Data centres boost the energy transition

The data centre boom has triggered an acceleration in the buildout of new power plants. In Europe, this goes hand in hand with increased investments in renewables and battery capacity, particularly in the UK and Spain, the biggest data centre hubs in Europe. In the US, the conventional wisdom is that the data centre buildout has boosted the construction of gas power plants, rather than renewables. But this seems to be untrue.

A study from Switzerland looked at the data centre buildout in the US from 2022 to the end of 2025. The map below shows that this buildout was heavily focused in the regions with the lowest energy costs, like Texas, Virginia, Ohio and Nevada.

Data centre capacity in the US at the end of 2025

Then, they tracked the construction of power plants in the US. The chart below shows that most new power capacity additions come from renewables, with only a small fraction from gas power. Despite the best efforts of the current US government, the energy transition continues in the US because, well, money talks. And new renewable energy is simply cheaper than building new gas power plants.

Electric power capacity additions in the US

But what happens when we overlay the location of new data centres with the location of new power plants? The third chart shows that in areas where a data centre was built between 2022 and 2025, the buildout of renewable energy and battery electric storage systems (BESS) accelerated much more than in areas where there was no data centre (grey bars vs blue bars in the left-hand chart).

The buildout of gas power plants accelerated as well in areas where data centres were built (grey bars in the right-hand chart) but much less than in areas where no data centre was built (blue bars). Thus, a data centres coming to your area increase the demand for power, and this power is more likely than not to be provided by renewables and battery power, rather than gas power. But talk to anyone in Texas, and you wouldn’t know any of it.

Power buildout and data centre location