The nexus of Asia’s power demand and AI is getting stronger, with data centre investments set to double to US$200 billion ($254.22 billion) and tighten power markets a lot faster. These data centre investments will consume 0.5 trillion more power units by 2030. This could be as large as South Korea’s current power consumption, with significant implications for energy generation, distribution, and efficiency, not just for the power supply chain and global natural gas markets.
There is no artificial intelligence (AI) without power. Data centres accounted for around 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024 and data centre demand has grown at a 12% CAGR since 2017. Power demand in Asia (including Japan), which includes data centre capacity, is set to nearly triple to about 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 and form more than one-third of global data centre capacity.
Multiple Asian countries are already looking at power shortages in the coming years, and policymakers are racing to find solutions, with natural gas at the top of their minds. About a quarter of Asia’s (ex-China) data centres will be natural gas-powered, while many of China’s data centres will run on renewable power.
