Data centers drove half of U.S. electricity demand growth in 2025, and opposition is mounting

Data centers absorbed roughly half of all new U.S. electricity demand in 2025, the single largest contributor to the country's power appetite, according to the International Energy Agency's Global Energy Review, as reported by Fortune. That concentration puts the AI infrastructure boom at the center of a widening debate about who pays for the grid strain it creates.

Overall U.S. energy demand grew 2% in 2025, Fortune reported, citing the IEA. That is slower than 2024's 2.8% increase but still the second-highest growth rate since 2000, excluding post-recession rebound years. Economic expansion and a cold winter contributed, but no single sector came close to matching data centers.

A demand surge with no near-term ceiling

The IEA does not see the ratio changing soon. According to Fortune's coverage of the IEA findings, data centers are expected to continue accounting for about half of U.S. electricity demand growth all the way to 2030. The agency estimates that global data center electricity consumption already reached around 415 terawatt-hours in 2024, or about 1.5% of total global electricity use, and has grown at roughly 12% per year over the past five years, according to IEA data.

Goldman Sachs Commodities Research puts a sharper point on the near-term numbers. The firm projects U.S. data center power demand will more than double from 31 gigawatts in 2025 to 66 gigawatts in 2027. As a share of total U.S. peak summer power demand, data centers are forecast to jump from 4.1% to 8.5% over the same period, according to Goldman Sachs.

The IEA notes that the rise of AI is specifically driving higher power density inside facilities. Accelerated servers equipped with graphics processing units, which handle AI training and inference workloads, now account for around 60% of electricity consumption in modern data centers on average, according to IEA analysis. Cooling systems add another 7% to more than 30% on top of that, depending on whether a facility is a hyperscale campus or an older enterprise installation.

Not all capacity will arrive on time

The buildout faces real friction. Goldman Sachs estimates that only about 50, 60% of data center capacity scheduled to come online in the next one to two years will do so on schedule, with delays and outright cancellations holding back the rest. The grid impact will not be evenly distributed. The firm identifies Mid-Atlantic, Mid-Continent, and Northwest markets as facing elevated reliability risks, while Texas and Georgia may see comparatively limited strain thanks to planned new generation capacity.

The investment figures behind the construction wave are substantial. More than $61 billion was poured into data center construction globally in 2025, with the U.S. and Canada together accounting for more than $47 billion of that total, according to a December report by S&P Global cited by Fortune. That capital has supported construction hiring and lifted tech-sector balance sheets, but it is also drawing scrutiny at the local level.

Community resistance is becoming a business variable

The same period that produced the construction boom has generated organized opposition to it. Communities across the country have pushed back against new data center projects, raising concerns about power consumption, water use, and effects on surrounding property values, Fortune reported. Signs of protest outside a proposed facility in Monterey Park, Calif., have become emblematic of a broader pattern.

Public sentiment data reinforces the trend. A Pew Research Center survey published in March found mixed views among Americans about data centers' local impacts, according to Fortune's coverage. The findings signal that the social license once extended to tech infrastructure cannot be taken for granted, particularly as facilities scale up in size and frequency.

For utilities, grid operators, and the technology companies funding the buildout, the mismatch between projected demand and actual on-time capacity delivery is now a planning risk as real as any permitting challenge. Goldman Sachs flagged that gap, projecting significant tightening across the national power market by 2027, with some regions more exposed than others. How utilities manage that tightening, and whether communities accept the tradeoffs, will shape where the next generation of AI infrastructure actually gets built.