Data centres form the backbone of our digital lives. They are the factories facilitating technology driven progress. The rise of artificial intelligence is now turbocharging demand for bigger data centers, transforming the landscape even more and taxing the region’s energy grids. The almost overnight surge in electricity demand from data centers is now **outstripping the available power supply** in many parts of the world, according to interviews with data center operators, energy providers and tech executives. That dynamic is leading to years-long waits for businesses to access the grid as well as **growing concerns of outages and price increases** for those living in the densest data center markets. The dramatic increase in power demands from **Silicon Valley’s growth-at-all-costs approach** to AI also threatens to upend the energy transition plans of entire nations and the clean energy goals of trillion-dollar tech companies. In some countries, including Saudi Arabia, Ireland and Malaysia, the energy required to run all the data centers they plan to build at full capacity exceeds the available supply of renewable energy, according to a Bloomberg analysis of the latest available data. By one official estimate, Sweden could see power demand from data centers roughly **double** over the course of this decade — and then double again by 2040. In the UK, AI is expected to suck up **500% more energy over the next decade.** And in the US, data centers are projected to use **8% of total power by 2030**, up from **3% in 2022**, according to Goldman Sachs, which described it as “the kind of electricity growth that hasn’t been seen in a generation.” Globally, there are more than **7,000 data centers built or in various stages of development, up from 3,600 in 2015** These data centers have the capacity to consume a **combined 508 terawatt hours** of electricity per year if they were to run constantly. That’s greater than the total annual electricity production for Italy or Australia. By 2034, global energy consumption by data centers is expected to **top 1,580 TWh, about as much as is used by all of India.** In today’s data centers, you might find thousands of Nvidia Corp.’s coveted H100 chips — the engine of the generative AI boom — each of which draws as much as 700 watts, or nearly eight times the power used by a typical 60-inch flat screen TV. The average data centre was smaller than a Walmart till the turn of the 21st century.