efforts from the current administration.
In late December, a Department of Energy (DOE) report found that data centers consumed 4.4 percent of US power in 2023, adding that it could hit 12 percent by 2028. The AI boom has led to the development of server racks that consume more power than ever, networked together in data centers that are larger than ever.
Globally, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in April forecast that data center consumption will grow to 945TWh per year by 2030, from 415TWh in 2024.
