A wave of data centre investment raises concerns about a surge in electricity demand and its impacts / Investment in new data centres has surged over the past two years, driven by growing digitalisation and the uptake of artificial intelligence (AI), which is expected to continue accelerating. Much of the spending is concentrated in the United States, where annual investment in data centre construction has doubled in the past two years alone, although other major economies, such as China and the European Union, are also witnessing an increase in activity. In 2023, overall capital investment by Google, Microsoft and Amazon, which are industry leaders in AI adoption and data centre installation, was higher than that of the entire US oil and gas industry – totalling around 0.5% of US GDP. (....)