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US data centers will burn more natural gas than almost every country by 2035
US data centers will need 15 billion additional cubic feet of natural gas a day by 2035, more than the entire gas consumption of every country on Earth except China, Russia, Iran and the US itself. Fifteen billion cubic feet a day. That's how much more natural gas American data centers will burn every day by 2035, according to a new forecast from BloombergNEF published this week, and it answers a question the industry has been dodging for years: how much natural gas will AI data centers actually use by 2035? A lot more than anyone assumed even nine months ago. BloombergNEF's own December forecast put that number at 6.9 billion cubic feet a day. Nine months later, it more than doubled. The revision, reported by Bloomberg News on September 14, reflects how fast AI compute demand has outrun every previous estimate of how much power it would need. Put the number in context. It gets uncomfortable fast. Fifteen billion cubic feet a day is more gas than Germany's entire economy burns in a year, roughly 9 billion cubic feet a day across every furnace, factory and power plant in the country. It's more than the total gas consumption of...