In 2024, electricity consumption by data centers in Switzerland accounted for approximately 3.6% of total electricity consumption, amounting to 2.1 TWh. By 2030, electricity consumption is projected to increase to between 2.5 and 3.2 TWh. This is according to a new study commissioned by SuisseEnergie, a program of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy.
Since the last study conducted in 2019, data center energy consumption has increased by approximately 20%. While large commercial data centers (accounting for 44% of consumption) have seen significant growth, consumption at many corporate-owned data centers (accounting for 56% of consumption) has stagnated or declined due to efficiency gains and the outsourcing of IT to the cloud or to specialized providers, which accounts for this moderate increase.
The previous study from 2019 also included server rooms, which covered a broader scope. To simplify the analysis, server rooms have been excluded from this study. On a like-for-like basis, consumption amounted to 1.77 TWh, representing 3.1% of Switzerland’s electricity consumption at the time. Consumption increased by 18% between 2019 and 2024 (an average annual growth rate of 3.4%).
The remaining energy efficiency potential is estimated at approximately 0.8 TWh, or nearly 38% of total data center consumption in Switzerland. The scope for improvement is slightly greater for IT equipment than for building infrastructure.
Artificial intelligence currently plays a minor role
Only ETH Zurich actually operates an AI supercomputer (the CSCS in Lugano), while businesses and the general public use pre-trained AI applications, and Switzerland does not yet host any data centers dedicated to training large language models. These types of centers rely on liquid cooling infrastructure and require power capacities of several hundred megawatts. The large data centers built in Switzerland to date are primarily intended for cloud applications.
According to the report, electricity consumption by data centers in Switzerland, across all uses, could reach between 2.5 TWh and 3.2 TWh by 2030. Consumption by commercial data centers could double or even triple. In this “maximalist” scenario, consumption by Swiss data centers could reach 3.5 TWh in 2030 (equivalent to 6% of the electricity consumed in Switzerland in 2024). In the coming years, the SFOE plans to step up its monitoring of data center consumption and efficiency.
Source : Press Release
