07What does AI draw from the grid?

Where the Electricity Comes From: the fuel behind data centres

What fuel generates the electricity data centres use, and why do the grid, the forecasters and the companies each give a different answer?

On the grid where they sit, the world's data centres draw a mix that was 22% gas, 17% wind and solar and 9% nuclear in 2025 (Ember, location-based).

For Ireland's data centres, that mix was 48% gas, 43% wind and solar and 0% nuclear in 2025 (Ember, location-based).

Market-based figures, where companies match their use with contracts, are shown separately.

Location-based shares are Ember's measured grid mix applied to each region's data-centre total (an estimate by the International Energy Agency, IEA; for Ireland, the figure metered by its Central Statistics Office, CSO). Marginal shares are an IEA scenario, market shares the companies' own claims.

Fuel shares of data-centre electricity

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Three ways to count a data centre's power

A data centre plugs into the local grid and draws whatever that grid carries in each hour. Counted that way, location-based, its electricity has the fuel mix of the country or region where the building stands. It is the most direct measure, and it changes only as the grid around the data centre changes.

Companies often report a second number. Under the market-based method they count renewable-energy certificates or power purchase agreements against their use, even when that power was generated at other times or in other places. The figure describes what the company has paid for. It can show a data centre as fully renewable while the grid it draws from burns gas at night.

The third count looks forward: which plants will be built or started up to meet the demand that new data centres add. This marginal mix is a scenario, and it depends on the plans of grid operators, governments and the companies themselves. The chart shows the International Energy Agency's projection to 2030 as its own option.

How much power data centres use in total is charted on Twenty Years of Data Centres, and where they use it on Where the Load Sits.

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More in “The Load”
Twenty Years of Data CentresThe share of a country's electricity that data centres take, since 2000: Ireland and the Netherlands metered, the rest modelled, one line per published study.Where the Load SitsData-centre electricity by region in the latest year, and the share of national demand it takes, with Ireland as the outlier.The Cost of a TokenJoules per generated token, measured on the graphics chip (GPU) for dozens of open models, and how much the answer grows once the whole building is counted.Tokens as Grid LoadHow many tokens (fragments of text) AI companies say they process, each in its own unit, and what those volumes would draw from the grid at three energy costs per token, next to Ireland for scale.