Big Tech’s AI dreams are coming with a big energy price tag—technology companies and their data centers are consuming more electricity than countries with many millions of people.

In the graphic below, Visual Capitalist's Pallavi Rao compares Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple’s 2023 electricity use against select countries. Data sourced from company reports and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (2022).

Google and Microsoft both consume more electricity (24 TWh) than countries like Jordan (population: 11 million) and Ghana (34 million).

*U.S. territory. **Estimated value. Figures rounded. Population source: World Bank.

This highlights the enormous energy draw for these Big Tech companies that maintain massive data centers as a key part of their operations.

In their 2024 Environment report, Google said its data center electricity use grew 17% in 2023, a trend it expects to continue. It further estimated the company’s data centers accounted for 10% of global data center electricity use in 2023.

And it’s easy to see how AI is playing into this consumption. Training AI models increases data centers’ energy and cooling requirements compared to more traditional data center use, like storing files and apps on the cloud or processing emails.

Tellingly, Microsoft’s electricity use was 11 TWh as recently as 2020 and has doubled to 24 TWh in less than four years. Similarly, Google’s has also doubled to 24 TWh from 11 TWh in 2018.

Both trends coincide with the companies’ generative AI push in which they are both frontrunners.

Meanwhile, tech companies who have had a comparatively later start to the race (Meta and Apple) are further behind in electricity consumption, though Meta seems to be catching up.