A single research report has recast the arithmetic of American energy: BloombergNEF’s latest projections show data center gas demand reaching 18 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) by 2035, a figure that would exceed Germany and Japan’s combined consumption and, on the grid-connected side alone, surpass the current natural gas appetite of every nation except China, Russia, Iran, and the United States itself.
The scale of the revision is as striking as the headline number. BloombergNEF’s previous forecast for grid-connected data centres, issued in December, put that figure at 6.9 Bcf/d. The new estimate: 15 Bcf/d, more than double, in under nine months. The authors note the projection already discounts announced projects that are unlikely to be completed.
Two Pipelines, One Crunch
The 18 Bcf/d headline figure splits into two very different stories. On-site generation, the plants being built directly by Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to bypass the grid entirely, accounts for 2.9 to 3.4 Bcf/d by 2035. That is roughly equivalent to everything all data centres consume today, from both on-site and grid-sourced power.
The larger force is quieter. Grid-connected data centres are projected to pull an additional 15 Bcf/d from the power sector, five times the combined demand growth of every other grid-connected industry through 2035. Natural gas is expected to supply 69% of the power needed by those facilities, according to BloombergNEF, chosen for its abundance, low US production cost, and gas turbines’ ability to ramp up and down for the uninterrupted, round-the-clock loads that computing infrastructure demands.
The power demand picture is equally vertiginous. BloombergNEF’s 2035 data centre power demand forecast stands at 106 gigawatts, a 36% jump from its own outlook published seven months earlier. From approximately 40 GW today, the sector is projected to reach roughly 78 GW by 2030 before surging to that 106 GW ceiling five years later.
Data Center Gas Demand and the Price Question
Much of the current buildout rests on an assumption that has held for several years: cheap, stable gas. The US Energy Information Administration’s Short-Term Energy Outlook shows the Henry Hub spot price averaged $2.19 per MMBtu in 2024, rising to $3.53 in 2025, with the agency projecting $3.43 in 2026 and $3.28 in 2027. Those are historically benign numbers.
Analysts at Noreva, a US gas forecasting service, anticipate a more volatile market ahead, with potential regional price spikes to $10 per MMBtu in supply-constrained areas. The combination of surging data centre demand and rising liquefied natural gas exports is their central concern. BloombergNEF’s own modelling shows LNG export demand rising by 21 Bcf/d through 2035, compounding the pressure from data centres. If both forces materialise simultaneously, producers and pipeline operators will be running to catch up.
The utility ratepayer sits at the end of that chain. Tech companies with trillion-dollar balance sheets can absorb a price surge in energy contracts; the household paying a monthly electricity bill cannot spread that cost across a global revenue base.
The Carbon Ledger
Behind the gas volumes sits a greenhouse gas calculation that does not improve with scale. Burning one cubic foot of natural gas releases the equivalent of 60 grams of carbon dioxide, according to the International Energy Agency, a figure that includes extraction, processing, and distribution. The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator puts direct combustion emissions at approximately 55 grams per cubic foot, with upstream activities adding the remainder.
Applied to the additional demand data centres are projected to generate, the arithmetic produces 1 million metric tons of additional greenhouse gas pollution per day, roughly 12% of total US emissions today. The data centre boom has been marketed, in part, on efficiency gains over older infrastructure. At 18 Bcf/d, that framing will be harder to sustain.
The pivot point is 2030. By then, data center gas demand will either be bending toward renewable alternatives, or the infrastructure decisions being made today, in pipeline capacity, gas field development, and power plant permitting, will have locked in a decade of fossil-fuel dependency that no efficiency argument will undo.
