Wyoming Data Center: Where AI's Computational Power Meets the Prairie. A seemingly innocuous building houses nine massive green heat exchangers, cooling rows of servers powering everything from streaming video to cryptocurrency. This Cheyenne facility, one of many fueling the AI boom, showcases the massive infrastructure supporting artificial intelligence's rapid growth
Cheyenne's data centers: powering the AI revolution. These massive facilities, housing thousands of servers, are crucial to the modern digital economy, handling the immense computational demands of artificial intelligence and fueling the growth of tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta. Their energy consumption and impact on local resources are significant factors in the ongoing expansion of AI infrastructure
Tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet are investing heavily in AI, pledging over $320 billion this year on data center infrastructure. This massive investment fuels the AI revolution, driving the construction of thousands of data centers across the US and globally, dramatically increasing data processing capabilities for AI applications. This unprecedented expansion reflects the tech industry's race to dominate the future of AI, a multi-trillion dollar market poised to reshape the global economy
Business Insider's exclusive investigation reveals the explosive growth of America's data center infrastructure. Our months-long research, analyzing thousands of building permits, unveils a comprehensive national list of 1,240 data centers – nearly four times the number in 2010. Discover the massive energy and water consumption of these facilities, powering AI and the digital economy, and learn about the real-world consequences for communities nationwide
America's AI Boom: 1,240+ Data Centers Fueling the Multi-Trillion Dollar Revolution. Business Insider's exclusive research reveals a fourfold increase in US data centers since 2010, with over 1,240 now built or under construction – the most comprehensive count ever compiled. Hundreds are hyperscale facilities powering the AI revolution, representing a massive investment in the future of the global economy
AI's transformative potential: Tech giants invest billions in data centers powering AI-driven advancements, envisioning a future where AI algorithms revolutionize healthcare, predict disasters with unprecedented accuracy, unlock scientific breakthroughs, personalize our lives as assistants and educators, and even offer companionship
Innovation in AI requires robust infrastructure. Lunavi cofounder and CIO Cortney Thompson emphasizes the necessity of readily available resources for creation and innovation, whether leveraging existing platforms or building custom infrastructure. This capacity is crucial for companies competing in the rapidly expanding AI market
Discover the hidden costs of AI's rapid expansion. Business Insider's exclusive analysis reveals the unforeseen consequences and escalating expenses behind the booming data center industry fueling artificial intelligence. We expose the true price of powering the future
US data center water crisis: 40% face severe water shortages, consuming millions of gallons daily. Our investigation reveals the alarming reality of water consumption in the booming AI data center industry, impacting communities nationwide
US data center energy consumption is exploding. Business Insider estimates that US data centers could soon surpass Poland's 2023 electricity usage, and federal projections indicate a potential tripling of consumption within three years. This surge is fueled by the AI boom and massive investments from tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta
Data center boom fuels massive public health costs: Business Insider estimates that the power needed for these facilities will generate between $5.7 billion and $9.2 billion in annual healthcare expenses due to pollution
Fueled by taxpayer subsidies, a nationwide data center boom is transforming towns into tech hubs. Local governments offer massive tax breaks, often exceeding $1 million per high-paying tech job, to attract giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, driving the AI revolution but raising questions about equitable economic development
Tech companies are investing billions annually in sustainable data center infrastructure to mitigate environmental impact, driven by consumer and corporate demand for AI-powered solutions. These investments, including renewable energy, water restoration, and efficient technology, represent a significant commitment to the future of AI and its transformative societal potential
The massive investment in AI is paying off, but the bill is coming due. Data center construction is booming, with thousands of facilities powering the AI revolution. Learn about the unprecedented energy consumption, water usage, and the impact on our lives as tech giants race to dominate the future of artificial intelligence
Virginia's booming data center industry houses 329 facilities, processing up to one-third of global internet traffic and consuming nearly 25% of the state's electricity in 2023. This highlights the complex regulatory landscape, where local planning commissions negotiate data center construction with major tech companies, underscoring the tension between local land-use control and the expansion of the global digital infrastructure
Hidden Power Consumption of Data Centers: Unveiling the Energy and Water Usage Fueling AI's Growth
Data centers draw power from the local utility grid. But they have to run 24/7, so if that power goes out, they rely on backup generators that burn diesel fuel or natural gas. To run them, data center owners must get permits, which require an accurate accounting of their emissions. That output maps to the data center’s power needs. By obtaining 1,240 permits from across the US, Business Insider calculated the potential near-term ecological footprint of every US data center owner, based on our estimate of how much electricity data centers typically use relative to the capacity of their backup systems. (See here for more on Business Insider’s methodology.)
Amazon tops the list. Business Insider’s estimate indicates that if it builds all the data centers it has planned, it would use 30 to 48 terawatt-hours a year. At the midpoint, that would be around the same amount of electricity the state of Nevada used in 2023.
An Amazon spokesperson said Business Insider’s methodology for estimating consumption “oversimplifies complex data center operations and is based on assumptions that do not account for important differences in how companies build and operate data centers.”
Google and Meta did not respond to Business Insider’s queries about data center power use estimates, and QTS declined to comment. A Microsoft spokesperson acknowledged that its data centers “do not always run at 100% of their installed capacity.”
The federal government estimates that demand for electricity will rise more this decade than it has since the 1980s; some calculations say data centers account for as much as 44% of that growth. Meeting that new demand will mean keeping older, dirtier generation capacity online — climate crisis and carbon commitments be damned.
Water is the most effective way to cool down the hotter, more closely packed graphics processing units that AI relies on. And that water often has to be fresh. Data centers are finicky drinkers.
In 2018, before the AI boom, US data centers consumed 34 billion gallons a year — just about what the state of California uses every day. Just seven years later, the US has doubled its data center capacity.
Now, here is where you’d expect a story like this to tell you how much water any data center of a given size uses. That’s almost impossible. Just half of all data center operators track their water use, and it’s wildly variable depending on size and technology.
Thanks to the air permits Business Insider examined, we can at least tell you where those data centers are. That’s important because, given their needs, you might think that companies would site them near ready supplies of fresh water. They often don’t.
In fact, 40% of the data centers in the US are (or are set to be) in places marked by the World Resources Institute — a sustainability advocacy group — as having high or extremely high water scarcity. That includes multiple parts of the arid American Southwest — like Arizona’s Maricopa County, an “extremely water-stressed area” with 48 data centers.
Data center builders know all this, and they take water seriously. The biggest water users have pledged to do better — to be water-neutral in coming years, to pay other users to use less, or to fund water conservation projects as offsets. And they point out that just because they have permission to use millions of gallons of water a day doesn’t mean they will — and where water is scarce, they tend to favor air-cooling tech instead.
Of course, air cooling needs power. And however much they draw, data centers’ power needs are big enough that they tend to raise local electricity bills for everyone, Business Insider found — whether homes or Walmarts.
Their punishingly noisy cooling fans run all day and all night, making it tough for some who live near data centers. Every drop of water that goes to a data center could’ve gone to a home, or a different industrial or agriculture use — and outflows from the cooling systems risk polluting local waterways.
Technological improvements could obviate this someday. More efficient heat exchangers could solve the cooling problem. A more flexible power grid or AI that uses far less energy might solve the power problem.
Though some utilities are bringing new fossil-fuel plants online, renewable solutions are emerging — a few miles from the data center in Cheyenne, a massive solar farm is rising alongside hundreds of already-spinning wind turbines.
We can marvel at new applications like real-time language translation or more accurate cancer diagnoses. We can scoff at the latest chatbot hallucination — or worry about policy or military decisions made not in the White House or the Pentagon but in data centers guided by algorithms few understand. All this happens while water aquifers drain and electricity bills climb.
A handful of transnational corporations are offering this proposition: They will usher in an age of technological wonder in return for the opportunity to make a tremendous amount of money. State after state is giving them more money, and reorienting entire regulatory structures, to let them do it. If the AI revolution delivers, perhaps the ledger eventually balances. If not, we’ll be left with the receipts for a future that never arrived.
About the data: Business Insider used air permits issued to data center backup generators to identify facility location and ownership, and estimate facility power use. We received permits from all but four states, plus Washington, DC. Read more about how we investigated the impact of data center growth here.
Reporting: Hannah Beckler, Dakin Campbell, Daniel Geiger, Rosemarie Ho, Narimes Parakul, Adam Rogers, Ellen Thomas
Editing: Jeffrey Cane, Rosalie Chan, Jason Dean, Esther Kaplan, Jake Swearingen
Research: Darren Ankrom, Schuyler Mitchell, Trey Strange, Yuheng Zhan
Design and visuals: Dan DeLorenzo, Isabel Fernandez-Pujol, Jinpeng Li, Kim Nguyen, Randy Yeip, Rebecca Zisser
Photography: Kendrick Brinson, John David-Richardson, Greg Kahn, Brian Palmer, Jesse Rieser
Video: Robert Leslie, Gary Moon, Marco Secci
Copy editing: Mark Abadi, Kevin Kaplan
Source: Original Article