Data Center

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The Environmental Impact of Data Centers: A Growing Global Challenge
Data centers—once quiet, unseen infrastructure—have become one of the most environmentally consequential industries of the 2020s. Their rapid expansion, driven by AI, cloud computing, and streaming, has created escalating demands for electricity, water, land, and local infrastructure, with measurable effects on ecosystems and communities.

Runaway electricity demand
Modern data centers operate 24/7 and require enormous amounts of power to run servers and cooling systems. U.S. data centers consumed 176 TWh of electricity in 2023, roughly 4% of all U.S. electricity use, with projections rising to 6–12% by 2028.

Massive cooling requirements
Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day for evaporative cooling—comparable to the daily use of a small town.

Infrastructure strain
Local governments must often expand: water and sewer systems, electrical substations, road networks.

These upgrades can cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars

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Data Centers Drove Half of U.S. Power Demand Growth in 2025, IEA Says


The world's electricity demand rose by 3% in 2025, with growth nearly triple compared to the 1.3% increase in total energy consumption, as data centers and electric vehicles continued to push power use higher, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Monday.

Overall global energy demand growth slowed to 1.3% in 2025, slightly below the previous decade's average of 1.4% and significantly lower than in 2024, as global economic growth slowed and cooling demand in Asia was lower than in 2024, the IEA found in its annual Global Energy Review report published today.

While total energy demand growth cooled, electricity demand continued to grow strongly, with an annual rise of 3% last year. The growth rate eased from 4.4% in 2024, when intense heat waves in India and Southeast Asia had boosted electricity consumption.


https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Data-Centers-Drove-Half-of-US-Power-Demand-Growth-in-2025-IEA-Says.html

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INSIDE THE DIRTY, DYSTOPIAN WORLD OF AI DATA CENTERS

"To power AI, energy and tech companies are turning to fossil fuels, which they regard as more reliable and readily available than wind, solar, or nuclear. Asked where the energy for data centers should come from, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has repeatedly said, "Short-term: natural gas." (OpenAI and The Atlantic have a corporate partnership.) A Louisiana utility plans to build three natural-gas plants for a Meta data center that, upon completion, will be among the largest in this hemisphere. The lifespans of coal plants, too, are being extended to power new data centers. And the IEA estimates that data-center emissions could more than double by 2030—becoming one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gases in the world."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/ai-data-centers-energy-demands/686064/?gift=fTJ_e-oju-0m18Nme_kFoUt6V-1ULkbPnQX-yh8LY5I

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Researchers warn these "heat islands" could have a "remarkable influence on communities and regional welfare," and affect more than 340 million people.

AI infrastructure is significantly warming surrounding areas, creating a "data heat island effect" with the potential to impact hundreds of millions of people living nearby, a new working paper found.
Using a dataset of land surface temperatures produced by NASA, a research team led by the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge found from 2004 to 2024, the surrounding areas of more than 6,000 data centers worldwide saw an average increased land temperature of about 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. In certain cases, nearby temperatures increased 9 degrees Celsius, or 16.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers calculated these heat islands could be felt about 6.2 miles away from facilities, impacting up to 343 million people globally.

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INSIDE THE DIRTY, DYSTOPIAN WORLD OF AI DATA CENTERS

"To power AI, energy and tech companies are turning to fossil fuels, which they regard as more reliable and readily available than wind, solar, or nuclear. Asked where the energy for data centers should come from, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has repeatedly said, "Short-term: natural gas." (OpenAI and The Atlantic have a corporate partnership.) A Louisiana utility plans to build three natural-gas plants for a Meta data center that, upon completion, will be among the largest in this hemisphere. The lifespans of coal plants, too, are being extended to power new data centers. And the IEA estimates that data-center emissions could more than double by 2030—becoming one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gases in the world."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/ai-data-centers-energy-demands/686064/?gift=fTJ_e-oju-0m18Nme_kFoUt6V-1ULkbPnQX-yh8LY5I

The article should be titled Inside the Dirty minds of Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and the Ellison duo. They are the enemies of humanity and all life for that matter. I despise these effers more than Trump or Biden.  They should be deposited at the Sentinel Island or some inhospitable Island somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.

Make no mistake, much of AI is about surveillance and controlling the population and consolidating and moving the center of power from a representative government to some sick fucks. 

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Some, such as Dario Amodei attempt to garner support from the public, with promises that AGI will in short order offer a cure for ALL disease/illnesses, resulting in greatly expanded life expectancy.
One must ask what we want from life. Quantity or Quality?
Whenever the topic of mortality pops up, my mind drifts back to the scene/song with Connor MacLeod in the "Highlander" film.
🎶Who wants to live forever🎶

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/watch-robot-dogs-with-elon-musk-and-bezos-faces-are-excreting-ai-art-at-a-berlin-museum/vi-AA21ZxPG?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=69f33c791d954d119f1ebcf350304b9b&ei=19#details

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Carolina Curious: How could AI data centers affect community health?

In recent months, North Carolina has seen a wave of proposals for AI data centers, drawing pushback from residents. For this week's Carolina Curious, one listener asked how these centers could potentially impact community health.

To find out, WFDD's April Laissle spoke with Neha Gour, a PhD candidate at George Mason University. She co-authored a peer-reviewed analysis of the estimated health impacts of a data center hub in Northern Virginia — among the first studies of its kind.


https://www.wfdd.org/health-safety/2026-05-04/carolina-curious-how-could-ai-data-centers-affect-community-health

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Water in Florida is precious, but AI data centers will guzzle big amounts
A single 100-word AI prompt can consume a bottle of water at a Florida data center, jeopardizing supplies for cities and towns.

* Large data centers require significant amounts of water for cooling, which can strain local resources.

* Several proposals for large-scale data centers in Florida are facing public and governmental opposition.

* A single large data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of water daily, competing with residential and agricultural needs.

* If water is unavailable, data centers may use more electricity for cooling, adding to their environmental impact.

https://archive.ph/D5YWV

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When this one was announced for our county, the supporters suggested that one of the upsides would be their tax contribution to the local economy. Shortly thereafter, county taxes were increased, with my property taxes jumping 46% over the prior year. Just imagine what it would have been without the data center. 🤣

https://www.whitefiber.com/blog/nc-1-data-center

[Woolly Bugger]

When this one was announced for our county, the supporters suggested that one of the upsides would be their tax contribution to the local economy. Shortly thereafter, county taxes were increased, with my property taxes jumping 46% over the prior year. Just imagine what it would have been without the data center. 🤣

https://www.whitefiber.com/blog/nc-1-data-center

at minimum, WhiteFiber� appears positioned to receive significant North Carolina data-center tax benefits for its planned AI/HPC campus in Madison, and the company itself publicly stated it was pursuing local and state incentives. 

Here's what is known:

* Rockingham County's announcement about the project said WhiteFiber was "engaged in securing local and state-level tax incentives, employment support programs, and utility-related abatements." 
* WhiteFiber's parent-company announcement stated the facility "qualifies for NC state tax exemptions." 
* North Carolina law already provides major automatic tax exemptions for qualifying data centers investing at least $75 million. WhiteFiber's proposed investment was announced as more than $1 billion, so it would almost certainly meet the threshold if the project proceeds as planned. 

Those North Carolina incentives can include exemptions from:

* sales/use taxes on construction materials,
* servers and computing equipment,
* cooling and electrical infrastructure,
* and even electricity consumed by the data center. 

What is not publicly clear yet:

* the exact dollar amount of any incentive package,
* whether Rockingham County or Madison approved additional property-tax abatements,
* or whether the state approved any discretionary grants beyond the standard statutory exemptions.

North Carolina has been debating whether these incentives are too generous because AI/data centers consume enormous amounts of power while creating relatively few permanent jobs. Gov. Josh Stein recently asked policymakers to reconsider or scale back the exemptions

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North Carolina does not publish one precise statewide "live" megawatt figure for data-center electricity demand, but current estimates show the sector has become one of the dominant drivers of new power demand in the state.

Key numbers:

* Gov. Josh Stein's Energy Policy Task Force reported in 2026 that data centers account for about 80% of Duke Energy's projected new electricity demand in the Carolinas. 
* Duke Energy disclosed it has signed agreements for 7.6 gigawatts (GW) of new large-load demand since 2024, largely tied to data centers and AI workloads, with another 15.4 GW under discussion. 
* Bloomberg reported Duke's contracted data-center load in North Carolina rose to roughly 4.5 GW by early 2026 from about 3 GW previously. 

For perspective:

* 1 GW is roughly the output of a large nuclear reactor.
* A continuous 4.5 GW load could consume around:
    * 39–40 terawatt-hours annually, or
    * roughly one-third of all electricity currently consumed in North Carolina.

Many projects are not fully operating yet, so the current active load is likely materially lower than the contracted/planned load. But the pipeline is enormous.

Examples of proposed or expanding North Carolina projects include:

* Microsoft campuses in Catawba County,
* Google expansion in Lenoir,
* Amazon-related projects in the Triangle area,
* and AI-focused facilities such as WhiteFiber/Bit Digital in Madison. 

State reports project overall North Carolina electricity demand could rise 16%–60% over the next 15 years, with data centers responsible for most of that increase. 

This rapid growth is why North Carolina lawmakers and regulators are debating:

* special electric rates for hyperscale data centers,
* requiring them to pay directly for grid upgrades,
* and requiring some on-site power generation. 

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And of course those noise polluting generators need to be fed. So there's this:

https://appvoices.org/pipelines/ssep/

Gotta have pipelines for the gas, because the risk of killing birds with windmills for clean/smart energy is way too risky.