A new report from McKinsey & Company reveals that data centers are the primary force behind rising electricity demand in the United States, posing a challenge to the nation’s transition to low-carbon energy. According to the Global Energy Perspective 2025, industrial development is expected to double global electricity demand by 2050, with data centers playing a central role in this surge, especially in North America, Western Europe, and China. The report forecasts an average annual growth rate of 17% in data center power demand worldwide between 2022 and 2030. In the U.S., this figure rises to 25%, driven by the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure. By 2030, data centers could consume more than 14% of the nation’s total electricity—over three times the amount they used in 2023—despite improvements in energy efficiency from newer chips and greener data center designs. Major tech companies are constructing large-scale data center campuses across the U.S., from Virginia and Louisiana to Arizona. Utilities are responding by planning massive infrastructure upgrades, including new power plants and transmission lines. Some estimates suggest data centers alone could require 60 gigawatts of new power capacity by the end of the decade—enough to supply six medium-sized cities. These projects are costly, often running into billions of dollars, and have sparked debate over who should bear the financial burden. In August, regulators approved Entergy Louisiana’s request to recover $5 billion in construction costs for three new natural gas plants built to support a Meta data center in the state. In some cases, companies are bypassing traditional utility systems altogether. The Stargate campus in Abilene, Texas, home to an Oracle data center hosting a major OpenAI server cluster, is being powered by an on-site natural gas plant. The McKinsey report warns that fossil fuels will remain a dominant part of the energy mix through 2050. While low-carbon alternatives like carbon capture and green hydrogen are being developed, their deployment is lagging. These technologies are expected to contribute only marginally to the global energy supply in the coming decades, delaying the shift to a fully sustainable power system.