Resources
Explore seminal resources on data centers, energy consumption, and their environmental impact. This curated collection includes statistical sites, research reports, journalism studies, and industry surveys.
Title
Source
Description
Link
IEA – Data Centres and Data Transmission Networks Tracker
IEA
Gold-standard global overview of data centre and network energy use, with historical trends, projections, and policy levers you can quote directly for context and charts.
IEA – Electricity 2024 (Data Centres & AI Section)
IEA
Flagship report that quantifies how AI, data centres, and crypto could push electricity demand through 2026, including scenario charts you can use to frame "AI vs the grid" futures.
Aterio – US Data Centers Inventory
aterio.io
Commercial dataset with granular, state-level facility listings (stage, provider, size, estimated power demand) across all US data centres, giving you a quasi-ground-truth backbone for mapping and analysis.
DataCenterMap – Global Data Center Directory
datacentermap.com
Crowd-sourced directory used by the industry to browse colocation and cloud facilities worldwide, useful for cross-checking locations, owners, and basic attributes when you zoom out beyond the US.
Baxtel – Data Center Map & Database
baxtel.com
Another major directory with a strong US map and detailed facility pages (power, status, providers) that you can mine for example sites, regional clusters, and cross-validation.
Business Insider – "Where data centers use the most electricity"
businessinsider.com
Investigative package (with an interactive map of 1,200+ US sites and estimated power use) that's great for showing how journalism visualizes data-center externalities for a general audience.
Carbon Brief – China data centres, AI and electricity demand explainer
carbonbrief.org
Deep dive on how China is trying to manage data-centre and AI loads on the grid, giving you a policy-rich international case study on regulation, curtailment, and "computing power" targets.
Uptime Institute – Global Data Center Survey
uptimeinstitute.com
Annual industry survey covering outages, energy efficiency, sustainability metrics, and capacity trends, useful for grounding your narrative in what operators themselves say they're struggling with.
Wikipedia – Data Center
wikipedia.org
Solid primer on what a data centre is (tiers, cooling, redundancy, PUE, etc.), which is perfect for quick definitions and diagrams when you need to explain basics without diving into paywalled reports.
Wikipedia – Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)
wikipedia.org
Canonical definition of the main efficiency metric used in data-centre energy debates, giving you a clean formula, typical ranges, and key critiques you can reference in your design and analysis.