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Informist, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026

NEW DELHI – India must urgently rethink and modernise its energy systems as artificial intelligence accelerates power demand globally, Global CEO of Schneider Electric Olivier Blum said at the India AI Impact Summit. He warned that AI-driven compute expansion will place unprecedented pressure on electricity infrastructure.

Blum said that although much of the global debate around AI has focused on models, chips, and applications, energy remains the foundational challenge. "I've not heard enough about energy," he said, stressing that AI means more compute, and "more compute means more energy." He cautioned that countries are entering "a new era where AI could transform the planet," but without parallel upgrades in power systems, energy constraints could slow down the progress.

Highlighting the scale of the challenge, Blum said industry estimates suggest more than 200 gigawatts of new data centre capacity will need to be built globally by 2030, with around half of it driven by AI workloads. "Rack densities have already surged from just a few kilowatts per rack a few years ago to nearly 80 kilowatts in India and 150 kilowatts in advanced GPU deployments in the US," he said. Future AI systems, he said, could demand between 500 kilowatts and 1 megawatt per rack. "That puts tremendous pressure on the energy system," he noted, adding that new electrical architectures such as 800-volt DC systems will be required to power next-generation AI data centres.

Citing projections from the International Energy Agency, Blum said the world will require an additional 10,000 terawatt hours of electricity between 2024 and 2035 to support economic growth, and another 12,000 terawatt hours between 2035 and 2050. However, he said these estimates do not fully factor in the incremental demand AI will create. "AI brings another level of pressure on the energy system," he said, stating the need for urgent grid modernisation and smarter energy management.

Blum described AI not only as a driver of new infrastructure demand but also as a tool to make energy systems themselves more intelligent. By connecting electrical panels, industrial equipment, and buildings to digital platforms and applying AI-driven models, companies can reduce energy consumption by 10% to 30%, he said.

Using residential energy consumption as an example, Blum said connected electrical panels paired with AI agents could automatically optimise electricity use when homeowners are away, cutting wastage significantly. Residential power usage remains the single largest source of electricity demand globally, he noted, highlighting the scale of potential efficiency gains.

Blum also underscored India's strategic importance in the AI-energy transition. He said India's cost competitiveness, engineering depth and culture of innovation position it uniquely to develop next-generation energy systems for the AI era. India is now Schneider Electric's third-largest market globally and largest in terms of employees, with around 40,000 staff. The country also hosts the company's largest research and development centre worldwide, employing about 8,000 engineers, including its largest base of software engineers.    End

Reported by Pallavi Singhal and Shakshi Jain

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

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