In One Timeline

AI Is About to Use More Power Than Japan

Global data-centre electricity, to scale: about 415 TWh in 2024 (more than the whole UK), and the IEA projects roughly 945 TWh by 2030 — about as much power as all of Japan uses today — with honest error bars on the forecast.

—credits6sourcesAll episodes
No third-party image credits. This episode's visuals are original charts/animations and AI-generated b-roll — nothing that requires attribution.

Data sources & references

01Global data-centre electricity (measured past + Base Case forecast, ~945 TWh by 2030) — IEA, "Energy and AI" (2025)
022010s efficiency plateau — Masanet et al., "Recalibrating global data center energy-use estimates", Science (2020)
03Country electricity totals (UK, France, Germany, Japan) — Ember / EIA, year-stamped
04US data-centre figures — LBNL (2024)
05Per-answer energy (~0.3 Wh) — Epoch AI (2025)
06Music — "Between the Lines" by Ondrosik, CC0 1.0