The IEA quantifies the shock: electricity grids will have to invest 50% more by 2030

Global electricity demand will grow by more than 3.5% per year until 2030, driven in particular by data centers, whose consumption is expected to more than double.

In its Electricity 2026 report, the International Energy Agency expects global electricity demand to grow by more than 3.5% per year by the end of the decade. In the United States, about half of the expected increase is due to the expansion of data centers alone.

The orders of magnitude are precise: the electricity consumption of data centers increased by 17% in 2025, that of sites dedicated to AI by 50% over the same year, and the whole is expected to more than double in five years — to reach the equivalent of Japan's current consumption by 2030.

The bottleneck has shifted to the network

The IEA estimates that annual investment in grids needs to increase by about 50% by 2030, from the current $400 billion. More than 2,500 GW of renewables, storage and large consumer connection projects are currently stuck in connection queues globally. On the generation side, the share of solar and wind would increase from 17% to 27% of global generation by 2030, and about half of the growth in data center demand would be covered by renewables.