The construction of new data centers shows no signs of slowing down. According to a new report from BloombergNEF, planned additions will require nearly triple the sector’s current electricity demand over the next decade. By 2035, data centers are forecast to draw 106 gigawatts of power, a sharp increase from the 40 gigawatts they use today. Much of this growth will occur in more rural areas as facilities increase in size and urban sites become scarce.
The sheer scale of these new facilities is a key driver. Currently, only 10 percent of data centers draw more than 50 megawatts of electricity. However, over the next decade, the average new facility will require well over 100 megawatts. The largest sites significantly skew the data, with nearly a quarter planned to be larger than 500 megawatts and a few exceeding 1 gigawatt.
Simultaneously, the utilization rate for all data centers is expected to rise from 59 percent to 69 percent as AI training and inference grows to represent nearly 40 percent of total data center compute. This rapid expansion aligns with the global race to build more powerful data centers, which has driven investment in such facilities to $580 billion this year, surpassing global spending on finding new oil supplies.
The new report highlights how quickly the landscape is changing, representing a sharp upward revision from a document the same group published in April. This change was driven by a surge in new project announcements. The report notes that with an average seven-year timeline for projects to come online, developments in earlier stages most affect the tail end of the forecast. Early-stage projects have more than doubled between early 2024 and early 2025, though these are distinct from projects that are committed or under construction.
Much of this new capacity is being planned for states including Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and New Jersey. These lie within the region managed by the PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organization. The Texas ERCOT grid is also expected to see a large number of additions.
This report arrives as PJM Interconnection faces scrutiny from its independent monitor, Monitoring Analytics. The group filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission stating that PJM has the authority to authorize new data center connections only when the grid has adequate capacity. The monitor argued that PJM can require large new data center loads to wait until they can be served reliably. Furthermore, the organization stated that data centers are responsible for today’s high electricity prices within the region and that PJM’s failure to enforce its existing rules compromises reliable and affordable service.