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India’s Data Centres to Become APAC’s 2nd-Largest Power Consumers by 2030

India is on track to emerge as the second-largest market for electricity demand from data centres in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region by 2030, surpassing Japan and Australia, according to S&P Global. The rapid surge is being fueled by the country’s booming digital economy, cloud adoption, and artificial intelligence (AI) push.

Data centres’ share of India’s electricity demand is projected to triple from 0.84% in 2024 to 2.6% by 2030. In absolute terms, power consumption will rise fivefold, from 13 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2024 to 57 TWh by 2030—an average annual growth of 28%. Under the government’s AI Mission, over 34,000 GPUs have been allocated to data centre operators, half of which are already installed. Once fully functional, these GPUs alone will add about 2 TWh of annual electricity demand, or nearly 10% of total data centre consumption in 2025.

To meet this growing demand sustainably, India will need 15–30 GW of additional renewable capacity, roughly 10% of planned renewable additions by 2030. Analysts highlight that this is achievable given India’s vast untapped solar and wind potential. Encouragingly, most leading operators—Amazon Web Services (by 2030), Sify Technologies (by 2027), NxtGen (by 2025), and ST Telemedia (by 2026)—have committed to 100% renewable energy sourcing for their data centres.

The report underscores India’s growing importance in the global digital infrastructure landscape while highlighting the parallel role of renewable energy in enabling sustainable growth.