Charted: The Growth of Global Data Center Capacity (2005–2025)

Charted: The Growth of Global Data Center Capacity (2005–2025)

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As digital infrastructure continues to expand rapidly, data centers have seen explosive growth in demand and capacity globally.

The growth has been especially pronounced over the last decade, with cloud computing and AI driving the demand for data storage and infrastructure.

This chart visualizes the installed data center capacity worldwide from 2005 to 2025 (estimated), using data from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The Soaring Demand for Data Center

In 2005, global installed data center capacity stood at 21.4 gigawatts (GW). As of 2025, that figure stands at an estimated 114 gigawatts—up more than fivefold in 20 years.

Year	Global Installed Data Centre Capacity (GW)	Annual Growth Rate
2005	21.4	-
2006	23.8	11.2%
2007	24.8	4.2%
2008	25.9	4.4%
2009	26.9	3.9%
2010	28.0	4.1%
2011	29.0	3.6%
2012	29.7	2.4%
2013	30.5	2.7%
2014	31.3	2.6%
2015	32.9	5.1%
2016	35.3	7.3%
2017	38.1	7.9%
2018	43.5	14.2%
2019	51.6	18.6%
2020	59.7	15.7%
2021	66.9	12.1%
2022	74.1	10.8%
2023	83.2	12.3%
2024	97.1	16.7%
2025e	114.3	17.7%

Until 2018, global data center capacity was growing at a modest rate annually. However, capacity installations have accelerated recently, with double-digit growth every year from 2018 to 2025.

Data center capacity grew fastest in 2019 at 18.6%, and 2025 is set to be the second-best year with an estimated 17.7% increase in installed capacity.

Furthermore, the demand for data centers is likely to continue rising with AI usage, given that they store the data used to train AI models and provide the computational power used to deploy them.

Growing Electricity Demand from Data Centers

Data centers are energy-intensive and use large amounts of electricity to run servers and cool their infrastructure.

Today, data center facilities consume about 485 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity, representing 1.7% of global demand. By 2030, electricity consumption for data centers is projected to reach around 945 TWh.

Regionally, the U.S. remains the dominant data center hub globally, both in terms of installed capacity and electricity usage, followed by China and Europe. The U.S. and China are also projected to be the biggest drivers of data center electricity consumption through 2030.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

For more insights, check out this infographic on how the world is powering its data centers on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.