Onsite generation and storage offer greater potential for data centre flexibility, but the system benefits depend on what is built and how it is regulated.
London, 29 October 2026: As concerns grow over pressure on the electricity grid from rapid data centre growth, developers are increasingly championing load shifting as a solution. However, load shifting – the form of flexibility most often proposed as the answer to grid pressures – could reduce peak electricity demand by less than 0.6% in seven of the nine markets examined, according to new analysis from global energy think tank Ember.
Load shifting offers limited relief as most data centre workloads cannot be moved
Ember estimates that only around 3% of global data centre capacity will be able to participate in load shifting by 2030. The barrier is structural because the potential for load shifting depends on what the data centres do. Around 87% of global data centre capacity in 2030 is expected to run cloud services, enterprise IT and AI inference – workloads that must respond to users instantly and cannot be easily paused or moved. AI training facilities offer greater scope to shift demand, but these account for the smallest portion of global data centre capacity.
Across the nine major data centre markets examined – Texas, California and New York in the US; Ireland, the UK and Germany in Europe; and Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore in Southeast Asia – load shifting would reduce peak demand by an estimated 0.1-0.6% in seven. In Ireland and Malaysia, where data centres could account for around a quarter of peak demand by 2030, the potential reduction is higher, at around 1.5%. These are indicative estimates based on the limited data available. An interactive calculator published with the report lets readers test different assumptions.
