For years, I’ve been concerned about adding millions of electric vehicles to an aging electrical grid. Now, there’s huge demand from U.S. data centers.
The demand risks deepening America’s reliance on fossil fuels and can put consumers and communities at risk, according to a report released Thursday.
“New technology can be part of a brighter future, but not if it keeps us tied to the dirty energy sources of the past,” Quentin Good, policy analyst with Frontier Group and one of the report’s authors, said in a statement. “The impact on consumers and the environment from data center expansion isn’t theoretical; it’s real and it’s happening right now.”
In addition to the Frontier Group, other public interest organizations that worked on the report are the U.S. PIRG Education Fund and Environment America Research and Policy Center.
The report shows that between 2021-2024, the number of data centers in the United States doubled from 2,667 to 5,381, and that number is expected to keep growing. Electricity demand to power these centers is projected to increase.
The report identifies at least 17 fossil fuel-generating facilities that have delayed their closures or are at risk of being kept open longer than planned due to rising electricity demand. In many cases, much of that demand is for data centers, according to the report. In addition, at least 10,808 MW of new fossil-fuel powered electricity generation is being planned to meet increasing electricity demand nationwide.
The report also describes proposals to resurrect expensive and dangerous nuclear power plants solely to serve data centers.
Data centers can also increase utility prices for consumers, and the cost of incorporating them onto the electric grid can be passed onto other ratepayers, he said.
The report recommends that policy makers:
- Ensure that almost all energy use at data centers is powered with renewable energy, and take advantage of opportunities to improve data center energy efficiency and reduce their impact on the grid.
- Improve transparency on energy and water use by data centers.
- Consider the value to society provided by AI, cryptocurrency, and other forms of energy-intensive computing to ensure that the value they provide exceeds the costs they impose on the environment, consumers, and communities.
The takeaway: The cost of meeting the challenge of the growing number of data centers with massive electrical needs will likely be shoved on to consumers. It needs to be public policy that the companies which build and use data centers be required to pay for the electrical costs associated with them as well as upgrading the grid.
