Thanks for joining us for another Tuesday of Climatific, a free, weekly read that breaks down climate science so it makes sense - not for scientists or researchers, but for everyday people trying to understand the planet we live on, what’s happening to it, and why it matters.
Today, we’re covering the most requested topic today in five minutes: Dun dun dunn… Data Centers.
What to Expect: A breakdown of what’s driving the data center boom, how rural America in particular is being impacted, and the success stories that are writing the blueprint for how communities interact with companies.
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🌎 The Commotion
One day, we were debating what to have for dinner (tacos or stir fry?) and the next, “AI and data centers” became all the rage. Nothing to digest except the flood of news talking about an “AI revolution” and “data center boom.”
What even are data centers anyways? AI tools, like ChatGPT, require lots of processing power to work. Think of your old home computer groaning any time you tried loading the Internet, and now imagine the behind-the-scenes of an AI tool scanning the entire Internet to answer: “Does Kraft Mac n’ Cheese have real cheese?”
In order to make it happen, AI relies on large centers that house a bunch of supercomputers (literally what they’re called) to keep up with everything it's being asked to do. Enter, data centers.
So what’s driving this new craze?
Race with China: From a national security perspective, AI is our modern-day Space Race, this time with China. U.S. companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are sprinting to build massive data centers to keep up.
White House Backing: Across President Trump’s two terms, he has signed nearly ten Executive Orders framing the data center boom as beneficial, saying in a statement that it will lead to big investments in infrastructure and boost manufacturing.
Local Government Incentives: In Northern Virginia, there are about 300 facilities across just a handful of counties, turning it into the densest concentration of data centers anywhere in the world. Why? The state of VA is cutting them a break - literally. Data center companies have saved nearly $3 billion in state taxes over the past decade. Other municipalities, counties, and states are following suit, offering tax breaks and other incentives in hopes that the facilities will generate local revenue.
🌎 The Digital Gold Rush
Depending on where you live, your small talk in line at the grocery store may have nothing to do with data centers. Or, it might be all that’s on your minds.
Across red, blue, and purple America, hundreds of community members are organizing against data centers being built in their hometowns. So why is it that data centers are so hot (literally, see the Water bullet below) that they draw people of all backgrounds together?
“I don’t care how much chocolate icing you put on a dog turd, it don’t make it chocolate cake. They are trying to fluff this data center thing up and say, ‘Man, eat this birthday cake.’ But it isn’t birthday cake.”
Land. Out with the concrete jungle, in with the amber waves of grain. Big tech companies are scouting rural America for land more and more – sometimes hundreds of acres worth - to build data centers. Rural land, such as former farmland, is oftentimes cheaper and more available than urban lands.
Still, “finder’s keepers” is supposed to be a fun jab amongst siblings, not an argument to build a huge data center on historic farmland. And yet, many communities have been shut out of closed-door conversations to rezone towns or learned that representatives have signed NDAs with tech companies to help speed construction along.
Electricity Prices. Data centers need a lot of energy. The largest of data centers can use more energy than entire cities.
One such data center in Louisiana, for example, is expected to draw more than twice the power of the entire city of New Orleans once completed. And another in Wyoming is expected to use more electricity than every home in the state combined.
Every home across the U.S. has to pay their electricity provider for the amount of power they use. We can dive into how the grid works later (write in our form if you want that!), but these payments help your provider pay power plants for the electricity they produce.
While developers are increasingly building their own power sources (see: Air section below), many others rely on the grid to supply it. When you have a data center that is guzzling more electricity than every home combined in a state, your provider has to pay for a lot more, which means they have to charge their customers (i.e. You) more. Voila, higher electricity bill.
Water. Data centers also need a lot of water. A mid-sized data center uses as much water as a small town, and larger ones use as much as a city of 50,000 people.
Just like the bottom of your laptop screams out hot air when it’s trying to load something, the supercomputers in a data center can overheat. Enter water for cooling.
Don’t start pouring water on your laptop though. Across many data centers, water has been used for evaporative cooling (kinda like a humidifier) throughout the room.
What this has meant for communities, however, is that data centers will drink up a bunch of water and not spit any back out, since most of it gets evaporated in the process. Particularly in places where water is scarce, residents are worried that data centers will drain local water supplies.
Air. Whether they’re drawing from fossil fuel-based power plants or turning to on-site diesel generators to lighten their load on the electric grid, data centers are adding to the choir of greenhouse gases being released. What’s more, on-site generators produce pollutants that could cause health impacts such as asthma, heart disease, and learning disabilities in neighboring communities.
🌎 A Path Forward
Whether it be the quick and easy AI-generated Google summary to your question “Can trees actually explode in a winter storm?” or the AI-chat assistant that’s replaced your conversations with a customer service representative, it doesn’t look like AI is going away anytime soon.
Bubble burst? It doesn’t have to be. Although AI is the Wild Wild West currently, there are some real actions communities and companies are taking to reach a common ground.
Energy. In some places, large tech companies have agreed to pay their way and build new power grid infrastructure instead of straining the existing ones. In Ohio, new data centers are required to pay at least 85% of the energy they expect to use for 12 years.
Water. Instead of leaning on evaporative cooling to do the trick, some first movers are already turning to other cooling methods that require less water, as well as “closed-loop” systems that recirculate water instead of constantly drinking up. In Minnesota, data center developers are required to be cleared with the Department of Natural Resources that they have “closed loop systems” and enough of a water supply before they can move to construction.
Community Benefits. In Loudon County, VA, the total annual tax revenue from local data centers is expected to reach $900 million, nearly the same as their operating budget. With the right commitments, this revenue can be returned to the community as investments into schools, roads, and more by way of a “Community Benefits Agreement (CBA).” These formal commitments are a relief to have in place, but only if communities know to ask for them.
🌎 In the Forecast
We hope you’re staying warm and safe post-Fern. Any extreme weather event is cause for concern but, as we saw with Fern, even winter storms are getting more frequent and intense.
It’s natural to wonder how climate change can be the gasoline to fuel something like Fern, particularly when it’s frequently been called “global warming.” Next week, we’ll explain why–while it might seem counterintuitive–a warming climate affects both hot and cold temperature extremes.
Have a specific topic on climate science you want to learn about? Let us know. All responses are anonymous!
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