The Internet uses more electricity in America than the auto industry uses to make cars and trucks. Yet, despite all the talk about the nation’s aging power grid, utility experts say they can easily handle the additional demand, CNNMoney.com reported.

In a way, for energy producers, the huge increase in usage by companies like Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. is a good thing. Electricity demand from many industrial clients has dropped by up to 20 percent in the past few years.

Tech sector growth “has helped make the decrease not so bad” said Steve Rosenstock engineer at the Edison Electric Institute, in an interview with CNNMoney.com.

The electricity needed to power and cool the millions of servers that power the Internet has grown by more than 10 percent a year for the past decade, and now accounts for about 2 percent of all electricity consumed in the country, Rosenstock said.

Greenpeace estimates that Google’s eight current and planned server farms could consume 476 megawatts of electricity if they were operating at full capacity – enough to power all the homes in the city of San Diego.

Tech firms say they are working on ways to make their operations more efficient.

To read the full story on CNNMoney.com, click here.