Every aspect of artificial intelligence, from its economic impact to its societal and cultural consequences, is under a microscope. One topic of growing concern for consumers, local governments and environmental advocates is its energy demand.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump, who has encouraged aggressive AI development in the U.S., offered an estimate of how much electricity AI will require.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need, just as an industry, more energy than the entire country produces right now, when you think about it, which is incredible,\u201d Trump said\u00a0July 8 at the NATO summit<\/a>\u00a0in Ankara, Turkey. \u201cSo, take all of the energy that the United States produces, and that one industry \u2014 which is so big, so powerful \u2014 it needs more than that. In fact, some people say almost double.\u201d<\/p>\n AI\u2019s energy requirements have snowballed in recent years, and industry experts believe demand will likely grow.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, the AI energy load is nowhere near as big as Trump said.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t see a pathway for data center demand to exceed total electricity demand in the U.S., or even approach anything close to that level,\u201d said Brendan Pierpont, the director for electricity at Energy Innovation Policy and Technology LLC, an energy and climate policy think tank.<\/p>\n The White House did not respond to an inquiry for this article.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat the estimates show<\/p>\n AI requires \u201ctraining\u201d large language models, which involves\u00a0running<\/a>\u00a0a large number of computers continuously for months. As a result, the data centers that process AI use a large amount of electricity.<\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to project future AI energy loads with certainty \u2014 estimates vary for how much electricity AI will require, how much electricity can be generated, and how economically it can be produced.<\/p>\n With this caveat in mind, we reviewed several studies from federal sources and energy-focused think tanks. None comes close to Trump\u2019s estimate.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tA June 2026\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0by the Energy Department\u2019s\u00a0Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory\u00a0concluded that by 2030, the total power demand for data centers \u2014 the facilities that power AI \u2014 would account for 9.5% to 15.3% of that year\u2019s total U.S. electricity consumption.A\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0by the\u00a0Electric Power Research Institute, a think tank, projects U.S. data centers could consume 9% to 17% of national electricity by 2030, up from up from 4% to 5% today.Looking at a longer timeframe, an April\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0by the federal\u00a0Energy Information Administration\u00a0concluded<\/a>\u00a0that by 2050, electricity demand for data centers would account for a maximum of 15% of total electricity demand.A\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0by the World Resources Institute, an energy and environment think tank, collected an additional half dozen additional governmental and private-sector projections for U.S. data center energy use. The\u00a0highest one<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a November 2025 report by the\u00a0Boston Consulting Group\u00a0\u2014 finds that data center needs would represent about a quarter of the 2023 level of\u00a0all U.S. electricity generation<\/a>.<\/p>\n These estimates of expected AI energy loads range from 6% to 25%. Some of these studies say AI\u2019s energy use footprint in the U.S. could double from what it is now \u2014 but that\u2019s not what Trump said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTrump\u2019s estimate is very high relative to credible projections,\u201d said Kenneth Gillingham, a Yale University economist who specializes in energy and environmental issues.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tPolitiFact ruling<\/p>\n Trump said the AI industry needs \u201cmore energy than the entire country produces right now \u2026 In fact some people say almost double.\u201d<\/p>\n Multiple federal and independent studies project that from 2028 to 2050, the energy needs of data centers will account for 9% to 25% of total U.S. electricity demand.<\/p>\n These are significant increases, but they are not 100% or 200% increases of overall U.S. energy production.<\/p>\n The statement contains an element of truth but ignores facts that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every aspect of artificial intelligence, from its economic impact to its societal and cultural consequences, is under a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,85,12228,1066,1388,604],"class_list":["post-115595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-data-center","tag-electricity","tag-energy","tag-politifact","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}