Data centres: Unit economics
What a 100 MW AI campus really costs to build
What this tab covers What it costs to move a unit of energy this way: capital and operating costs, tariffs, utilisation and how it compares with the alternatives.A data centre's cost is dominated first by the IT hardware, then by the building with its power and cooling plant, and then by electricity. Lower PUE and higher utilisation cut the cost of every unit of computing.
Key costs
| Measure | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Construction cost, US and Canada | 17.6 USD million per MW (2026 guide, excluding chips and GPUs)818 | Up 21% since the previous (Q4 2024) edition |
| World data centre electricity | 415 (2024) rising to about 945 (2030 projection) TWh per year1 | Growth about 12% a year over the five years to 2024 |
| US data centre electricity | 176 TWh, 4.4% of US use TWh (2023)4 | Could double or triple by 2028, up to 12% of US electricity |
| Average PUE | 1.54 ratio (2025)2 | Was 2.50 in 2007 and 1.98 in 2011; between 1.54 and 1.67 every year since 2018 |
| Typical rack power | About 9 (average modal) against up to 132 for a GB200 NVL72 rack kW per rack (2025)212 | The AI rack is about 15 times denser (calculated) |
| AI training node | 7.92 kW median draw; 62 kWh over 8 hours kW and kWh per 8-GPU node4 | From one measured study |
| Water use | About 7 (one study) cubic metres per MWh4 | A 100 MW US site may use as much direct water as about 2,600 households |
Where the money goes
| Item | Share or amount |
|---|---|
| Power infrastructure (share of greenfield development cost) | About 21%, the largest single category (company press release)18 |
| Cooling (share of facility electricity) | About 38-40%4 |
| Servers and computing (share of facility electricity) | About 40%, with network and storage about 10%4 |
Worked example: a 100 MW (IT) campus costs about USD 1.76 billion to build before any chips (calculated from USD 17.6 million per MW). Suppose it runs at an average 80% of IT capacity with a PUE of 1.3 and pays USD 70/MWh (assumptions). It uses about 911,000 MWh a year, costing about USD 64 million (calculated). Spread over a 20-year life at 8% interest, the building costs about USD 180 million a year (calculated). Per MWh delivered to IT, that is roughly USD 255 for the building and USD 91 for electricity (calculated), and the servers and GPUs, replaced every few years, usually cost more than both. Cutting PUE from 1.54 to 1.3 at the same IT load saves about 16% of the electricity bill (calculated).
Sources
- Energy and AI (World Energy Outlook special report) IEA, 2025
- Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2025 Uptime Institute, 2025
- Data Centers and Their Energy Consumption: Frequently Asked Questions (R48646) US Congressional Research Service, 2025
- 2026 Data Center Development Cost Guide Cushman and Wakefield, 2026
- Vertiv and Nvidia collaborate on 7MW reference architecture for GB200 NVL72 DatacenterDynamics, 2024
- Cushman and Wakefield releases 2026 Data Center Development Cost Guide (company press release, as reproduced by Finviz) Cushman and Wakefield, 2026