Data appendix
The indicator set with its sources, the source registers, the licences of every kind of material and the formats of the edition.
Contents
- ·Edition home
- ·Executive summary
- 1Cloud is shared infrastructure with a physical footprint
- 2Key findings
- 3Systems and sectors at baseline
- 4Risks and capability
- 5Shared control-plane fault with diverging sovereignty rules
- 6Readings from the other desks
- 7The 2027 agenda
- 8Systems in depth
- AMethodology
- BData appendix
- CReferences and record
- ·Complete edition, for print
B.1The indicator set
| Indicator | Value | Unit | Year | State | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Global data centre electricity use | 415 | TWh | 2024 | Reported | 1 |
| Share of global electricity | 1.5 | % | 2024 | Reported | 1 |
| IEA base case for data centre electricity | 945 | TWh | 2030 base case | Scenario | 1 |
| US data centre electricity use | 176 | TWh | 2023 | Reported | 2 |
| US data centre share of electricity | 4.4 | % | 2023 | Reported | 3 |
| US projected share, low to high | 6.7 to 12 | % | Scenario | Scenario | 3 |
| Ireland data centre share of metered electricity | 22 | % | 2024 | Reported | 4 |
| Google data centre electricity growth | 27 | % | 2024 | Reported | 5 |
| Google fleet PUE | 1.09 | ratio | 2024 | Reported | 5 |
| AWS PUE | 1.15 | ratio | 2024 | Reported | 7 |
| AWS water use effectiveness | 0.15 | L per kWh | 2024 | Reported | 7 |
| Microsoft electricity consumed within the organisation | 29.8 | TWh | FY2024 | Reported | 6 |
| Microsoft water consumption | 5,807 | megalitres | FY2024 | Reported | 6 |
| Cloud infrastructure revenue, quarter | 143.4 | USD billion | Q2 2026 | Reported | 10 |
| Cloud revenue growth on the year | 43 | % | Q2 2026 | Reported | 10 |
| AWS us-east-1 event duration | 14.5 | hours | 2025 | Reported | 20 |
B.2Global source register
The governed source set behind this edition. Each source keeps its authority, coverage, cadence and role; categories describe origin, not truth.
Domains bound by the register
- ENE
- INF
- FIN
- GOV
- WAT
- DAT
- AIC
- CLI
- TRD
- HLT
| Source | Category | Coverage | Period | Cadence | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IEA Energy and AI1 | intergovernmental agency | global | 2024 | periodic | electricity |
| LBNL report and DOE summary23 | national laboratory and ministry | US | 2023 | periodic | electricity |
| CSO metered electricity4 | national statistics office | Ireland | 2024 | annual | grid share |
| Google environmental report5 | operator report | global | 2024 | annual | electricity, PUE, water |
| Microsoft environmental fact sheet6 | operator report | global | FY2024 | annual | electricity, water |
| Amazon sustainability report7 | operator report | global | 2024 | annual | PUE, WUE |
| Synergy Research release10 | industry analyst | global | 2026 | quarterly | market shares |
| UK CMA case page11 | competition authority | UK | 2025 | one-off | competition |
| AWS, Google Cloud and Cloudflare reports202122 | operators | global | 2025 | per event | resilience |
| EU Data Act pages1516 | EU institution | EU | 2025 | continuous | switching |
B.3Regional reading, cloud across ten clusters
Regional plates follow with the regional editions. This page gives the regional reading of cloud and distributed computing in table form and ranks no region.
| Region | Principal hazards | Systems most exposed | Baseline evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| North America | hyperscale hosting; federal authorisation reform | energy, resilience | LBNL2; FedRAMP24 |
| South America | regional evidence not bound | regional evidence (not bound) | regional evidence (not bound) |
| Europe | Data Act, DMA reviews, DORA and CADA proposal; high grid share in Ireland | regulation, grid | European Commission121618; CSO4 |
| Eurasia | regional evidence not bound | regional evidence (not bound) | regional evidence (not bound) |
| Middle East and North Africa | regional evidence not bound | regional evidence (not bound) | regional evidence (not bound) |
| Africa | regional evidence not bound | regional evidence (not bound) | regional evidence (not bound) |
| South Asia | regional evidence not bound | regional evidence (not bound) | regional evidence (not bound) |
| East Asia | regional evidence not bound | regional evidence (not bound) | regional evidence (not bound) |
| ASEAN | data centre growth and efficiency roadmap in Singapore | energy, siting | IMDA43 |
| Oceania-Pacific | regional evidence not bound | regional evidence (not bound) | regional evidence (not bound) |
B.4Cluster card: data centres in a national grid, Ireland
- grid
- electricity share
- permits
- efficiency rules
- Systems in view
- data centres, national grid, cloud regions
- Defining events
- data centres at 22% of metered electricity in 20244
- Couplings
- ENE → INF grid share; INF → ENE load
- Capability evidence
- EU reporting rules and a planned efficiency package19
- Gaps
- site-level load; connection queues; water use
- Agenda items
- C-02 · C-03
Data centres used 22% of metered electricity in Ireland in 2024 and 21% in 2023 [4].
GRID
Share of metered electricity
The Commission planned a data centre energy efficiency package for the third quarter of 2026 [19].
RULES
Reporting and efficiency
The proposed Cloud and AI Development Act sets a 12-month maximum permit procedure for projects under it, as reported [18].
PERMITS
Proposed permitting
B.5How countries appear in the cloud edition
Countries enter the cloud edition through the readiness chapters of their own national editions, on one card grammar. They are read against peer distributions and thresholds, never ranked.
| Card field | What it shows | Source |
|---|---|---|
| WEFH+B state | each core system against peer distribution bands | national edition |
| Couplings | the national dependency matrix | national edition |
| Risk objects | the national risk portfolio | national edition |
| Capability rungs | the national capability ladder | national edition |
| Evidence age | oldest and newest source dates | national source register |
Editions in the 2026 Baseline programme
countries and unions
clusters
flagship and sector
technology reports
How to read a country card
- Each system is shown against the distribution of its peers, with thresholds where they exist
- Couplings and risk objects come from the country’s own national edition
- Capability rungs record evidence, not a judgement of institutions
- Evidence age is printed, so older national data are visible as such
| Wave | Countries and unions | State |
|---|---|---|
| W0 | Canada | ISSUED |
| W1 | United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, European Union, Switzerland | PLANNED |
| W2 | Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Türkiye, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Senegal, Kenya, African Union, India, China, Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia | PLANNED |
B.6Licences
| Material | Licence |
|---|---|
| Text | CC BY 4.0 |
| Data | on the licence of each source; Nexus tables CC BY 4.0 |
| Figures | Nexus figures CC BY 4.0; third-party as credited |
| Maps | boundary source and licence printed on each plate |
| Metadata | CC0 1.0, as Zenodo publishes it |
| Third-party data, figures and text | The source’s own licence, credited where it is used; never relicensed |
| Nexus-authored text, tables and figures: CC BY 4.0 (SPDX CC-BY-4.0). Map plates print their boundary source and licence. | |
B.7Formats and provenance
| Format | Kind | State | What it is | Identifier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web edition | HTML | On this site | Draft in stewardship review; every value resolves to its source. | NR-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-v1.0.0 |
| Print edition | At release | A4 portrait · screen, print and archival PDF, signed with the web edition at release. | NR-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-v1.0.0 | |
| Indicator data | CSV · JSON | On this site | 16 indicators with unit, year, status and source; the machine-readable copy ships with the evidence bundle at release. | NR-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE data release v1 |
| Figures | SVG · PNG | On this site | 4 on the web edition: headline figure, figure 1.3, coupling instrument, capability ladder. | FIG-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-* |
| Slides | Not recorded | No slide deck is recorded for this edition. | ||
| Evidence brief | HTML · PDF | Not recorded | No evidence brief is recorded for this edition. | |
| Dataset with DOI | DataCite | At release | Concept and version DOI are minted at deposit; none is recorded yet. |
Provenance
- Edition pack
- The edition’s content pack (JSON), from which the print and web editions are built
- Evidence cut
- DC-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-B0, closed 30 September 2026
- Reproducibility
- sourced values cited; analytical values reproducible from stated parameters
- Self-check
- 14 of 23 at evidence close; a fail on any item blocks release
- Review
- five passes scheduled before release (in Annex C)
- Publisher of record
- The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI) for the Nexus Consortium
- Corrections
- Registry correction pathway; upheld corrections are published as notices with a new version
Notes
Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references
- 1UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (data centres about 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity; about 945 TWh in the 2030 base case; about 1,200 TWh in 2035 with a range of 700 to 1,700), taken from search-result summaries; the report pages returned access errors. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 2Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published 19 December 2024, DOI 10.71468/P1WC7Q (publication page; the page gives authors and a scenario range to 2028 but no figures; figures read in the DOE summary [3]). Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. doi:10.71468/P1WC7Qback
- 3US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE releases new report evaluating increase in electricity demand from data centres (20 December 2024; about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023; 6.7 to 12% projected for 2028; 58 TWh in 2014 and 176 TWh in 2023). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 4Central Statistics Office (ed.), Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2024 (statistical release of 10 June 2025; 22% of metered electricity in 2024, 21% in 2023; the GWh table was not in the content read). Central Statistics Office, Cork. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 5Google (ed.), 2025 Environmental Report (PDF; fiscal year 2024; data centre electricity consumption up 27%, data centre energy emissions down 12%, fleet PUE 1.09 against a stated industry average of 1.56, water consumption up 28%; company-reported). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 7Amazon (ed.), 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report (PDF; AWS global PUE 1.15 in 2024 against a stated public cloud industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises data centres, citing IDC; AWS water use effectiveness 0.15 L per kWh in 2024; company-reported). Amazon, Seattle. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 6Microsoft (ed.), 2025 Environmental Data Fact Sheet (PDF; fiscal year ended 30 June 2024; Table 6 electricity consumed within the organisation 29,829,540 MWh in FY24 and 23,567,502 in FY23; Table 9 water consumption 5,807 ML in FY24 and 7,844 in FY23 after a new estimation approach; company-reported, section 1 reviewed by an external firm). Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 15European Commission (ed.), Data Act (policy page; applicable from 12 September 2025; entered into force in January 2024). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 16European Commission (ed.), Data Act explained (policy page; switching charges including data egress charges removed from 12 January 2027; transitional period 11 January 2024 to 12 January 2027; notice period not on the page). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 24US General Services Administration (ed.), FedRAMP 20x (programme page; announced March 2025; phase 1 26 submissions; first pilot authorisations 6 March 2026; phase 3 wide-scale adoption active; new Rev5 submissions stop 11 June 2027, a future date that may change). FedRAMP, Washington. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 18Euronews (ed.), EU Cloud and AI Development Act gets mixed reception (news article of 22 June 2026; three pillars; aim to triple European data centre capacity in five to seven years; acceleration zones within six months; 12-month maximum permit procedure; four assurance levels; reactions; press report of the proposal, not the proposal text). Euronews, Lyon. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 43UNVERIFIED, not opened: Infocomm Media Development Authority (ed.), Green Data Centre Roadmap, Singapore, cited from memory; the page returned no content and no figure is used. IMDA, Singapore. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 19European Commission (ed.), Energy Efficiency Directive (policy page; states a data centre energy efficiency package planned for the third quarter of 2026 and links to reporting of data centre energy consumption; no threshold or dates on the page). Directorate-General for Energy, Brussels. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
