The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is planning a mandatory, nationwide survey of data centers’ energy use, according to a letter seen by WIRED. The effort is framed as the first systematic attempt to collect basic information about how much electricity data centers consume—and, importantly for modern infrastructure, what portion of that power comes from behind-the-meter generation.
The letter, dated April 9, was sent by EIA head Tristan Abbey to senators Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley. WIRED reports that the initiative responds to earlier inquiries from the senators about the EIA’s plans to obtain more information about data centers. The EIA told WIRED it has “no specifics to share beyond what is in the letter.”
A technology problem: data centers are energy systems, not just servers
Data centers are increasingly treated as energy-intensive computing infrastructure, where the “stack” includes not only IT workloads but also power delivery, backup and generation, and cooling. The WIRED report describes why this matters for both grid planning and environmental impact: as the number of data centers has grown, public concern and proposed legislation have focused on resource use and even construction moratoriums, yet “there’s surprisingly little official data collected on the industry.”
One reason official visibility has been limited is that “most details about data centers’ energy use” are often considered proprietary business information and usually not made public. That combination—fast infrastructure buildout plus limited standardized reporting—creates a gap where policymakers and utilities may be forced to rely on estimates rather than audited, comparable metrics.
In response to encouragement from the Trump administration to protect ratepayers, many data center developers have been turning to building their own power sources described as behind-the-meter power. The WIRED report notes that these facilities—“many of which are gas-powered”—can introduce additional concerns around air pollution and climate change. (The article also references that on Tuesday the NAACP filed a lawsuit against xAI alleging it was running behind-the-meter gas turbines on a data center in Mississippi without a permit and polluting the community around it; xAI did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)
From a technology perspective, behind-the-meter generation changes what “energy use” even means for measurement: it is no longer only electricity drawn from the grid, but also fuel combustion and local generation capacity. That distinction is central to why the EIA’s survey design is likely to be watched closely by operators and vendors of power and cooling systems.
Pilot surveys as a method: power, cooling, facility specs, and IT efficiency
WIRED reports that the EIA is already moving through pilots. In late March—“a day before the senators sent their letter”—the EIA announced it would conduct a pilot survey in three regions with heavy data center development: Texas, Washington state, and the northern Virginia/DC metro area.
In Abbey’s April 9 letter, WIRED says the EIA plans a second tranche of pilots “covering at least three more states.” Both surveys would be complete by late September. Abbey writes that the pilots are “a necessary step in the methodical development of a nationwide mandatory survey.”
The letter describes what the EIA intends to collect. The scope includes not only annual electricity use but also information on behind-the-meter power generation. It also includes:
- Classification of different types of data centers
- Cooling systems
- Facility characteristics, including square footage
- IT specifications, including metrics on how efficiently a data center uses energy
For technologists, these fields map to multiple layers of the data center infrastructure: cooling architecture, physical footprint, and IT-level efficiency metrics. While WIRED does not specify which efficiency metric(s) are used, it does state that the EIA will include “metrics on how efficiently a data center uses energy.”
How the pilots may limit comparability—and what that suggests
Not every respondent in the pilots will be asked for the full set of metrics. According to the letter, questions will be tailored “to the particular location of each data center facility.” WIRED adds that the current pilot asks the 196 companies identified across the three regions to “choose just one location to report metrics on.”
That structure raises operational questions that WIRED notes the EIA did not answer. The report says the EIA did not explain how it determined which locations should receive which questions, whether it provided requirements for respondents on how to choose a location, or how it will define the timing and scope for a second set of pilots.
These details matter for measurement quality. If different facilities are asked different subsets of metrics, or if companies select which location to report, the resulting dataset may be useful for discovery and model-building but harder to compare across the industry without careful normalization. The EIA’s approach—pilots first, then a mandatory nationwide survey—suggests an effort to learn which questions are feasible and how to operationalize reporting, but it also implies that observers may need to wait until the nationwide survey design is clearer to assess how consistent the data will be.
WIRED also reports that the EIA did not answer questions about when it plans to launch the second set of pilot surveys, the specific states involved, or the possible timing of a national mandatory survey. Those gaps could affect how quickly infrastructure planning and vendor roadmaps align with standardized reporting requirements.
Accountability pressure meets infrastructure measurement
Senator Elizabeth Warren told WIRED that “Americans deserve to know how much energy data centers are sucking up and what that’s doing to their utility bills.” She called the EIA’s mandatory survey “an important first step towards holding data centers accountable,” adding that she is “pushing EIA to collect and share this data as soon as possible.”
From a technology standpoint, the key change is not only the political demand for transparency, but the move toward a repeatable measurement framework that can incorporate both grid electricity consumption and behind-the-meter generation. If the nationwide survey succeeds in capturing annual electricity use alongside behind-the-meter power generation, cooling systems, facility characteristics, and IT efficiency metrics, it could provide a baseline for how data centers are engineered and optimized under different constraints.
Even though the WIRED report emphasizes that “the EIA told WIRED that it doesn’t have any specifics to share beyond what is in the letter,” the described pilot structure already indicates where the agency expects the industry to differ: geography, facility type, cooling design, and power sourcing strategies. That, in turn, could shape how utilities, regulators, and operators approach planning for capacity, emissions concerns, and efficiency improvements—assuming the eventual nationwide mandatory survey standardizes the reporting enough to support comparisons.
Source: WIRED