Surging demand for AI infrastructure is driving a wave of new server farms across America, but it is exposing long-term underinvestment in the grid networks required to deliver power where it's needed. Insurance broker Howden calculates that datacenters would need to source up to 58 percent of their power off the grid by 2030 just to keep their share of grid capacity from growing.
Gartner warned in June that the energy consumed by AI datacenters is on track to grow 26 percent this year, and grid supply may be unable to keep pace with demand by the end of this decade. Howden's analysis of data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and S&P Global found that since the year 2000, power being fed to data campuses has risen 19 percent a year on average, while the electricity grid expanded capacity by just 2 percent per annum over the same period. Datacenters' share of US grid capacity was circa five percent in 2025, up from 0.1 percent in 2000 – a 50-fold increase.
