Keep pulling the thread on Wood McKenzie.
The International Energy Agency projects that global data center electricity consumption will more than double from 415 terawatt-hours today to 945 terawatt-hours by 2030.
Wood McKenzie projects that data center electricity demand in the Asia-Pacific region will increase by 790 terawatt-hours in the year 2026 alone.
According to a Goldman Sachs forecast, data centers will be responsible for 40% of all growth in electricity demand through the end of the 2020s.
Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft are collectively projected to spend approximately $690 billion on capital expenditures in 2026, with a large portion dedicated to data center infrastructure.
On January 21, 2026, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) restarted Unit 6 of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Plant, the first of its reactors to resume operations since the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
The Japanese government has officially cited the power demand from AI data centers as a key reason for its policy to maximize the use of existing nuclear assets.
Hyperscale cloud providers have collectively committed $28 billion to build AI infrastructure in Japan.
Singapore has lifted its 2019-2022 data center moratorium and is now offering 200 megawatts of new capacity under its DCCFA-2 program, which requires operators to source 50% of power from green sources and achieve a PUE of 1.25.
Wood Mackenzie projects Malaysia's data center electricity consumption will increase eight-fold from 8.5 TWh in 2024 to 68 TWh by 2030, the fastest growth rate in Asia Pacific.
In February 2026, South Korea's National Assembly passed the SMR Special Act to create a legal framework for the development and export of small modular reactors.
South Korea plans to add 10 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity to support 5 gigawatts of additional AI data center demand.
Amazon is partnering with X-Energy, Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, and Doosan Energility to deploy XE-100 small modular reactors in the U.S. to power AI data centers.