Energy · Issue 02
Cooling uses more electricity than the European Union
IEA, July 2026: space cooling in buildings used about 2,900 TWh in 2025 — more than the EU’s entire electricity demand. Peak load from cooling: 1,400 GW, equal to US installed generating capacity. Data-centre cooling is 80 TWh. It is not the same chart.
- Buildings (print)
- IEA STEPS
- Building space cooling, 2025 (IEA)
- 2,900 TWh
- Since 2015
- +50%
- Peak cooling load, 2025
- 1,400 GW
- Data-centre cooling, 2025 — a different line
- 80 TWh
The air-conditioner is the load. The rack is the footnote.
IEA, 10 July 2026: electricity for space cooling in buildings has grown 50% since 2015, to around 2,900 TWh — more than the entire European Union uses. Cooling was 14% of global electricity-demand growth over that decade, and as much as 25% of it in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2025 it contributed 1,400 GW of peak, which the agency compares to the total installed generating capacity of the United States. Cooling is about 10% of annual electricity and about 30% of peak. That is a summer problem with a winter invoice. The same commentary puts data-centre cooling at 80 TWh in 2025. Thirty-six times smaller. Pair with Almonds versus the rack: the viral water chart made the same category error in gallons. Do not let the rack eat the air-conditioner on the electricity desk either.
1,600 TWh more by 2035 is Japan plus Korea. It is also a transformer.
Under stated policies the IEA sees cooling adding 1,600 TWh by 2035 — roughly Japan and Korea’s combined annual demand. A heat-wave sensitivity (a strong El Niño in 2026–27, then every three years) adds another 700 TWh, more than 60% of it from faster air-conditioner adoption rather than from running the existing stock harder. Efficiency of sold units has improved; ownership has improved faster. India is the binding case: Ember and the IEA’s Electricity 2026 both have cooling as more than a fifth of India’s demand growth to 2030. The grid that cannot meet a 7pm August peak does not care that annual TWh still look absorbable.
The long view is peak, not average
Own the things a 1,400 GW peak buys: efficient kit, demand response, four-hour batteries on hot-climate feeders, and the transformers already queued in 2,500 gigawatts waiting for a wire. Do not own a trade that treats 80 TWh of data-centre cooling as the cooling story. What would change this page: an IEA year-table that prints building cooling below 2,500 TWh, or data-centre cooling clearing 400 TWh. Neither is the 2025 print.
Investing lens
Horizon 6–15 years · Educational, not advice
Cooling is the largest weather-shaped electricity load on Earth, and it is still under-owned relative to AI racks. The investable surface is peak: efficient hardware, flexible capacity, and grids in hot, urbanising markets.
Where the map points
- High-efficiency AC and heat-pump makers with a hot-climate mix
- Utilities and storage on summer-peaking feeders in India, MENA, the US South
- Grid equipment already in the interconnection book
- Avoid treating data-centre cooling as a proxy for the building stock
What can break it
- A string of mild summers that makes the peak trade look late
- Efficiency standards that crush unit volumes faster than TWh fall
- Refrigerant and PFAS rules that re-rate the installed base
CHART does not recommend securities, funds or trades. Figures can be revised by their publishers. Do your own research and consider regulated advice before allocating capital.
Sources
Every headline number traces to a named publisher. Contextual sources inform the essay, not the key stat.
- 01PrimaryInternational Energy Agency2026-07-10Cooling a hotter world: El Niño meets strong growth in global electricity demand
Building space cooling (data centres excluded) +50% since 2015 to ~2,900 TWh; 14% of global electricity-demand growth; 1,400 GW peak in 2025. Data-centre cooling 80 TWh in 2025. STEPS +1,600 TWh by 2035. El Niño sensitivity +700 TWh.
- 02PrimaryInternational Energy Agency2026Electricity 2026 — Executive summary
More than 2,500 GW of projects stalled in grid queues (renewables, storage, large loads). Grid investment ~$400bn/yr; +50% needed by 2030. Global electricity demand +3% in 2025; +3.6%/yr 2026–2030.
- 03PrimaryInternational Energy Agency2026Key Questions on Energy and AI — Executive summary
Updated path: 485 TWh in 2025, ~950 TWh in 2030. AI-focused sites +50% in 2025; all data centres +17%.
Keep reading
Data-centre water, in a field of almonds
Lawrence Berkeley counted 17.4 billion gallons of on-site water at US data centres in 2023. A 2026 path toward the lab’s 38–73 billion-gallon 2028 range still sits near 28. California almonds, from USDA acres at 3.0 acre-feet, sit near 1,355. US golf applied 531 in 2024. The campus can dry a local aquifer. It does not move a national ledger.
50×
CA almonds vs US data-centre on-site water, 2026 path
The power behind intelligence
Data centres used 485 TWh in 2025. The IEA’s base case still nearly doubles that by 2030 — and AI sites are growing three times as fast as the rest.
485 TWh
Data-centre electricity, 2025
Germany’s heat pump just beat the gas boiler
EHPA: Europe sold 2.9 million heat pumps in 2025, up 13%. In Germany they took half of the space-heating market for the first time. The 2022 boom and the 2024 bust were a policy chart. This is the install base starting to win.
50%
Germany space-heating market, heat pumps, 2025
The first three years above 1.5°C
2024 was the hottest year in the instrumental record. 2023–2025, taken together, were the first stretch to average more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial.
1.47°C
2025 vs 1850–1900 (Copernicus ERA5)
2,500 gigawatts waiting for a wire
The IEA’s 2026 electricity report puts more than 2,500 GW of projects — renewables, batteries, data centres — in grid connection queues. The world spends $400 billion a year on grids and $1 trillion on generation. That is the distribution bottleneck.
2,500 GW
Projects stalled in grid queues, 2026