Will The U.S. Be Out Of Electricity In 10 Years?

By Douglas McIntyre  •  September 7, 2025
Frans van Heerden Pexels

Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google famously said that AI server farms and applications would use up 99% of the world’s electricity for super intelligent AI. If that is true, the U.S. would be almost out of electricity at the same time. There are saner ways to look at it. 

By 2030, AI applications and data centers could use 30% of America’s electricity. EVs could be another 20%. The factor that could change both of these is supply. With the Trump Administration taking offshore wind energy offline and threatening actions that could make solar harder to fund, and tariffs that will cut into steel and copper, public policy becomes a supply threat. That leaves oil, natural gas, coal, and possibly nuclear to power the growing need.  Building and getting approval for nuclear reactors has been a years-long process.

As the path for other options narrows, fossil fuels may be the only option. Even if the supply from each of these sources grows, there must be a grid infrastructure that is significantly better than the existing ones, one that is much better than the current infrastructure in parts of the country.

Another gating factor is who gets the electricity. Air conditioning use is expected to increase with global warming. Crypto is already a large consumer. The number of residential and legacy energy uses is not going to fall. 

The whole country does not get low on electricity at the same time. Electricity generation and grid infrastructure are not level across the U.S. Nor will it build out of data centers. Some parts of America could run very low on energy within the next decade. That would mean, at least, residential brownouts to balance demand. 

Finally, AI companies could build private grids. However, then they compete for supply, unless they bring their own supply, which is scarce due to electricity, that will not happen.

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