New Delhi, June 10 -- The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) workloads is driving a sharp rise in global datacenter energy consumption, with electricity demand projected to grow 26% year-over-year in 2026, according to Gartner.

Global datacenter electricity consumption is expected to reach 565 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2026, up from 447 TWh in 2025, as organizations continue investing in AI infrastructure and compute-intensive workloads.

To give an example around 565 TWh (565 billion kilowatt-hours) is enough to power roughly 18 to 19 crore Indian households for an entire year, assuming an average household of four people consumes about 250 units (kWh) of electricity per month. In other words, the electricity required by the w...