AI could eat 12% of the US grid by 2028 — the bottleneck is electricity
Superintelligence Needs The Supercloud Why the AI Revolution... | PMLS 2025 | Day 3 | Open Source AI (Blockworks)
“In 2023, US data centers consumed 176 terawatt hours — about 4.4% of the entire national electricity output. And the Department of Energy now warns that by 2028 that could be more than triple, to as much as 12% of the grid… AI isn’t just a user of compute, it’s a devourer of energy.” — 00:01:28
Context: Opening problem statement; he adds Gartner’s forecast that by 2026, 40% of AI data centers may be unable to secure sufficient power: “This is a bottleneck. Not bandwidth, not GPUs — it’s electricity.”