LIVE … lattes of Big Tech capex so far todayLIVE … GWh used by the world's data centres todaySLOUGH 65% of the town's electricity goes to data centresGB GRID 50.8 GW of data centres in the connection queueCAPEX $720–745bn Big Four spend guided for 2026HYPERSCALE 1,136 worldwide, up from 430 in 2018PIPELINE 504 more hyperscale sites plannedUK ~100 new data centres could be built in 5 years2030 945 TWh world data centre demand forecast, IEALOUISIANA 5 GW Meta's planned Hyperion campusWATER 155bn glasses: Google's 2024 consumptionMAPPED 4,004 data centre sites from open data
Data Center Clock

← Back to the clock · updated 26 October 2026

Sources & method

Derived figures: homes = energy ÷ 2,500 kWh (Ofgem typical medium household src). Olympic pool = 2.5 million litres. Lattes: capex uses a $5.60 US average latte src; household costs use the Ofgem price cap of 26.32p/kWh src and a £3.64 UK latte src. Glasses = 200 ml, the glass size in UK hydration guidance src; daily fluid intake = 1.2 litres src. The clock spreads annual totals evenly over 31,536,000 seconds; the 'this year' figures run from 1 January at those same rates, so the energy figure (a 2024 rate) undercounts a growing total. 100 MW site = 100 MW × 8,760 hours (theoretical maximum).

  1. IEA, Energy and AI (2025)
  2. IEA, Energy and AI: Executive summary
  3. DESNZ, Data centre electricity consumption in Great Britain, 2020 to 2024
  4. NESO, Demand Call for Input: High Level Summary (Mar 2026)
  5. Ofgem, Demand Connections Reform call for input (Feb 2026)
  6. NESO written evidence to Parliament (DCU0081)
  7. CSO Ireland, Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2024
  8. EPRI, Powering Intelligence (2024)
  9. LBNL, 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report
  10. Google Cloud, Measuring the environmental impact of AI inference (Aug 2025)
  11. The Verge on Sam Altman's per-query figures (Jun 2025)
  12. Washington Post, A bottle of water per email (Sep 2024)
  13. Google 2025 Environmental Report
  14. Company Q2 2026 earnings guidance, compiled by datacentres.com (Oct 2026)
  15. Data Center Map, United Kingdom
  16. Data Center Map, country listings (accessed Oct 2026)
  17. Ofgem, Typical domestic consumption values: decision (2026)
  18. Allegra World Coffee Portal, Project Café UK 2025 (Jan 2025)
  19. Toast, Coffee pricing in 2025 (Nov 2024)
  20. British Nutrition Foundation, Hydration
  21. Ofgem, Energy price cap 1 October to 31 December 2026
  22. techUK, Foundations for the Future (Nov 2024, industry-commissioned)
  23. GOV.UK, £6.3bn of US investment in UK data centres (Oct 2024)
  24. GOV.UK, Homes to be kept warm by data centre waste heat (Nov 2023)
  25. Masanet et al., Recalibrating global data center energy-use estimates, Science (2020)
  26. DCD on Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2025
  27. American Clean Power, Clean Power Annual Market Report 2024 (May 2025)
  28. S&P Global, Data centers drive surge in clean energy procurement (Feb 2025)
  29. Synergy Research Group, hyperscale data center count jumps to 430 (2019)
  30. Synergy Research Group, hyperscale operator spending on data centers, 2019 (512 at end-2019)
  31. Synergy Research Group, Microsoft, Amazon and Google account for over half of today's 600 hyperscale data centers (2021)
  32. Computer Weekly citing Synergy Research Group: 728 hyperscale data centres at end-2021
  33. Synergy Research Group, hyperscale data centers hit the thousand mark (2024)
  34. Synergy Research Group, hyperscale data center count hits 1,136 (2025)
  35. BBC News, analysis of Barbour ABI planning data: almost 100 new UK data centres in five years (Aug 2025)
  36. House of Commons Library, Data centres: planning policy, sustainability, and resilience (CBP 10315, Aug 2025)
  37. OpenAI, five new Stargate sites (Sep 2025, updated Oct 2025)
  38. Meta, Deepening our investment in Richland Parish, Louisiana (Jul 2026)
  39. DCD, 1GW data center planned for North Lincolnshire given planning permission
  40. OpenStreetMap contributors, features tagged telecom=data_center or building=data_center (ODbL; planet snapshot 21 Sep 2026, via QLever)
  41. Company filings (Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta), compiled by kingy.ai
  42. chokepoints.ai summary of DSIT AI Growth Zones progress report (Jan 2026)
  43. GOV.UK, North East AI Growth Zone announcement (Sep 2025)
  44. Nscale press release (Sep 2025)
  45. Google blog, Waltham Cross data centre (Sep 2025)
  46. GOV.UK, Delivering AI Growth Zones
  47. GOV.UK, Data centres designated Critical National Infrastructure (Sep 2024)
  48. CNBC, Tech giants to pour billions into UK AI (Sep 2025)
  49. Wikidata, items that are a data center (Q671224) with coordinates (CC0)
  50. BBC News, Plans for large AI data centre approved (Elsham Tech Park, Mar 2026)
  51. Thurrock Data Centre (Google) project website, application 25/00573/OUT
  52. DCD, Teesworks data center gets approved (Aug 2025)
  53. OpenAI, Introducing Stargate UAE (May 2025)
  54. OpenAI, Introducing Stargate Norway (Jul 2025)
  55. Microsoft, Inside the world's most powerful AI datacenter (Fairwater, Sep 2025)
  56. CNBC, Amazon opens $11 billion AI data center Project Rainier in Indiana (Oct 2025)
  57. Google, Our first AI hub in India, powered by a $15 billion investment (Oct 2025)

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