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Datacenters driving US clean energy growth while still threatening climate <p>As datacenters’ connections to electric grids are held up, big tech is forced to throw money at producing its own power</p><p>Datacenters are driving unprecedented growth in the US clean energy industry, paradoxically boosting a sector that was sputtering before the artificial intelligence boom even as AI’s rollout creates immense environmental challenges.</p><p>However, observers caution that while the centers are propelling wind, solar, and other clean energy companies, datacenters remain a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/08/datacenter-ai-drought-water">climate nightmare.</a></p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/19/datacenters-us-clean-energy-growth-climate">Continue reading...</a>

As AI data centers multiply across the Mountain West, so do fears over ... Local News Mountain West News Bureau KUNR Public Radio is a partner of the Mountain West News Bureau, a regional newsroom exploring the issues that define our region – from land and water to urban growth to culture and heritage. The bureau is a partnership with NPR and public media stations that serve Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. As AI data centers multiply across the Mountain West, so do fears over water use KUNR Public Radio | By Kaleb Roedel Published October 14, 2025 at 6:01 AM PDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Listen • 4:27 Kaleb Roedel / Mountain West News Bureau The Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, located in the high desert of northern Nevada, is a global hub for advanced manufacturing and warehousing. Now, it’s transforming into one of the biggest data center markets in the world. “Directions to 255 USA Parkway,” Brian Armon asked his phone’s AI assistant, which responded with a virtual map and a traffic report. Armon, a commercial real estate broker, was driving to the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, which rises from the sagebrush like a pop-up …

Microsoft CEO says new AI data centers use as little water annually ... Microsoft's Fairwater data center (Image credit: Microsoft) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 5 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has claimed that the company's newest generation of AI data centers uses so little water that its annual consumption is roughly equivalent to that of a single restaurant. Speaking at Microsoft Build 2026 on June 2, Nadella made the claim while outlining Microsoft's "Community-First AI Infrastructure" strategy aimed to address growing concerns about the impact of data centers on local communities . "The cooling loop is filled once, and the data center can operate effectively with zero water consumption," Nadella said during his keynote, while describing how new architectures are redefining data center water consumption. "The daily water usage over the course of an entire year is roughly equivalent to what a single restaurant would use." Go deeper with TH Premium: AI and data centers (Image credit: Microsoft) Photonics and high-speed d…

AI, data centers, and water - Brookings Institution Commentary November 20, 2025 Across the country, fromVirginiatoMichigantoArizona, tech companies are pouring billions of dollars into new data center projects needed to store and manage digital information amid the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Meanwhile, state and local governments areenticed by projected increasesin economic output, job creation, property tax revenue, and more that may accompany such projects. In some communities, leaders are practically tripping over themselves to lure more tech investment as part of thecountry’s expanding AI boom, whether byoffering tax incentivesorscrambling to approve permits. But amid this AI-fueled gold rush, more leaders are beginning to pay attention to the short- and long-term natural resource concerns, especially around all the water needed to keep data centers running. And even beyond the water needed to support data centers, public and private leaders increasingly need to view data centers in light of larger regional plans and priorities around water infrastructure investment and economic development. Building a new facility and pledging economic impact mean little witho…

Why are communities pushing back against data centers? Data centers, which house computer systems that help train AI models, are blanketing the country, a boom fueled by surging interest in AI and state tax breaks. More than4,000are already in operation, mostly in Virginia, Texas, and California, and 3,000 more are being planned or under construction. Data center developers and tech giantsarguethe projects benefit communities by creating new jobs and boosting local economic development through increased property tax revenue and future business opportunities. They also note that infrastructure must grow if the nation wants to remain a global AI power. Butpublicoppositionismountingover the largewaterandelectricitydemands and other strains that data centers, often the size of warehouses, place on communities, according to a recentpollby the Pew Research Center. In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity,Ben Green, assistant professor in the University of Michigan School of Information and Public Policy and a faculty associate at theBerkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, discusses the impact of data centers on communities, the factors behind their rapid …

Microsoft CEO says its AI data centers consume less water than your ... Click for next article Nadella has claimed that Microsoft’s AI centers now consume less water. (Image credit: Getty Images | George Chan / Stringer) Copy link Facebook X Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Bluesky Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Gigantic "Big Tech" corporations across the world, such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, are investing billions of dollars into artificial intelligence , building sophisticated infrastructure and data centers to support the development of advanced models. However, the construction of these data centers has been received with mixed feelings. On one hand, it will create job opportunities, improve infrastructure, increase tax revenues, and provide better internet connectivity for the community. But more concerningly, its setbacks are alarming, including increased pollution, gentrification, higher electricity bills, and decreased access to water . Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addressed some of these concerns during his keynote at the company's just-concluded annual devel…

FILE – Meta’s Stanton Springs Data Center is visible Jan. 13, 2026, in Newton County, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File) By The Associated Press PUBLISHED: June 18, 2026 at 12:00 PM EDT | UPDATED: June 18, 2026 at 12:06 PM EDT Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By MATTHEW DALY and MARC LEVY WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal regulators on Thursday agreed to let large energy users connect more quickly to the nation’s inefficient and electric transmission system to accommodate surging demand from power-hungry artificial intelligence data centers . Energy Secretary Chris Wright had urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to act in an effort to help the United States better compete with China for superiority in the fast-growing AI sector. Tech companies and data center developers have welcomed the chances for faster connections to the country’s power supply. But utilities, states and regional grid operators worried that the Republican administration’s plan would remove their authority to manage the process. Clean energy advocates want the agency to advance, rather than undermine, state-level efforts to require the use of renewable energies. The commission’s actions come as a backl…

The hidden constraint that's stalling data centre build-out For the last few years, the data centre industry has treated grid interconnection as its existential constraint. Queue times stretching into years, transformer shortages, and curtailment clauses buried in power purchase agreements were the conversations that dominated boardrooms and the corridors of every major industry event. But a second bottleneck is slowly emerging and is proving considerably harder to engineer around. Water rights, the legal entitlement to draw, store and discharge water at a specific location, have quietly moved from due diligence footnote to deal-breaking variable. In the United States alone, more than 40% of planned and existing data centres sit in areas classified as high or extremely high water scarcity. Arizona has effectively closed new groundwater certificates to hyperscale projects. Virginia has introduced no-net-increase water clauses for new permits. Google’s Lancaster, Ohio facility secured planning approval only after committing to sourcing 100% of its cooling water from non-potable or reclaimed supply. Microsoft’s Mount Pleasant campus in Wisconsin triggered a multi-year hold after regu…

AI Data Centers: Big Tech's Impact on Electric Bills, Water, and More AI Data Centers: Big Tech's Impact on Electric Bills, Water, and More Massive data centers are gobbling up resources across the U.S.—and you may be paying for it Hyperscale data centers like the QTS Data Center in Fayetteville, Ga. (shown above), are being built across the U.S. Photo Illustration: Lacey Browne/Consumer Reports, Getty Images By Nicole Greenfield Investigative Reporter Data visualizations by Evan O'Neil March 20, 2026 John Steinbach was shocked to receive a $281 electricity bill in January 2026—a huge spike from the roughly $100 he’d paid the previous month. “It’s just so far beyond any bill that I’ve ever had,” he says. Steinbach, who has lived in his Manassas, Va., home for nearly 40 years, worries his rates will keep climbing as the outsized electricity demand from AI data centers grows. “They’re building them like it’s ‘Field of Dreams’—build it and the electricity will come—but we don’t see how that’s going to happen.” The contribution of AI data centers to higher bills is just one of the ways the development boom is affecting consumers. The facilities also compete for critical resources like…

Data Center Operators Are Trying to Fix Their Water Use Problems Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story On Monday, SpaceX amended its initial public offering to state that water conditions—including water scarcity, regulations around water, and drought—could constrain data center development. It isn’t the only tech company trying to assess how water scarcity might impact its business. Water use is emerging as one of the most contentious data center issues . A recent Gallup poll found that seven out of 10 Americans are opposed to data center development, with water scarcity ranking as the top resource concern. Facing increasingly fierce resistance, some tech companies are scrambling to assure the public that they’re facing the issue head-on. Data centers primarily use water to cool server racks, which throw off massive amounts of heat. One popular technique, known as evaporative cooling, uses fresh water to absorb the heat, which is then pumped to cooling towers where it evaporates outside. Using more water can save money and reduce emissions for big tech companies by reducing the power needed for cooling that relies on energy-intensive …

Data Centers, Pollution, and the Communities Left Behind ByTatjana Washington Imagine waking up to the sharp smell of diesel exhaust drifting through your window while you watch your community’s river run low but not from drought, but from the massive water demands of nearby data centers. It sounds dystopian, yet this is the daily reality unfolding in suburbs and rural towns across the United States. Data centers have long relied on freshwater for cooling, but the AI boom has escalated that demand. In 2025, data centers consumedhundreds of billions of gallons of waterfor cooling and power generation. Developers are now tapping local rivers, aquifers, and municipal supplies at unprecedented rates to satisfy the thirst of data centers, putting the communities that host them at risk. Data center operations still rely heavily on fossil fuels, emitting air pollutants and fine particulates that raise serious public health risks, especially asthma. Meanwhile, chemical runoff from cooling systems contaminates soil and waterways. These facilities create real environmental challenges and are too often sited and strategically chosen in already vulnerable places.As AI demand surges, the ne…

Microsoft CEO: New Data Centers Use the Same Amount of Water As a ... According to a recent study , AI data centers could consume as much water annually as 1.3 billion people in Africa by 2030. Tech CEOs, however, continue to brush off such narratives. First, it was OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and now it's Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. At the company’s Build conference this week, Nadella said Microsoft is taking a new approach to generate more power with less conversion loss at its new data centers. As part of that plan, it restructured how its cooling system and water consumption work. “The cooling loop is filled once, and the data center can operate effectively with zero water consumption,” Nadella said . “The daily water usage over the course of an entire year is roughly equivalent to what a single restaurant would use.” Microsoft Build 2026 Keynote Highlights As Tom’s Hardware notes, most traditional data centers use evaporative cooling systems to keep their servers from overheating. This means that once the water used for cooling evaporates, these data centers need a fresh supply. With its new closed-loop cooling system , however, Microsoft fills up water at its data centers during con…

7 Ways Data Centers Affect US Communities Insights | Explainer From Energy Use to Air Quality, the Many Ways Data Centers Affect US Communities Energy prices and water use aren't the only ways data centers affect U.S. communities. We break down the impacts — and how some states are dealing with them. By: Carla Walker and Ian Goldsmith February 17, 2026 Explore More: Energy Freshwater Air Quality Equity & Governance U.S. Energy Image by Gerville/iStock AI tools like ChatGPT, navigation apps and streaming platforms feel effortless, drawing information seemingly from thin air. Yet the infrastructure behind them is anything but invisible. Across the country, a surge of new data centers is reshaping local energy grids, water systems and land use. This rapid expansion is often happening with limited public information about the long-term impacts — or benefits — new data centers could bring. Rising power bills and rampant water use tend to be top of mind. Yet it’s increasingly clear that data centers will have impacts far beyond this, with real implications for communities’ well-being. While the rise in data centers is all but inevitable, the way it happens is not. Data c…

The data center showdown in Lackawanna County - Resilience Environment The data center showdown in Lackawanna County By Dave Rollo , originally published by Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy June 16, 2026 As the artificial intelligence (AI) boom explodes with a race for ever more powerful models, so does the need for its infrastructure. This takes the form of huge, windowless buildings housing thousands of data servers. Projects may involve numerous buildings—sometimes a dozen or more—with added infrastructure such as hundreds of backup generators. These amalgamations are termed data centers or, in some cases as an indication of their enormity, “hyperscale data centers.” Over 4,000 data centers have been built or are under construction in the United States, with corporations seeking approval for thousands more. Nearly half the world’s data centers are in the United States, with an annual electricity consumption of over 180 Terawatt-hours. This is estimated to reach 426 Terawatt-hours by 2030. That’s 1.7 times the electricity used by the entire state of Florida in 2023. Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, from the air. (Billy Hathorn, CC BY-SA 3.0). To meet the ra…

Data Drain: The Land and Water Impacts of the AI Boom A low hum emerges from within a vast, dimly lit tomb, whose occupant devours energy and water with a voracious, inhuman appetite. The beige, boxy data center is a vampire of sorts—pallid, immortal, thirsty. Sheltered from sunlight, active all night. And much like a vampire, at least according to folkloric tradition, it can only enter a place if it’s been invited inside. In states and counties across the US, lawmakers aren’t just opening the door for these metaphorical, mechanical monsters. They’re actively luring them in, with tax breaks and other incentives, eager to lay claim to new municipal revenues and a piece of the explosive growth surrounding artificial intelligence. That may sound hyperbolic, but data centers truly areresource-ravenous. Even a mid-sized data center consumes as much water asa small town, while larger ones require up to 5 million gallons of water every day—as much as a city of 50,000 people. Powering and cooling their rows of server stacks also takes an astonishing amount of electricity. A conventional data center—think cloud storage for your work documents or streaming videos—draws as much electricit…

Environmental Groups Demand a Nationwide Freeze on Data Center ... More than 200 environmental organizations signed a letter to Congress supporting a national moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers. The letter, sent Monday, highlights these centers’ impacts on water resources, electricity rates and greenhouse gas emissions. Data centers often suck up large amounts of water to cool their computers. They require a lot of electricity to run their servers, often leading to higher regional utility rates and upgrades to the electricity grid to accommodate them. Some utilities are planning to build natural gas plants to serve the new load, while some data-center companies are even building their own plants , increasing local greenhouse gas emissions. It is near-impossible to paint a complete picture of the energy and water use of data centers, and the corresponding climate impacts, given the limited data that companies provide. A November study in the journal Nature Sustainability predicted that, depending on the speed of expansion, the artificial intelligence industry could emit as much carbon dioxide each year as 10 million cars, Inside Climate News reported. P…

Water use in US data centers: Legal and regulatory risks As the digital economy expands with rapid scaling of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and digital infrastructure, data center operations are increasingly scrutinized for their environmental impacts. Among the most pressing concerns is water consumption, a resource-intensive aspect of data center operations now drawing attention from state lawmakers, regulators, and environmental stakeholders, particularly in water-scarce regions. This article highlights how technology companies operating data centers face increasing legal exposure related to water use disclosures, community impact, and environmental compliance, and discusses how the evolving regulatory landscape presents both compliance risks and reputational challenges. Cooling demands and legal exposure Data centers require enormous amounts of electricity to power their servers, which in turn generate substantial heat. To prevent overheating and ensure reliable operations, these facilities rely heavily on cooling systems,[ 1 ] such as evaporative cooling and wet chillers, which consume large volumes of water. While precise volumes vary, some facilities consum…

Case Study: Water-guzzling data centres Using AND between your search terms narrows your search as it instructs the database that all your search terms must appear (in any order). For example,Engineering scienceANDRobotics Water Data centres accounted for around 1% or 2% of global electricity demand in 2020. All that processing power generates lots of heat, so data centres must keep cool to prevent damage. While some companies are using cool air on mountain sites and Microsoft has used the cold waters of Scotland to experiment with underwater data centres, up to 43% of data centre electricity in the US is used for cooling. Main photo: Tony Webster, Data centre in The Dalles, Oregon. The 1960s ushered in a new age of processing digital information, driven by the intelligence needs ofthe Cold War.Moore’s lawmeant microchips doubled in speed every two years, shrinking costs and miniaturising machines that once filled entire rooms. Today, the smartphone probably being used to read this article ismillions of times more powerfulthan the computer that landed the Apollo missions on the moon. While those huge supercomputers have disappeared, the proliferation of the cloud and theInte…

FILE – Meta’s Stanton Springs Data Center is visible Jan. 13, 2026, in Newton County, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File) By The Associated Press PUBLISHED: June 18, 2026 at 12:00 PM EDT | UPDATED: June 18, 2026 at 12:06 PM EDT Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By MATTHEW DALY and MARC LEVY WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal regulators on Thursday agreed to let large energy users connect more quickly to the nation’s inefficient and electric transmission system to accommodate surging demand from power-hungry artificial intelligence data centers . Energy Secretary Chris Wright had urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to act in an effort to help the United States better compete with China for superiority in the fast-growing AI sector. Tech companies and data center developers have welcomed the chances for faster connections to the country’s power supply. But utilities, states and regional grid operators worried that the Republican administration’s plan would remove their authority to manage the process. Clean energy advocates want the agency to advance, rather than undermine, state-level efforts to require the use of renewable energies. The commission’s actions come as a backl…

The power crunch threatening America's AI ambitions In cutting-edge Microsoft data centres, racks of chips used to train AI models sit idle. “The biggest issue we are now having is not a compute glut, but it’s power,” said Microsoft’s chief executive Satya Nadella during a recent podcast interview. The topic has been top of mind in a year when big tech “hyperscalers” — Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft — have set out plans to spend more than $400bn in capital expenditure. That outlay, mainly on data centres, has triggered market fears of an AI-fuelled bubble. Big tech groups have been undeterred, arguing that demand outstrips supply. Hyperscalers are seeking to power their own workloads, but also supply Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI and other AI developers looking to train large language models (LLMs). These models underpin a host of tools that promise to transform industries. Big tech stocks have risen as a result, but if computing supply is constrained by a lack of power, the AI “bubble” could deflate. OpenAI alone has signed infrastructure deals totalling more than $1.4tn, amounting to an estimated 28GW in capacity over the next eight years. Chief executive Sam Altman has characteris…

Concerns rise over noise and environment at Vineland data center NJ neighbors furious as giant AI data center hums 24/7 — and that’s not all Erin Vogt Erin Vogt Published: March 12, 2026 Vineland data center is causing public concerns (Data One Vineland via Google Maps, Screenshot: Sustain_SJ via Instagram) Share on Facebook Share on Twitter ⚡ A 2.6 million-sq.-ft. AI data center in Vineland has launched, will reach 300 megawatts of power capacity. 🔊 Residents say the facility produces a constant loud humming, sparking noise complaints. 💧 Critics warn the project requires immense power and sits above the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer, raising concerns about potential pollution and resource use. VINELAND — A massive AI data center now roaring to life in South Jersey is setting off alarms among nearby residents. Neighbors in Vineland say the sprawling facility runs 24 hours a day with a constant industrial hum, triggering a wave of noise complaints and fresh questions about how the project was approved in the first place. The 2.6-million-square-foot data center built to feed the exploding demand for artificial intelligence could eventually draw as much as 300 megawatts of power , an eno…

Data centers for AI use huge amounts of electricity, water, driving up ... Multiple reports show the data centers used to store, train and operate AI models use significant amounts of energy and water, with a rippling impact on the environment and public health. According to the International Energy Agency, a typical AI data center uses as much electricity as 100,000 households. A report from the Environmental and Energy Study Institute found large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day. The water is used to keep computer hardware cool, and some data center developers are tapping into freshwater resources. The use of diesel generators to keep data centers online have raised concerns about public health, as they can emit harmful pollutants that can contribute to asthma and other respiratory issues. And since data centers are usually built in rural areas, marginalized communities are more likely to be affected. Naperville City Council members voted down a proposed data center after months of opposition from residents.  Their primary concerns were heavy water use for cooling, health risks and potential increases in utility costs. In Aurora, data centers are…

Google data centre's 6-billion-gallon thirst, and why recycled water ... If you have ever wondered why your digital life feels so seamless, the answer lies in massive warehouses filled with humming servers. AI is very thirsty, and in a single year, Google data centres consumed a staggering 6.1 billion gallons of fresh water, according to theGoogle 2024 Environmental Report. In the report, the tech giant admitted to the scale of this resource drain. “In 2023, our data centers consumed 6.1 billion gallons of water—17% more water than the previous year, mirroring similar growth in electricity use,” the report said. This is not just a drop in the ocean; it is enough water to irrigate approximately 41 golf courses annually in the southwestern United States. As we transition into an era dominated by AI search, it is getting increasingly difficult to quench these machines' thirst. Behind every prompt is a physical cost that is quickly becoming impossible to ignore. Computers generate intense heat. When you ask an AI to write a poem or generate an image,thousands of processors worksimultaneously, creating immense thermal energy. To prevent these multi-million-pound machines from melt…

Nvidia wants to cut data center water use, but that's ... - TechCrunch Nvidia just announced a warm-water cooling system that it says can dramatically reduce the amount of water a data center uses — eliminating “pretty much all water usage” inside the data center, according to an Nvidia executive in apress release. “The water consumption challenge for data centers is largely solved,” Josh Parker, chief sustainability officer at Nvidia, recentlytoldAxios. But that’s only part of the water story. As long as AI data centers run on fossil fuels — a choice tech companies areincreasingly making— the savings stop at the data center’s walls. The core issue is how Nvidia measures data center water use. According to its blog post, the company essentially draws a line around the data center. Anything inside gets counted, and anything outside gets ignored. To be fair, Nvidia’s system does appear to deliver on its facility-level promise — the coolant runs in a closed loop, filled once and recirculated for the life of the facility, meaning no new water is consumed to cool the chips. In favorable climates, the company says, that can amount to a 100% reduction in on-site water use. TechCrunc…

Why are communities pushing back against data centers? April 10, 2026 Why are communities pushing back against data centers? by Liz Mineo, Harvard University edited by Sadie Harley , reviewed by Robert Egan Editors' notes This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: fact-checked trusted source proofread The GIST Add as preferred source Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Data centers, which house computer systems that help train AI models, are blanketing the country, a boom fueled by surging interest in AI and state tax breaks. More than 4,000 are already in operation, mostly in Virginia, Texas, and California, and 3,000 more are being planned or under construction. Data center developers and tech giants argue the projects benefit communities by creating new jobs and boosting local economic development through increased property tax revenue and future business opportunities. They also note that infrastructure must grow if the nation wants to remain a global AI power. But public opposition is mounting over the l…