US Data Centers on Track to Burn More Gas Than Germany and Japan Combined by 2035

American data centers are projected to consume more natural gas by 2035 than Germany and Japan together, according to new analysis reported by TechCrunch, a forecast that reframes AI infrastructure as an energy story as much as a computing one. The finding lands as hyperscalers race to bring gigawatt-scale campuses online faster than grids can add clean generation to serve them. In practical terms, it means the largest driver of new US gas demand over the next decade may not be industry or households but the buildings that train and run AI models.

The math behind that claim rests on the sheer scale of planned buildouts. Utilities and grid operators across Texas, Virginia, Ohio and Georgia have already flagged record interconnection requests from data center developers, with some single campuses seeking more power than midsize cities draw. Gas-fired plants are the default answer because they can be permitted and built in a few years, while nuclear and large-scale storage take far longer. Germany and Japan, for all their industrial weight, have each been reducing gas consumption, which makes the crossover plausible rather than rhetorical.

The comparison to Germany and Japan is striking because both are among the world's biggest gas importers. Germany consumed roughly 80 to 90 billion cubic meters annually before the 2022 energy crisis pushed it to cut Russian supply and curb demand. Japan, similarly, has trimmed LNG imports as it restarts reactors and pushes efficiency. If US data center demand grows along the projected curve, it would absorb volumes on the order of those two national markets combined, a scale that LNG exporters and pipeline builders are already positioning to serve.

That shift carries consequences beyond fuel markets. More gas burn means more carbon emissions at a moment when several major tech companies have pledged to run on 24/7 clean power, and it complicates their own climate accounting as AI workloads expand. It also raises reliability questions: gas prices have swung hard in recent winters, and data center operators signing long-term supply deals are effectively betting on fuel costs staying manageable. Regulators, meanwhile, face pressure over who pays for new pipelines and plants built primarily to serve a handful of corporate customers.

What to watch is whether the projection holds as efficiency improves and as alternative sources mature. Vendors are shipping denser chips, operators are experimenting with on-site generation and small modular reactors, and some states are rewriting tariff rules to shift infrastructure costs onto large loads. The open question is timing: if gas plants get built first and renewables arrive later, the 2035 figure may look like a floor rather than a warning.