Overview
- The IEA reports $580 billion will be invested in data centers this year, about $40 billion more than new oil supply spending, with roughly half of demand growth centered in the United States.
- AI workloads are projected to drive a roughly fivefold jump in data‑center electricity use by 2030, colliding with long interconnection queues that stretch up to a decade in northern Virginia and a new‑connection pause in Dublin until 2028.
- PJM capacity payments climbed from $2.2 billion in 2022 to $16.1 billion this year, and its independent market monitor attributes the surge largely to data‑center load that ultimately hits customer bills.
- Residential electricity prices rose about 6% nationwide, with sharper increases in New Jersey (~21%), Virginia (~13%) and Georgia (~5%), fueling victories and pledges by Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger and New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill and a Senate letter pressing the White House.
- Near‑term supply constraints on turbines, transformers and transmission are steering operators to gas and on‑site solutions, while the IEA projects most new data‑center power will come from renewables by 2035, with potential contributions from small modular nuclear.