State of the Fossil-Free Internet 2026

Runaway energy demands from data centers

For this inaugural State of the Fossil-Free Internet, we are casting a spotlight on data centers because it is one of the internet’s largest sources of emissions, and also the one growing the fastest. Perhaps somewhere near you, there is already a massive data center?

Depending on where you live, there soon could be. With the rise of generative AI, the number and scale of data centers has grown, and this trend continues.

There are plans for new data centers worth $3.2 trillion worldwide. They could use green energy—like solar, wind, and hydropower—to power their machines, but they will often choose fossil fuels—like coal, diesel, oil, and natural gas—instead.

How many data centers are there? There is no exact count.

Data Center Map tracks at least 10,852 data centers in 174 countries. However, this number only includes large, publicly known data centers—and not the many, many thousands more that operate privately, on a small scale, or for secret government and military uses.

In comparison, the planned growth is immense. At least 7,250 new data center projects are planned. Construction on as many as 4,300 could begin within the next two years. Two-thirds are in North America, followed by Europe, and Latin America.

The real problem is size. Because generative AI services, like ChatGPT, use more computing power, the companies that dominate the internet—and are competing to dominate AI—are investing aggressively in bigger data centers. These huge facilities are called hyperscale data centers, and there are at least 1,297 around the world. Their campuses can be as big as dozens of football fields. They require enormous amounts of electricity and water, as much as towns or cities. Their owners also hog hardware, like RAM, disk storage, CPUs and chips.

Communities around the world are fighting massive new data center projects for both social and environmental reasons. This is a critical moment to stop an unjust expansion.

The number of hyperscale data centers tripled in the last seven years. So many more are on the way that their total operational capacity could double in the next three years.

Just three companies, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, control around 58% of today’s hyperscale capacity. Other major companies on a global scale are Meta, Alibaba, Tencent, Oracle, Apple, and ByteDance. Both OpenAI and X AI also have big facilities in the US.

It makes sense that the internet needs a lot of data centers, but the fact that generative AI competition is the cause for so many new and enormous ones deserves more scrutiny.

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

Hyperscale data centers put a massive strain on electricity grids. In many places where utility companies cannot meet demand, data centers build their own gas solutions.

Last year, the US tripled its gas power capacity with data centers as a leading cause, and US greenhouse gas emissions rose for the first time in two years by 2.4%. In the US, the carbon intensity of electricity used by data centers was 48% higher than the national average.

Backup diesel generators at many data centers also release toxic emissions that cause asthma and lung cancer, with medical costs rising significantly for people living near them.

People, in fact, do not want more AI at the cost of their own health or survival.

There are also the threats to local ground water drying up; the rising costs in electricity in many regions; the promised jobs that dissipate after construction ends; and the lack of public transparency over subsidies and even which companies are accountable.

How do we get to a fossil-free internet?

The internet does not need fossil fuels to function. The entire infrastructure could one day run entirely on green energy if corporate interests took a backseat to those of the planet.

It likely wouldn’t even cost companies that much more. Most countries are investing heavily in alternative sources of energy. Already around 41% of the world’s total electricity use comes from renewable energy sources, and clean energy is increasingly affordable and available worldwide.

The internet as a whole demands somewhere in the range of 1-2% of global electricity consumption. Lowering the amount of electricity used is as essential as greening that energy for the internet’s climate impact to go down. It extends from decisions of how to use and power data centers to how we build websites and software.

We need more mechanisms to hold major tech companies in check on fossil fuels, and more governance and oversight of their actions all around the world.

For the community of people and organisations working on this issue, a core focus is to get more accurate and granular data about what is happening locally and globally.