Global data centres will consume nearly three times the combined annual electricity of Nigeria, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, by 2030.
- +UN: AI data centres to consume more power than Nigeria, two other countries
This is according to a United Nations report published on Wednesday, which noted that the power consumption would be driven largely by the explosion in everyday AI usage rather than model training.
This is according to a United Nations report published on Wednesday, which noted that the power consumption would be driven largely by the explosion in everyday AI usage rather than model training.
The report, published by the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, projects that data centre electricity consumption will rise from 448 terawatt-hours in 2025 to 945 TWh by 2030, with AI accounting for 40% of that total, up from a fifth today.
For context, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria together are home to more than 650 million people.
Water consumption from data centres is projected to more than double from 4.5 trillion litres to 9.3 trillion litres by 2030, enough to meet the basic water needs of 1.3 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Carbon emissions will rise from 189 million tons to 399 million tons over the same period, while the land footprint of data centres will expand from 6,900 square kilometres to more than 14,500 square kilometres.
The report identifies inference, the continuous running of deployed AI models to answer everyday user queries, as the dominant cost, accounting for 80 to 90% of total AI energy use.
The report notes that if current growth trends continue, global data center electricity consumption could nearly double to 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2030.
The report documents cases where data centre expansion has already collided with local resource limits. In Ireland, data centres accounted for 21% of total metered electricity in 2023, exceeding all urban households combined, prompting the national grid operator to pause new approvals around Dublin until 2028.
Only 32 countries currently host AI-specialised data centres, with more than 90% of global AI compute capacity concentrated in just two, the United States and China. More than 150 countries have little or no access to sovereign AI computing infrastructure.
Nigeria’s active push to attract data centre investment, anchored in the National Cloud Policy 2025 and accelerated by facilities like Digital infrastructure provider, Kasi Cloud’s LOS1 commissioned in Lagos in May 2026, sets the country up to capture economic benefits from AI infrastructure.
