Artificial intelligence is perceived as an immaterial technology, but it relies on physical infrastructures – data centers, networks, cooling systems, and generation capacity – that consume increasing amounts of electricity. The paradox is precisely this: the technology that promises to improve efficiency, productivity, and sustainability requires stable, continuous, and available energy 24 hours a day to function. For this reason, the growth of AI cannot be seen only as a digital issue, but as a new energy, industrial, and infrastructural challenge.
HOW MUCH DO DATA CENTERS REALLY CONSUME
According to the International Energy Agency, data centers consumed about 415 TWh of electricity in 2024, equal to 1.5% of global electricity demand. The IEA also estimates that demand could exceed 1,000 TWh by 2030 and reach about 1,300 TWh by 2035, driven mainly by artificial intelligence. The Global Energy Review 2026 also notes that in 2025 global electricity demand grew at more than twice the rate of overall energy demand, confirming the entry into the so-called “age of electricity.”
In this sense, the point is not the consumption of a single query – estimated by Epoch AI at about 0.3 Wh for a simple text request – but the scale of the phenomenon. OpenAI has declared over 2.5 billion queries per day: multiplied by billions of interactions, even seemingly light requests become a significant energy load. And consumption grows further when moving to complex reasoning, image generation, more powerful models, and services integrated into smartphones, search engines, enterprise platforms, and industrial applications.
WHY RENEWABLES ALONE ARE NOT ENOUGH
The growth of renewable sources is already very strong: in 2024, according to IRENA, 585 GW of new renewable capacity was installed, equal to 90% of new global electricity capacity. The IEA also estimates that in 2025 investments in clean energy reached about 2,200 billion dollars, double that of fossil fuels. However, the renewable share in global electricity generation remains around 30%, because demand is growing rapidly and because grids, storage, permits, land availability, and source intermittency limit the possibility of replacing dispatchable sources in a short time.
Data centers, in particular, are rigid loads: they must be powered without interruptions, with very high reliability levels. A hyperscale data center of 100 MW requires energy continuously, about 876 GWh per year. Solar and wind are indispensable to reduce emissions, but they do not always produce: to guarantee continuity, oversizing, storage, adequate grids, and dispatchable sources capable of intervening when sun and wind are not available are needed.
THE ROLE OF GAS
In this context, gas remains essential in the present and future energy mix: it is dispatchable, flexible, available, and less emissive compared to other fossil sources. For every kilowatt-hour produced, gas emits about 30% less than oil and 50% less than coal. Gas power plants can also offer quickly “dispatchable” capacity, useful to stabilize the electrical system and integrate the growth of renewables, especially in the presence of continuous and increasing consumption, such as that of data centers.
The most recent Italian data confirm this: in June gas consumption was 3.8 billion cubic meters, up 3% compared to the same month in 2025, with thermoelectric power marking an 11% leap, supporting grid stability during a phase of higher demand due to intense heat, covering the drop in hydroelectric production.
ITALY REMAINS TIED TO GAS
In this sense, the IEA estimates that global gas demand, about 4.3 trillion cubic meters in 2024, could continue to grow at least until 2035, reaching about 5 trillion cubic meters, driven by emerging economies, industry, electricity generation, and greater LNG availability. Also in Italy, gas maintains a central role: the country is among the largest European consumers and produces about 40% of the electricity consumed annually with gas. Moreover, a significant part of Italian industrial added value depends on gas-intensive sectors, such as ceramics, glass, and other hard-to-abate sectors.
FROM BIOMETHANE TO CO2 CAPTURE
Gas can also support the development of lower-impact solutions, thanks to already existing and convertible infrastructures: biomethane, CO2 transport, and carbon capture and storage projects. In the case of data centers, electricity generation from gas combined with CO2 capture and storage can represent a concrete response to the need for continuous energy and, at the same time, lower emission intensity.
THERE IS NO OPPOSITION BETWEEN GAS AND RENEWABLES
The point, therefore, is not to oppose gas and renewables, but to build an integrated system. The growth in demand – from consumption electrification to AI – shows that new energy vectors add to previous ones more than they replace them. In this sense, rather than pure substitution, it is useful to talk about energy integration, a paradigm that Snam’s CEO, Agostino Scornajenchi, has been bringing into the public debate on energy systems for some time. It is a model in which infrastructures, sources, and different vectors work in a coordinated way to guarantee continuity, flexibility, and adaptability. Thanks to its dispatchability, gas confirms itself in this framework as a keystone of security and an enabling element, able to compensate for fluctuations of other sources and support the stability of the entire energy system (including the electrical one thanks to thermoelectric plants, i.e., plants that use gas for electricity production).
SYSTEM RESILIENCE AND SUPPLY SECURITY
A confirmation in this sense also comes from the new Energy System Resilience report (2026): systems must now be designed not only to operate under ordinary conditions but to withstand events beyond standard planning conditions, maintain service, and restore it quickly.
For the overall system’s resilience, therefore, flexibility, interconnection, and adaptability capacity become priorities, and gas infrastructures – from storage to transport networks to LNG – structurally contribute, offering that degree of operational continuity and shock response that allows absorbing the increasing variability induced, more and more often, also by climate and the growing energy demand of AI. An integrated, flexible, and resilient energy mix will be needed, in which gas will continue to guarantee stability, continuity, and security to the system, while accompanying the decarbonization path.
