The data is clear: tech is no longer just a user of electricity — it’s becoming one of its biggest drivers. How the sector responds will shape the next decade of climate and energy progress.
To explore what this response could look like, Renewabl and Tech Zero (powered by Octopus Energy and Tech Nation) recently hosted an event recently hosted an event featuring speakers from Google, EY, Electricity Maps and more. They shared practical insights on the surge in energy demand from data centres and AI — and the strategies that can help tech move to renewable power, faster.
This article brings together key takeaways from those talks, alongside the latest data from the IEA and other sources — offering a clear, actionable picture of where the sector stands, and where it’s heading next.
Access all session recordings and slides from the event here.
Energy demands of the tech industry
How much energy does tech use today? Data centres and AI in numbers
The energy footprint of the global tech industry is growing fast — and data centres are at the heart of it. As demand for digital services grows, so does the strain on electricity systems.
In 2024, global data centre electricity consumption is estimated at 46 TWh, up from less than 15 TWh in 2023. Generative AI alone is driving much of this growth, with power demand increasing sharply. Of this total, roughly 80% comes from computing and cooling.
Here’s what that looks like in context: In the EU, data centres' energy usage was just under 100 TWh in 2022. In the US, around 176 TWh was consumed in 2023, accounting for 4.4% of national electricity demand. In Ireland, data centres already made up 17% of electricity use in 2022 — and continue to grow rapidly.
One reason is the sheer computing power needed to train and run AI models. For example:
- Training ChatGPT-4 used 50 times more energy than its predecessor.
- Computational power needed for AI is now doubling every 100 days, a pace far outstripping grid development.
- If fully integrated into products like Google Search, AI could require an extra 10 TWh per year, just for that one use case (IEA).
At the same time, infrastructure is struggling to keep up. In the UK, it now takes 13 years on average to connect a new renewable energy project to the grid — far too long to meet this rising demand.
“All of this is happening as we exceed key climate thresholds. Global temperatures have already surpassed the 1.5°C limit set in the Paris Agreement, and many electricity systems are at or near capacity.”
— Tom Morris, EY Global Renewables
Future growth: Powering AI, cloud and crypto sustainably
Unlike past efforts driven by policy and regulation, today’s shift is being shaped by new, explosive demand from disruptive technologies.
“What we’re seeing is not just an energy transition — it’s an energy revolution.”
— Tom Morris, EY Global Renewables.
Power demand from generative AI alone is projected to grow by 70% per year through 2027, with usage patterns that far outpace current infrastructure capabilities. By 2026, data centre electricity use is expected to surge across major regions — with sharp increases forecast in the US, China, and the EU. In Ireland, data centres could consume nearly a third of the country’s electricity as over 50 new sites come online.
AI, data-heavy computing, and digital infrastructure are now acting as additive forces. They don’t just replace fossil fuel demand with renewables — they create entirely new demand, and at scale. That’s what makes this moment more comparable to the introduction of steam power or the internal combustion engine than previous green energy transition efforts.
The IEA forecasts that data centre, AI, and crypto electricity consumption could reach as high as 1,050 TWh by 2026, more than double 2022 levels. This is equivalent to adding the entire energy consumption of Sweden or Germany, depending on the scenario.
Governments and grid operators are starting to respond:
- Ireland requires new data centres to store or generate power onsite and reduce usage during strain.
- Denmark is forecast to see data centres consume 20% of national electricity by 2026, and has launched the Net Zero Innovation Hub for Data Centres.
- Sweden plans to build a nuclear-powered data centre using small modular reactors (SMRs) by 2030.
At the same time, companies are racing to lower energy intensity. Technologies like direct-to-chip water cooling can cut centre energy use by up to 20%. In the longer term, quantum computing may offer higher output with lower energy per operation — if the extreme cooling requirements can be solved.
Despite these developments, grid connection delays, local opposition, and lack of planning remain obstacles. To meet both climate goals and infrastructure needs, tech and energy leaders must collaborate now — before demand further outpaces supply.
Renewable energy strategies for a high-demand tech future
Tech companies are rapidly evolving from energy buyers to active participants in the energy transition. The new focus is on precision, impact, and credibility, and it is driving the uptake of three core strategies:
- Hourly matched energy procurement (also known as 24/7 Carbon-Free Electricity, or 24/7 CFE)
- Long-term renewable Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)
- On-site generation and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)
Catch every presentation from Google, EY, GRA and more — click here.
24/7 hourly matched energy procurement
Matching total annual energy use with an equal volume of renewables has been a strong starting point — yet the focus is now shifting to hourly alignment for greater precision and impact. Traditionally, companies that wanted to demonstrate the use of greener electricity could procure certificates (REGOs / GOs) or sign a long-term contract with a wind, solar or hydro farm to show that their annual consumption was 100% covered. But in practice, a company may still draw on fossil-powered grid electricity at key times — like cloudy days or windless nights.
Hourly matching means aligning your electricity consumption in each hour of the day with clean energy generated in that same hour, ideally within the same grid zone.
“It’s about buying certificates that are physically deliverable at the same time and location you’re using them.”
— Olivier Corradi, Electricity Maps.
As JP Cerda (Renewabl) explains, impactful procurement begins with spatial matching — sourcing from the same country or grid zone — followed by temporal matching that aligns energy use with hourly generation patterns.
The shift is also being pushed by regulatory change. Under the EU Green Claims Directive, companies will no longer be able to claim 100% renewable energy unless it’s backed by time-matched procurement. Updates to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol are also expected to recommend hourly time-stamped certificates for Scope 2 emissions reporting. Voluntary initiatives like the 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition and SBTi are reinforcing this trend, while policies such as RED III and the CSRD are shortening disclosure periods and tightening verification standards.
“Climate Group's 24/7 Carbon-Free Coalition supports companies on their journey to procuring 24/7 carbon-free electricity where and when it's needed. We're bringing innovative corporates together and building a new global framework.”
— Rachel Swiatek, Climate Group
Beyond compliance, hourly matching has practical advantages:
- It exposes carbon-intensive gaps in your load profile, especially at night or during winter peaks
- It supports smarter procurement and encourages demand-side flexibility, storage, and grid optimisation
- It provides robust, auditable proof of clean energy use, reducing the risk of greenwashing accusations
These benefits are particularly relevant to the tech industry, where data centres consume power 24/7 and tend to operate at steady, high baseloads — often out of sync with intermittent renewable generation. For operators, understanding and optimising their real-time consumption profile is key to reducing emissions credibly.
Challenges and energy solutions for 24/7 hourly matching
The four key challenges encountered by companies right now, as pointed out by Jon Fletcher (Energy Helper & Big Clean Switch), are a lack of standards, unclear pricing, imperfect data, and difficulty communicating energy claims. These barriers are especially acute for smaller firms — but a growing set of tools is helping to overcome them.
“For hourly matching to be widely adopted, clear and consistent data and predictable costs are essential. Companies need transparent systems that make long-term commitments achievable and realistic.”
— Jon Fletcher (Big Clean Switch)
To help companies navigate this transition, Renewabl works at the intersection of data, procurement, and clean energy markets. The platform facilitates transactions across all major routes to 24/7 CFE, including hourly Energy Attribute Certificates, hourly-matched PPAs, and transparent green tariffs.
Ultimately, no single route delivers perfect hourly coverage. But with the right combination of tools — and the technology to match supply and demand in real time — a diverse portfolio can deliver meaningful progress toward 24/7 CFE.
As Trigya Singh (Global Renewables Alliance) highlights, through regular coordination of demand and supply — supported by policy dialogue, coalition-building, and strategic energy deployment — 3X Renewables becomes an achievable reality.
“24/7 is not a singular solution — it’s a journey. While technology and certifications are vital, what truly empowers the 24/7 CFE journey is a unified language that bridges the gap between corporate buyers and policymakers.”
— Trigya Singh, Global Renewables Alliance
PPAs: A proven tool for scaling clean energy
Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) remain one of the most effective tools to bring new renewable capacity online — and for tech corporates to meet sustainability targets with substance.
PPAs offer long-term price certainty while directly supporting new renewable capacity — a high-impact way for companies to accelerate grid decarbonisation and improve the credibility of their energy claims. These contracts typically span 10–20 years, making them especially attractive to large buyers with stable demand. At the same time, PPAs can be harder to access for smaller businesses or those without an investment-grade credit rating, and they often require significant internal resources to manage — especially for companies operating across multiple markets.
Tech companies have historically led on long-term renewable energy procurement. In 2020, the five largest tech firms collectively procured 7.2 GW of renewable energy — nearly 30% of all corporate PPAs that year, and around 3.5% of global renewable capacity additions. It marked the moment when big tech became a major force behind global clean energy deployment.
In 2024, the Information Technology sector continued to lead the way, signing 38 PPA deals totalling 3.8 GW — a 56% increase in deal count and 5% rise in disclosed volumes year-on-year.
Microsoft signed a 20-year agreement to source power from a soon-to-be-restarted nuclear facility at Three Mile Island — the site of the infamous 1979 accident — expected to return to operation by 2028. Google and Amazon have also signed PPAs for future electricity from small modular reactors (SMRs), reflecting a growing interest in firm, carbon-free baseload power.
Hourly matched PPAs and other trends
According to the recent S&P Platts data, the beginning of 2025 has seen more interest in shorter term PPA deals and hybrid opportunities — for example, combining solar and storage or wind and solar. Tech is expected to remain the largest buyer of PPAs, as data centres continue to increase capacity to meet soaring demand.
New-generation PPAs can now be designed for hourly matching. Buyers and sellers compare demand and supply curves, then choose structures with the best potential match.
- This may involve diversifying across solar and wind in different locations
- Load shaping and flexible contracts allow buyers to optimise scores over time
- Structured support platforms handle analytics, reporting, and certification
These PPAs provide a middle ground between compliance and leadership: they're still impactful in terms of capacity buildout, while aligning with tighter regulatory frameworks.
“We believe hourly matching will follow a faster adoption curve than PPAs did a decade ago. Regulatory pressure is growing, and the tech is already here.”
— JP Cerda, Renewabl
Access all session recordings and slides from the event.
On-site renewables and storage: control, resilience, and grid support
While procurement is often the most scalable route to decarbonisation, on-site renewable energy and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) are gaining traction — especially in data-intensive industries.
- Data centres and hyperscalers increasingly deploy co-located renewable assets, such as rooftop solar or nearby wind farms.
- BESS installations now replace diesel backup in many locations, offering the ability to shift loads away from peak times and operate in island mode during outages.
- The combination of AI, high-density computing, and local grid constraints make energy resilience a competitive advantage.
Leading by example: Google's renewable energy strategy
Google has been a frontrunner in corporate clean energy, particularly in advancing data centres' green energy, signing one of the first large-scale PPAs in 2010. Since then, it has matched 100% of its global electricity use with renewables annually — but is now pushing beyond that to hourly matching.
By 2023, 64% of Google’s global electricity consumption was matched on a 24/7 basis, with 10 data centers above 90% — six of them in Europe. The company’s strategy focuses on three pillars: measurement, optimisation and procurement.
“Our AI systems adjust when and where computing tasks are performed, aligning with renewable energy availability. This ensures both Google and our customers benefit from clean energy when it is most abundant and cost-effective.”
— Adam Elman (Google EMEA)
To hit its 2030 net-zero target, Google is also investing in new energy technologies, including advanced geothermal and small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). Crucially, the company is working with grid operators on innovative tariffs and composite clean energy deals designed to support grid resilience — not just its own operations.
Top solutions driving the tech industry’s transition to renewable energy
Renewabl: Enabling 24/7 hourly matching for corporate buyers
Renewabl focuses on helping corporates move towards 24/7 hourly matching — a more precise way of buying and reporting renewables through advanced energy solutions. With Renewabl’s platform, businesses get visibility into their energy data by hour, not just month or year, as well as trade RE100-compliant PPAs, GOs/REGOs, and green tariffs.
For instance, a solar PPA may only generate power during daylight hours, while a company’s energy needs continue overnight. Renewabl highlights these gaps and helps build a procurement strategy that includes spatial (local) and temporal (time-based) solutions.
It also helps buyers understand their Carbon-Free Energy (CFE) score which reflects how much of their usage is actually covered by clean electricity on an hourly basis. Understanding this score is the first step toward better procurement, regulatory alignment, and avoiding greenwashing.
Electricity Maps: Analysing where your energy comes from
Electricity Maps gives companies real-time visibility into how clean the electricity is on a given grid, hour by hour and region by region. For businesses operating data centres or offices across multiple countries, this level of granularity is essential — especially as the grid mix can vary significantly by location.
The platform also offers flow-tracing technology, which shows not only where electricity is consumed, but how it flows through interconnected systems like the European grid. For example, a company based in Denmark might discover that some of its power comes from nuclear — imported from neighbouring Sweden — even though Denmark itself doesn’t produce nuclear energy. This type of insight is becoming increasingly important for organisations looking to accurately track carbon emissions and back up renewable energy claims.
Electricity Maps aims to predict the cleanliness of electricity in the future to optimise energy use in sectors like electric vehicles and data centers. The platform is already actively used by corporates like Google to shift energy-intensive tasks to times and places where clean power is available, significantly lowering its emissions.
Electron: Making local energy flexibility work for the grid
Electron runs a flexibility marketplace that allows energy users — like batteries or EV fleets — to offer their demand or supply capacity to the local grid. This is especially important in cities or dense areas where it’s hard to build new grid infrastructure or fit large batteries.
What makes Electron valuable is its focus on time and location. It helps local network operators manage congestion and delays by tapping into resources already on the ground. For tech firms struggling with long grid connection times, particularly data centres, this offers a new route to faster deployment.
Electron’s platform turns flexibility into a financial asset as it allows companies to get paid for being available to reduce or shift demand. This is a major shift from traditional models where flexibility wasn’t rewarded. It supports a more dynamic, decentralised grid — which is critical as we add more renewables that vary with time and weather.
Electric Match by Octopus Energy: A 100% renewable tariff with hourly matching
Electric Match is a green electricity tariff from Octopus Energy that matches a business’s usage with energy from specific wind and solar farms, tracked hour by hour. It’s designed for companies that want more transparency and control over their renewable energy without the need for custom procurement or specialist tools.
Businesses on the Electric Match tariff can view live data showing where their energy is coming from and how well it aligns with their usage over time. Matching is done automatically, using named renewable sources, and customers receive reporting on carbon intensity and renewable performance for each site.
It’s a practical option for companies that want to move beyond generic “green tariffs” and towards more time-based matching—without needing to manage PPAs or certificates themselves. All the matching and tracking is built into the tariff, making it easy to switch and simple to use.
Big Clean Switch: Jargon-free advice and green energy procurement for SMEs
Big Clean Switch helps British businesses — especially smaller tech firms — move to cleaner electricity by making green tariffs easier to understand and access.
Rather than focusing on complex data tools, it translates energy procurement into plain language for staff, investors and customers, supporting practical decisions for firms without in-house energy teams. Its goal is to help companies apply hourly matching in practice by finding the most suitable tariffs. Crucially, it steers clients away from blanket “100% renewable” claims and towards more accurate, hour-by-hour reporting.
Conclusion: Practical steps forward
If there’s one takeaway from this, it’s that credibility now matters more than claims. For tech companies, matching explosive energy demand with real, clean supply isn’t a future challenge — it’s today’s procurement brief. The tools exist. The standards are coming. And the leaders are already moving.
Whether you’re shaping your first hourly matching strategy or scaling PPAs across global sites, the shift to 24/7 is now less about possibility — and more about priority. And having access to the right data is crucial for this:
“The first step for companies is to understand their own load profile — hour by hour, site by site. Then they can start aligning their procurement strategy to clean energy availability, rather than relying on spreadsheet-based annual averages.”
— JP Cerda, Renewabl
