Intelligence Update
The growing PUE advantage of larger data centers
The Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2026 revealed an industry-wide annual average PUE of 1.52. This long-running benchmark of facility efficiency (tracked since 2007) has decreased slowly and predictably in recent years, owing to the large, diverse and consistent sample of operators surveyed. New (and ever larger) facilities with industry-leading power and cooling systems routinely report PUEs at 1.3 or lower. These facilities are being built at a rapid pace — yet their pull on the headline average remains diluted by the many older facilities still in operation.
An alternative calculation of average PUE, in which larger facilities are given proportional weight, produces a significantly lower PUE of 1.36. This outcome is intuitive, as it captures the influence of energy-efficient designs that are increasingly commonplace and well publicized. Additionally, this capacity-weighted PUE has improved at a faster rate than the per-facility PUE figure since at least 2024.
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