AI Growth Is Driving Up U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions – What Travel Businesses Need to Know

The United States is set to break a multi-year trend of falling emissions, with a 2.4% increase in 2025, according to new data from the Rhodium Group.

The main culprit? Soaring demand for generative and agentic AI and the data centers that power it.

“The largest source of increased electricity use was commercial buildings, where data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations drove electricity demand up by 2.4%,” the report found. “This growth was concentrated in Texas, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Ohio Valley regions.”

Emissions grew faster than the economy, a reversal of recent years in which GDP growth outpaced carbon output.

AI Growth in Travel

The travel industry has been quick to embrace the energy intensive generative and agentic AI, the kind that creates content, learns patterns, and performs and plans tasks.

Only 4% of travel companies mentioned AI in their annual reports in 2022.

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