What is it about?
This paper presents the first global long-run analysis (1975–2022) that jointly estimates electricity consumption, information processing, and energy efficiency in computing devices, including desktops, laptops, datacenters, smartphones, and supercomputers. The study reconstructs global trends showing that electricity use, processed information, and efficiency increased by 4, 11, and 7 orders of magnitude, respectively, while tracking how changes in device types and computing infrastructure shaped these trends.
Featured Image
Photo by Andrew on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Despite the rapid growth of computing and information processing, the study finds that the share of computing devices in global electricity use peaked at about 2.5% in 2013 and stabilized around 1.8% since 2018. This stabilization occurred because large improvements in efficiency and shifts toward smartphones and large datacenters offset the increase in information processing. These results suggest that concerns about rapidly increasing electricity demand from computing may be overstated.
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Long-run electricity consumption in computing: Exponential growth followed by stabilization due to efficiency gains, iScience, March 2026, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2026.114876.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
