EIA Launches Pilot Studies to Assess Data Center Energy Demand
by Andreas Exarheas
click here to read this article at Rigzone.com
*this article was not written by Roseland Oil & Gas
In a release sent to Rigzone recently, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced that it is launching three voluntary pilot field studies to evaluate energy consumption in data centers.
As part of the undertaking, the EIA outlined that it would conduct web-based pilot surveys in Texas and Washington state, as well as in-person interviews in Northern Virginia and Washington, DC. The EIA said in the release that it identified 196 companies operating data centers across Texas, Washington state, and the Northern Virginia-DC region, adding that each company will be asked to report on the energy use of at least one data center in the targeted region.
The questionnaire will cover energy sources, electricity consumption, site characteristics, server metrics, and cooling systems, according to the release.
“A tremendous amount of excellent work goes into our retrospective consumption surveys, but they were conceived decades ago,” EIA Administrator Tristan Abbey said in the release.
“Going forward, that excellent work will be geared toward faster cycles and finer detail,” Abbey added.
In the release, the EIA noted that Abbey “is prioritizing data collection efforts in our rapidly evolving energy sector”, noting that, in February, the EIA launched three voluntary pilot field studies to assess the feasibility of collecting data on graphite, vanadium, and zirconium, “all of which are minerals critical to the energy sector”.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration announced that it is launching three voluntary pilot field studies to evaluate energy consumption in data centers.
“EIA is also in early-stage planning for pilot field studies in other areas of the energy economy, including the nuclear sector,” the EIA revealed in the release.
In a release posted on its website back in January, the EIA announced that it was forecasting the strongest four-year growth in U.S. electricity demand since 2000, “fueled by data centers”.
“EIA expects U.S. electricity use to grow by one percent this year and three percent in 2027,” the EIA said in that release.
“This increase would mark the first time since 2007 that power demand has risen for four years in a row and the strongest four-year growth period since 2000. The driving factor behind this surge is increasing demand from large computing centers,” it added.
In that release, Abbey said, “U.S. energy production remains strong, and natural gas output is expected to grow to nearly 109 billion cubic feet per day this year”.
“Natural gas supply is critical as we forecast that U.S. liquefied natural gas exports expand and electricity demand rises through 2027, driven largely by increasing demand from large computing facilities, including data centers,” Abbey added.
In the EIA’s latest short term energy outlook, which was released earlier this month, the EIA projected that U.S. electricity generation will grow by 1.2 percent in 2026 and by 3.1 percent in 2027, “led by demand growth in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) region”.
“U.S. electricity generation has been increasing by an average of two percent per year since 2021 to meet growing electricity demand following a period of flat demand growth between 2010 and 2019,” the EIA said in its March STEO.
“In 2026, U.S. coal generation declines by seven percent in our forecast as generation from renewable sources increases and the electric power sector retires about four percent of its coal-fired generating capacity,” it added.
In its March STEO, the EIA forecast that higher crude oil production results in more associated natural gas production.
“We expect marketed natural gas production to average 121 billion cubic feet per day (Bcfpd) this year, an increase of two percent from 2025,” the EIA said in its latest STEO.
“Production rises by an additional three percent in 2027 to reach 124 Bcfpd. The 2027 forecast is almost two Bcfpd higher than last month’s outlook,” it added.
U.S. data center electricity consumption is projected to more than triple from 2021, the last full year without ChatGPT, to 2030, according to data sent to Rigzone by the International Energy Agency (IEA) late last year.
The IEA, which described U.S. data center electricity demand figures as the closest proxy available for the energy consumption of artificial intelligence (AI) at the time, modeled that U.S. data center electricity demand came in at 120.65 Terawatt hours (TWh) in 2021, IEA data sent to Rigzone showed. In other data sent to Rigzone, which is available in the IEA’s Energy and AI report released earlier in 2025, the IEA forecasts that this consumption will rise to well over 400 TWh in 2030, in its base case.
In data sent to Rigzone, the IEA modeled that U.S. data center electricity consumption stood at 108.41 TWh in 2020, 134.07 TWh in 2022, 154.07 TWh in 2023, and 182.61 TWh in 2024. The IEA projected in its AI report that this demand will rise to well over 200 TWh in 2025, more than 250 TWh in 2026, over 300 TWh in 2027, around 350 TWh in 2028, and a little bit under 400 TWh in 2029.
A chart included in the IEA report showing electricity generation for data centers by fuel in the U.S., in the IEA’s base case, from 2020 to 2035, outlined that natural gas has had, and will continue to have, the biggest slice of the pie.
According to this chart, natural gas generated around 50 TWh of electricity for data centers in the U.S. in 2020. This figure rose slightly in 2021 and 2022, and came in a little under 100 TWh in 2024, the chart showed. The IEA chart projects that this figure will come in slightly over 100 TWh this year, go well over 100 TWh in 2026, come in at around 150 TWh in 2027, and keep pushing up towards 200 TWh in 2028. By 2029, this figure is projected to stand a little over 200 TWh and by 2030, it’s expected to go well above this figure, the chart outlined.
by Andreas Exarheas
click here to read this article at Rigzone.com
*this article was not written by Roseland Oil & Gas