Loudoun County, Virginia holds the highest concentration of data centers on the planet. What once made the area notable — pastoral scenery, proximity to Washington, DC — has been displaced by a far more pressing identity: an electricity-hungry infrastructure corridor that local utility Dominion Energy is struggling to keep supplied.
The pressure has grown visible. Dulles International Airport is building the largest airport solar installation in the country, a direct response to the region’s surging power demands.
The scale of the broader problem is significant. Data centers consumed roughly 4% of national electricity in the US in 2024. That figure could reach 12% by 2028, according to current projections.
A single 100-megawatt data center draws approximately as much electricity as 80,000 American homes. Facilities under construction today are being designed for gigawatt scale — enough to power a mid-sized city.
For executive teams, the cost implications are no longer theoretical. A December 2025 survey of 300 executives, conducted by MIT Technology Review Insights, found that 68% of respondents reported energy cost increases of 10% or more in the past 12 months, attributable to AI and data workloads.
Nearly all of those surveyed — 97% — expect their organization’s AI-related energy consumption to increase over the next 12 to 18 months.
100% of executives surveyed said the ability to measure and strategically manage power consumption will become an important business metric within two years. The report calls this capability “energy intelligence” — understanding where, when, and why energy is consumed, then using that data to control costs and optimize operations.
Cost Is the Dominant Pressure
Half of executives — 51% — ranked rising costs as the single greatest energy-related risk to their digital and AI initiatives. Most companies currently tracking data center energy consumption cite cost management as the primary motivation, according to the report.
Organizations are responding in several ways. Three in four leaders (74%) are optimizing existing infrastructure. 69% are partnering with energy-efficient cloud and storage providers. More than half are scheduling AI workloads more strategically (61%) or investing in more efficient hardware (56%).
The Measurement Gap
Despite the urgency, most enterprises still lack granular visibility into their own energy consumption. The problem is sharpest for organizations relying on third-party cloud providers and managed services — the source of rising consumption-based costs for 71% of respondents — where energy metrics are frequently opaque.
Communities near major data center clusters are also registering concern about the strain on local grids and resources, adding a reputational dimension to what was previously treated as a pure infrastructure challenge.
The gap between energy consumption and energy understanding, the survey suggests, is where the next wave of operational risk is forming.
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