Google's Data Center Energy Use Doubled In 4 Years

Google's data centers have more than doubled their electricity use in just four years, according to the company's latest sustainability report. In 2024, Google data centers used 30.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity, up from 14.4 million megawatt-hours in 2020. The company has pledged to use only carbon-free sources of electricity to power its operations, but its rapid data center growth is making this task more challenging. Data centers accounted for 95.8% of Google's total electricity usage in 2024. The ratio of data center to overall electricity usage has remained consistent over the past four years, allowing for extrapolation back to 2014, when data centers likely used around 4 million megawatt-hours of electricity. This represents a sevenfold growth in just a decade. Google has made efforts to improve data center efficiency, but progress has slowed as the company approaches the theoretical ideal power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.0. Google's company-wide PUE dropped to 1.09 last year, only a 0.02 improvement over the past decade. The company is seeking new sources of clean power, including a recent deal to purchase 200 megawatts of future fusion energy from Commonwealth Fusion Systems, despite the energy source not yet existing. This highlights the desperation of big tech companies for a virtually unlimited source of clean power.