Data centres' share of global power to surge to 4% by 2030

Asia Pacific is one of the regions driving demand.

Energy demand from data centres is projected to continue to increase in the coming months, as technology companies compete to developing cutting-edge artificial intelligence models.

In its analysis, Goldman Sachs Research forecasts data centre “power demand will increase from 1% to 2% of overall global power demand in 2023 to 3% to 4% by the end of the decade.”

“If global data center growth in 2030 vs. 2023 levels were its own country, it would be a top 10 global power consumer,” said Goldman Sachs Research analysts Jim Schneider, Carly Davenport, and Brian Singer.

The Asia Pacific and North American regions have the most power demand for data centres and square footage online today, most notably in Northern Virginia, Beijing, Shanghai, and Texas. Goldman Sachs Research finds that capacity is centered around regions with high compute and data traffic, as well as robust corporate demand.

Goldman Sachs Research estimates current demand to be approximately 62 gigawatts (GW), comprised of cloud workloads (58%), traditional workloads (31%), and AI workloads (13%). AI is projected to grow to 28% of the overall market by 2027, whilst cloud drops to 50% and traditional workloads fall to 21%.