Google Data-Centre Power Demand Doubles on AI Growth

Google’s latest sustainability report shows the company’s data-centre electricity consumption jumped to 30.8 million megawatt-hours in 2024, more than double the 14.4 million MWh it used in 2020. The facilities now account for 95.8 percent of Google’s total power demand, a rise driven largely by energy-hungry artificial-intelligence and cloud-computing workloads. The surge is testing Google’s pledge to run entirely on carbon-free energy around the clock. While the group has eked out only marginal efficiency gains—recording a power-usage-effectiveness score of 1.09 last year—it is expanding its supply of clean electricity. Recent deals include 600 MW of solar capacity in South Carolina and 700 MW in Oklahoma, plus multi-gigawatt projects with Intersect Power and TPG Rise Climate valued at about $20 billion. Longer-term, Google has agreed to buy 200 MW from Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ planned fusion plant and 500 MW from Kairos Power’s small-modular fission reactors, both expected to deliver in the 2030s. Clean sources covered 66 percent of the company’s hourly global data-centre load in 2024—ranging from 92 percent in Latin America to 5 percent in the Middle East and Africa—leaving Google reliant on further investments to meet its 24/7 carbon-free target as its AI footprint grows.