US data centers may burn more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined by 2035

A forecast that nearly doubled in nine months

The AI construction boom in the United States has reached a point where, by 2035, the country's data centers are projected to consume more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined. The projection comes from a new BloombergNEF report covered by TechCrunch, which puts data center gas consumption at roughly 18 billion cubic feet per day a decade from now — nearly double the estimate BloombergNEF published only nine months ago.

Over the coming decade, BloombergNEF expects data centers to rank as the second-strongest driver of US natural gas demand growth, behind only liquefied natural gas exports. Notably, the higher forecast already discounts the project pipeline: the report assumes that not every announced data center will actually be completed, meaning even a trimmed buildout implies substantially more gas demand than previously expected.

Onsite plants are only part of the picture

Much of the recent attention has gone to data centers that generate their own electricity. According to TechCrunch, Meta, Microsoft, Google and Amazon have all announced plans for new natural gas plants that would serve their facilities directly and bypass the grid. BloombergNEF expects these behind-the-meter projects to consume between 2.9 and 3.4 billion cubic feet of gas per day by 2035 — about as much as all data centers consume today, including the gas burned by power plants to serve them over the grid.

Even so, onsite generation is expected to account for only a fraction of total growth. BloombergNEF projects that grid-connected data centers will drive an additional 15 billion cubic feet per day of gas consumption in the power sector by the middle of the next decade. That is five times more demand growth through 2035 than all other grid-connected sectors combined.

Price pressure and the climate ledger

If demand rises on that trajectory, natural gas prices could climb with it. As TechCrunch notes, today's data center buildout largely rests on the assumption that gas will remain cheap, as it has in recent years. Analysts at Noreva argue that assumption looks fragile: the combined effect of data center demand and growing LNG exports could send prices soaring. Large technology companies may be able to absorb that on their balance sheets, but utility ratepayers likely could not.

There is also a climate accounting to do. Citing figures from the IEA, TechCrunch reports that burning one cubic foot of natural gas releases the equivalent of about 60 grams of carbon dioxide once extraction, processing and distribution are included. On that basis, the additional demand from data centers would generate roughly one million metric tons of extra greenhouse gas pollution every day, which TechCrunch puts at about 12 percent of total current US greenhouse gas emissions.

Why it matters

For the cloud industry, energy has moved from a line item to a first-order constraint. The power strategy behind each new region — grid interconnection, behind-the-meter gas, or a mix of both — now shapes where capacity gets built, how quickly it comes online and what it ultimately costs. A demand forecast that nearly doubles in the space of nine months also signals how much uncertainty remains even in well-regarded models, which complicates planning for operators, utilities and regulators alike. And because the projected gas consumption flows through to both prices and emissions, cloud expansion is no longer just a compute story: it ties data center growth to household energy bills and to US climate commitments, whether or not that coupling was ever part of anyone's infrastructure roadmap.