The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) today publishes a new study on electricity consumption and efficiency potential in Swiss data centers.
The Swiss Data Center Association (SDCA) welcomes the findings as an important basis for a fact-based debate. They confirm: Swiss data centers are growing at a measured pace despite significantly rising digital demand, because professional operators continuously invest in efficiency. The share of data centers in total Swiss electricity consumption has increased by just 0.5 percentage points since 2019 and is projected to reach 4.3 to 5.6 percent by 2030 in the most likely scenario.
Critical Infrastructure for Business, Government and Society
Data centers are the physical backbone of modern Switzerland. They enable banking transactions, corporate communications infrastructure, digital services of federal and cantonal authorities, hospital patient data systems, and the platforms on which millions of people work, communicate and access information every day. Without data centers, the Swiss economy and public administration would come to a standstill. Their electricity consumption must therefore not be viewed in isolation, but in relation to what it enables: a functioning, competitive and digitally sovereign economy.
Moderate Growth Despite Strongly Rising Digital Demand
According to the study, Swiss data centers consumed approximately 2.1 TWh of electricity in 2024, representing 3.6 percent of total national consumption. On a comparable system boundary, the figure in 2019 was 1.77 TWh, or 3.1 percent. This represents an increase of 18 percent over five years during which data volumes, cloud usage and digital services grew significantly, without electricity consumption rising proportionally. The actual increase in consumption falls clearly short of earlier studies’ projections. The authors note that consumption would be 20 to 40 percent higher today without the efficiency gains already realized.
SDCA President Roger Süess: “The SFOE study paints a far more sober picture than many headlines suggest. Swiss data centers do not represent an uncontrolled surge in electricity consumption, but rather professional, increasingly efficient digital infrastructure. Anyone reading the figures in relation to total electricity consumption and the efficiency gains achieved will recognize: Switzerland can absolutely reconcile digitalization and energy efficiency.”
Relocation as an Efficiency Gain
The increase in commercial data center consumption is largely explained by the migration of in-house corporate servers to colocation and cloud environments. At the same time, consumption at many internal data centers is stagnating or declining. What appears as growth in aggregate statistics is, to a significant extent, consolidation: IT is not simply growing larger, but being better organized, in professional facilities with lower energy losses, higher utilization rates and systematic efficiency optimization.
The study confirms that commercial data centers are already implementing key measures such as hot/cold aisle containment, higher operating temperatures and free cooling to a high degree. PUE values in the professional operator segment are frequently below 1.2. In-house data centers, by contrast, still have significantly more room for improvement, which provides additional energy-based justification for the shift to professional facilities.
AI: Minimal Impact in Switzerland
On the widely discussed topic of artificial intelligence, the study also contributes to a more measured conversation. It finds that AI currently plays a minor role in Switzerland from an energy perspective. Large language models are not trained domestically. The data centers built in recent years primarily serve cloud applications for the local market. The blanket equation of data center growth with an AI boom does not apply to Switzerland.
Putting 2030 Growth in Perspective
By 2030, the study projects an increase in consumption to 2.5 to 3.2 TWh in the most likely scenario, representing a share of 4.3 to 5.6 percent of Swiss electricity consumption. This growth reflects rising digital demand in a growing economy, coupled with further efficiency improvements. The remaining potential of approximately 0.78 TWh lies predominantly in the IT sector and demonstrates that digitalization and energy efficiency are not at odds.
The SDCA is committed to ensuring that these connections receive appropriate consideration in political and media debate. The new SFOE study provides an important, empirically grounded basis for doing so.
Click here to view the study (available in German only): https://www.admin.ch/de/newnsb/GV-%5Fd7OgIlqjfQDGZqbkN
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