How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?

# Summary Data centers globally consumed approximately 485 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2025—about 1.5% of worldwide electricity generation—with AI-focused facilities accounting for roughly one-third of that total, or about 0.5% of global electricity use. The article clarifies that AI energy consumption includes both model training and inference (running queries), with energy needs dominated by inference rather than training, and encompasses server operations plus cooling and facility maintenance but excludes cryptocurrency mining and end-user device power.