State of the Fossil-Free Internet 2026

Data centres and their runaway energy demands

Perhaps somewhere near you, there’s already a massive data centre? Depending on where you live, there soon could be. With the rise of generative AI, the number and scale of data centres is rapidly growing. New data centres worth an estimated $3.2 trillion are planned worldwide.

Ideally, data centres would use fossil-free energy—like solar, wind, and hydropower—to power their facilities. Regrettably, they often rely on fossil fuels—like coal, diesel, oil, and natural gas—instead. Most often, this is determined by what’s available via the local energy grid, but for many it’s also a matter of choice for what new energy infrastructure to build at their sites.

More than half of the anticipated growth in energy demand in the US is coming from data centres. In Europe, too, where data centres currently use an estimated 2% of total electricity, anticipated growth could mean a rise to 5% by 2030.

In India, data centre expansions appear to be derailing clean energy commitments, and similar concerns are rising in Malaysia, Mexico, and many other countries, too.

How many data centres are there? This depends on what gets counted as a data centre. There is no comprehensive global definition based on size, energy, or other attributes. Many, many thousands operate privately, on a small scale, or for secret government and military uses.

Data Center Map tracks at least 10,852 large, publicly known data centres in 174 countries. In comparison to this number, the expected growth is immense. At least 7,250 new data centre projects are planned. Two-thirds are in North America, followed by Europe and then Latin America.

Data centre size is a real game changer. The current wave of generative AI products, like ChatGPT and Claude, use much more computing power and therefore electricity than other software. So, the companies that dominate the internet—and are competing to dominate AI—are investing in much bigger and more energy hungry data centres.

The biggest are called hyperscale data centres and there are at least 1,297 of them worldwide. Their sites (often called campuses) can be as big as dozens of football fields. They can require as much electricity and water as entire towns or cities. In addition, they are driving hardware supply shortages of RAM, disk storage, CPUs and chips across the tech sector, for which mining, manufacturing, and waste disposal also cause environmental harm.

Over the last seven years, the number of hyperscale data centres has tripled. In the next three years, their total global operational capacity could double yet again. Just three companies—Amazon, Microsoft, and Google—control around 58% of today’s global hyperscale capacity. Other major operators are Meta, Alibaba, Tencent, Oracle, Apple, and ByteDance.

The companies behind the popular AI chatbots, ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), and Grok (XAI) all use the data centres of the biggest operators. However, they are also each investing billions in the construction of their own hyperscale data centres—again, involving partnerships on financing and hardware with the biggest tech companies.

In their fervour to cash in on AI, data centre operators put a massive strain on local electricity grids. When utility companies cannot meet demand, data centre operators often build their own fossil-fuelled generators and power plants. In the US, the government even compels them to  build power plants. In Ireland also, where data centres used 22% of available electricity in 2024, new rules require operators to be able to supply their own on-site electricity during times of grid stress (as a condition of connecting to the grid). It effectively encourages use of fossil gas when renewable energy requirements are weak. In Ireland, the alternative is to go entirely off-grid with fossil-powered data centres, with the first example going live earlier this year.

Soon, the world’s largest data centre will be Meta’s Hyperion in Holly Ridge, Louisiana. Still under construction at a cost of over $10 billion, it will be supported by three new gas plants and could consume close to as much power as Los Angeles in California annually.

Hyperion’s 11km² campus is about a fifth of the size of Manhattan in New York.

People living and working near data centres are deeply impacted in many ways.

Gas turbines and diesel generators release toxic emissions that cause higher rates of asthma, heart disease, and cancer. In various cases, tech companies have flouted environmental regulations and concerns while lobbying for governments to fast-track permits and bypass essential protections. In addition, there are countless examples of water drying up in drought affected regions, rising electric bills, and promised jobs that don’t materialise.

All this happens in a cloak of secrecy enforced by data centre operators, with limited public transparency over local government deals and subsidies.

This is a global issue playing out in local communities everywhere. But it’s especially visible in the US because of the sheer amount of data centres and the current government’s support for the fossil fuel industry. Last year, the US tripled its gas power capacity with data centres cited as a leading cause. The carbon intensity of data centres (a proxy for thinking about electricity’s dirtiness) was 48% higher than the national average. It is no coincidence that US greenhouse gas emissions rose by 2.4% in 2025 for the first time in two years.

In Europe, too, plans to ramp up data centre capacity means more gas plants are built to provide power, with the risk that phasing out fossil fuels slows significantly.

Regardless of the origin of emissions, everybody suffers from the harms they cause. The people most impacted by global climate change live in the Global South—meaning data centre operators are inflicting harm far beyond their immediate footprint. Locally too, whenever data centres are placed in regions with less green energy available, or where temperatures are higher and call for more cooling systems, the environmental injustices multiply.

Even before fossil fuels are burned, the process of extracting them from the earth is one of the most unjust and harmful practices on the planet. Once extracted, they remain central to geopolitical conflicts and wars because so many nations rely on imported fuels.

The internet needs data centres—this is understandable. But the fact that such an unprecedented level of destruction is taking place for companies to speculate on AI is wrong. In Europe, people polled say they don’t want more data centres if they are powered by fossil fuels. In the US, the more people learn about data centres, the more negatively they perceive them.

When we speak of a fossil-free internet, it’s not as simple as plugging wind turbines into data centres. Increasing oversight and governance of major tech companies is a huge part of it, as is questioning elected officials who support data centre expansions. As a society, we should be contemplating our digital needs and the demands on finite resources. What do we want data centres for? How should this be weighed in relation to other needs? People should have a voice in what gets prioritised, say, between healthcare, housing, or hyperscale data centres.

We don’t live in a world with an infinite, harm-free electricity supply. We are headed in the direction of plentiful renewables, but we are not there yet—and it will not entail that we can use energy without limits. Cutting down on electricity use is crucial. This involves a variety of conscious choices of how to power data centres; how to decrease global dependency on the most polluting companies; as well as of how to develop websites and software sustainably.

It’s not just about efficiency, but sufficiency.

In the absence of transparent energy disclosures across all internet infrastructure, we can only approximate the true environmental impact. Our concerns extend far beyond energy use, though that’s the main focus of this report. For the community of people and organisations working on these complex and interrelated issues, a core focus is to pause all data centre expansions until there is more accurate and granular data available—locally and globally—and stronger measures in place to ensure that new data centres will not be powered by fossil fuels.

At Green Web Foundation, we work on a combination of technical tool development, policy and community action with allies around the world. You can join us in taking action. Below, we share examples of promising pathways to address the core challenges of this moment: The outrageous rise in energy demand from data centres; the challenge of greening the internet; and the dominance of the largest tech companies.

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Democratise tech

The biggest tech companies use their dominance to act with impunity. They could be using green energy, but burn more fossil fuels instead. Public control and ownership of technology is barely on the radar, and this needs to be reversed. We need more alternative ownership models to rise to challenge corrosive power. We don’t need an AI arms race—we need to question the relentless demand for more AI and refuse energy-hungry technologies and infrastructures.