The forecast is 36% higher than its April estimate. Other experts warn that an AI bubble or speculative data center proposals could be fueling excessive load growth projections.
- U.S. data center power demand could reach 106 GW in 2035, BloombergNEF said Monday in one of the more aggressive load growth estimates to date. The U.S. had about 25 GW of operating data centers in 2024, Bloom Energy said earlier this year.
- BloombergNEF’s latest forecast is 36% higher than its previous prediction, released in April. The jump is due in part to the higher average size of the 150 significant U.S. data center projects announced in the past year, over a quarter of which are larger than 500 MW, BNEF said.
- The Energy Information Administration, which tracks demand for the federal government, generally only publishes detailed projections out two or three years, and few other analyses have attempted firm forecasts as far out as 2035.