The U.S. Energy Information Administration is forecasting that electricity sales in the commercial sector, which includes computing demand, will exceed those in the residential sector in 2026, a first since it started collecting the data.
The commercial and industrial sectors are driving growth in U.S. electricity consumption, EIA said in its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook.
"In our forecast, U.S. electricity sales to retail customers increase 2.2% in 2025 and 2.4% in 2026, following a 2.3% increase in 2024."
Data centers, increased electrification, and growth in manufacturing activity continue to spur growth in electricity demand, especially in the supply regions managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and the PJM regional transmission organizations.
"We forecast electricity sales in the commercial sector, which includes computing demand, will exceed those in the residential sector in 2026, a first since we started collecting the data. We forecast that electricity sales to the commercial sector will rise 3.0% in 2025 and a further 4.5% in 2026, bringing total sales of electricity in the commercial sector to 1,540 billion kilowatt hours (BkWh) in 2026," EIA said.
Electricity sales to industrial consumers are forecast to rise by 2.0% in 2025 and 3.5% in 2026. Residential electricity sales are forecast to rise more slowly at 1.7% overall in 2025, primarily as a result of cold weather at the beginning of the year.
"We forecast a slight decline of 0.4% in electricity sales to the residential sector in 2026 as fewer heating degree days are expected in the early winter months of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025."
Although the pace and extent of the expected growth in demand remains uncertain, EIA currently forecasts that approximately 34% of the forecast increase in U.S. commercial electricity demand and 69% of the forecast increase in industrial electricity demand will come from the West South Central Census Division (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas) in 2025.
This region accounts for 67% of the increase in combined commercial and industrial electricity demand in the United States in 2026.
