By Steve Goreham
Originally published in MasterResource.
Environmental groups seek to halt data center construction in the United States. They warn that data centers consume enormous quantities of electricity and water and contribute to climate change. But environmentalists now oppose the artificial intelligence revolution (AI), the irresistible force that is transforming the US economy.
On December 8, more than 230 environmental organizations delivered a letter to Congress requesting a “national data center moratorium.” The letter stated, “The rapid expansion of data centers across the United States, driven by the generative artificial intelligence and crypto boom, presents one of the biggest environmental and social threats of pollution, straining water resources, and rising electricity prices across the country.”
Signatories of the letter include Friends of the Earth US, Greenpeace USA, and the US Climate Action Network, along with democrat party organizations including Progressive Democrats of America, New York Progressive Action Network, and the Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.
The number of data centers in the US is exploding. According to USA Data Centers, about 2,700 centers existed at the start of 2024, but this number has risen to more than 4,000, a 50% increase in less than two years. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, and other large tech firms called “hyperscalers” are spending a combined total of over $380 billion this year to build data centers to run AI. This capital investment is larger than the Gross Domestic Product of more than 138 nations.
In addition to new centers, the servers of existing data centers are being upgraded to run AI. These new servers use six to ten times as much power as the old servers to solve problems, make predictions, and create text, images, music, and videos.
Environmental groups are correct in their assertion that AI uses vast amounts of electricity. Data centers were using about four percent of US power at the start of 2024 but this is projected to rise to 12% of US power by 2030.
But environmentalists are wrong in their assertion that data centers are the cause of rising electricity prices. From 2019 to 2024, power prices in the two states with the most data centers, Virginia (over 600) and Texas (over 400), rose far less than the rate of inflation. Virginia power prices were up only 13.2% and Texas prices up only 14.2%, well below the cumulative rate of inflation of 22.7% over the five-year period. Instead, Department of Energy data show that electricity prices are rising fastest in states pursuing green energy policies, including California, Massachusetts, and New York.
Environmental groups decry data center power consumption but ignore the power use of green energy programs. Electric cars, home electric appliances, and green hydrogen also use huge amounts of electricity compared to traditional fuels, but these initiatives are promoted by environmental groups in the name of fighting human-caused climate change.
President Trump called for the US to “do whatever it takes to lead the world in artificial intelligence.” With democrat environmental groups now opposing data centers, the democrat party may be turning to oppose AI and Trump’s effort to win the AI race.
Data centers consume vast amounts of electricity, but AI companies now provide facilities to minimize the impact on local communities. Builders are constructing new on-site power plants next to the data center, to avoid taxing the local power grid. For example, Tesla installed 35 gas turbines to power its Colossus xAI supercomputer facility near Memphis, Tennessee. Google is working with NextEra Energy to restart the Duane Arnold nuclear plant to support a new data center in Iowa.
Data centers also can use large amounts of water to cool AI servers, particularly if evaporative cooling is used. But new centers increasingly use closed-loop cooling systems to reduce water consumption. In addition, some projects are building new water facilities near data centers. Google financed the building of a water treatment plant for the Douglas County Water and Sewer Authority to support a new data center near Atlanta, Georgia.
But the biggest fear of environmental groups is that the AI tidal wave will wash away the net zero energy transition. Intermittent wind and solar systems can’t supply the 24-hour, seven-day-per-week power needs of data centers. Wind and solar systems are dilute and spread over wide areas, requiring hundreds of miles of transmission lines and many years to be brought online.
Gas power plants are concentrated power and can be built in less than two years onsite to minimize transmission needs. More than 200 new gas-fired power plants are in planning or under construction across the US, with more than 100 plants in Texas alone. It is estimated that 60% of the electricity needed for new data centers will come from natural gas, with nuclear plants providing a sizable portion of the rest.
Driven by the AI revolution, states are stepping back from green energy policies. Last month, Pennsylvania withdrew from RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which requires businesses to pay a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. After two decades of pipeline blockage, New York approved a new gas pipeline to New York City. New York also postponed their statewide ban on gas appliances in new construction that was scheduled to begin in January.
The battle is joined. Environmental and democrat groups are lining up to oppose the artificial intelligence revolution, a technological advancement on the scale of the internet. The end result will be a victory for AI and common sense, and the failure of renewable energy and the ideology of Climatism, the fear of human-caused global warming.
Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and author of the bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.
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Luddites…
Luddites were driven by a fear of losing traditional jobs. The anti-AI/data center enviro bunch is driven by a destructive anthromisia ideology.
It’s reasonable to say that greenies are afraid of losing their jobs if enough people realize what grifters they are.
There’s absolutely no reason to Ban Datacenters. Just require them to be CoGen and provide 100% of their own energy needs. Any overcapacity they produce can be pumped back into the grid. Caveat, if they produce DC energy THEY need to convert it to AC prior to reselling it to the grid.
Oh the irony! It burns!
The Cancel Culture four horseman of the Hotpocalypse, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo, have turned tail and left the battlefield. After two decades of de-platforming, de-monitizing, doxxing, firing, and even fire bombing climate “deniers”, the big big bullies are on their knees begging for kilowatts. And the loyal brainwashed minions who bought the bull shark have been left in lurch. Chicken Little had his head cut off!
230 organized chapters of leftists acting as Luddites. If you read their published organizational names on the letter, its a conglomeration of woke-speak names.
And liberals laugh at the notion when conservatives claim there is conspiracy among leftist policy makers.
Following the argument to it’s logical conclusion…Libraries should be burned because books require paper to make and that requires cutting trees. Same for bookstores. Ink should be banned because ink is a petroleum product.
Anything that runs on electricity should be banned because we can’t have power plants. Making wind power plants or solar power requires burning minerals to build and we can’t have that.
All people must live near a forest so that they can gather firewood with which to keep warm in the winter. Once all the wood has been burned, people must migrate to a different forest.
No cities, no civilization, no time for environmentalists since all time must be spent on survival.
Thomas Edison was convinced that the use of DC for domestic use was just common sense, AC being far too dangerous! Predictions are difficult, especially about the future.<g>
I wouldn’t be surprised if the obsession with AI turns out to be as misguided as the obsession with the role of “climate change”.
and what about the obsession that Segway scooters would make ordinary walking obsolete overnight?
(Mind you, the way my balance serves me now, I should have marine stanchions & rails installed along every pathway from the bed to the bathroom to the kitchen and back.
Or get a SegWay? 😳🤔 )
A bit amazing, but I saw a man on a Segway in a grocery store last week. I think it is the only one I have seen in the real world.
If you’re going to get a Segway…get the S-pod…the ultimate in seated transportation (deathtrap)
http://arab-en.segway.com/static/images/p-spod.jpg
The moratorium happening is the absence of working brain cells in activist ideologues. Progressives opposing progress is theater of the absurd. They don’t have a clue as to how things work in the real world.
That last sentence is the keystone.
They don’t have a clue. Without coal, oil and gas, there would be nothing made of metal, nothing made of plastic, nothing made of glass, and therefore (just some illustrative assumptions):
No electric grid;
No central heating;
No refrigeration;
No transport aside from walking or riding on an animal;
No communications aside from shouting or smoke signals;
Inadequate food;
No running water;
No internet;
No cell phones;
NO WINDMILLS;
NO SOLAR PANELS;
NO EVs;
NO BATTERIES
These clueless morons think life as they know it would go on without “fossil fuels,” precisely BECAUSE they don’t have a clue as to how things work in the real world.
And rationality cannot operate in brains captured by ideology.
Ideology is “The Superior Force”.
Progressives are just communists without police power. Once in power, it’d be in their interest to invert their eco-policies, which they’d do, and then would kill off the protesting useful idiots who got them there. So it always goes.
OMG, how telling is that? Dems and their no growth constituents are really letting everyone know who and what they are! My expectations for the mid-terms just cranked up a couple percentage points. Uh-raw!
What services will these future AI data centers provide? Doesn’t the US operate data centers for its many agencies like the IRS and the EPA?
They act similar to Cloud Storage for Information. Basically monstrous banks of servers that need to be kept cool and suck down GWhs of energy.
Realists urge Congress to ban fake, anti-science environmentally-destructive groups. !
The first listed should be Friends of the Earth US, Greenpeace USA, and the US Climate Action Network.
These groups have supported environmental destructions by wind turbines and solar panels, and have fought against the very gases that provide all life on Earth.
I understand the sentiment but banning them? No.
Defund them? (No taxpayer dollars.) Yes.
Remove their tax-exempt status? (They are political groups, not charities.) Yes.
Remove contributions to them as tax emptions? Yes.
But using the Government to ban them? No.
(If they become directly involved in violence and/or vandalism, arrest them.)
Now you know what it was like in 1848 – gold fever.
My great-great-grandparents went to California, but everyone did NOT strike a lode.
My G-G-grandfather became ill, so his wife brought him back to KY! She lived to 102 and the GR passed her and her family by.
AI has potential, but it is likely to NOT be the potential ignorant people (including oligarchs) expect.
At the very least, AI can and may kill the intentional implosion of humanity by activist scientists and corrupt morons in government.
Is it not interesting how a certain class of people always think first and foremost of censoring, abandoning, destroying, canceling, eliminating and opposing anything but their own narrow, restricted view of nature, life, and happiness..
Especially if they’re ideologically and financially invested in these pursuits.
They’re also expressly in favor of “Free Speech” as long as it’s speech they approve of. If it isn’t approved speech it’s “Hate Speech”
That idea brings up a nature-nurture style argument – I think autocratic thinking is in everyone’s nature but having to work for a living nurtures it out of certain classes.
Like: Once I’ve read how bad other people’s ideas are, I have to ask myself, are my own ideas bad? and then realize banning ideas that someone calls a bad idea would destroy all ideas.
Then the kicker, if banning speech or thought still seems okay: What happens when the other side is in power?
Naturally, everyone wants to have their way, right or wrong. That is uncivilized behavior. Civilized behavior is what we learn, yes. It is a pity that being civilized is not a prerequisite for high office. There are no exceptions to a rule; otherwise, it is NOT a rule. “An exception proves the rule” is backwards. An exception disproves the rule..
The DATA Centers would simply move to other countries. It’s the same problem as Emission Control under the Paris Agreement and I keep saying prohibition has not ever worked on anything in history if there is a financial incentive it will happen.
Which is why having them supply their own generation makes sense. It shields the general public from demand issued the datacenters can create and also shields the datacenter from PUC mandated rate increases as they bear their own cost of generation. Then they also get the benefit of being able to sell their overcapacity back into the grid for perhaps an energizing profit.
Won’t that go down well with the internet generations. The Trump Deranger strikes again.
Leftist ideas were a trap for the uneducated, but to get maximum reach for their ideas the left went and educated _everybody_. In 2025 your stereotypical USA coffee barista has a fancier college degree than most historical USA presidents. Now that the first wave of the “every kid should go to college generations” is thinking about getting old with globalism and private retirement plans and zero population growth… Oh. Education.
Self fact check: “Of the 45 individuals to have been the president, 24 graduated from a private undergraduate college, 9 graduated from a public undergraduate college, and 12 held no degree.”
I’ll stick with “a fancier college degree than most” but the presidency has 16 ivy leaguers, which probably does not match the coffee shop profile.
The Left not only against Data Centers. They are against Data.
Unless they get to “adjust” it to their liking.
But then, despite their bleating to the contrary, that “adjusted data” IS NO LONGER DATA.
So yes, they ARE against data…
Yes the true meanings of both “data” and “vaccines” have been so compromised and co-opted in the pursuit of leftist controlling narratives that these terms have lost their original specific meanings, and are now terms that incite suspicion.
Not to say, “man” and “woman.”
Not data in general just inconvenient data that they’d prefer scrubbed
The left wing artists I know are terrified of AI, not only because they see it as a threat to the global climate, but because it is attacking their professions, and they don’t know how to respond to it.
AI is in its infancy. As AI grows, it will eat many jobs. But after a short period of disruption the destruction of those jobs is expected to create many more. I am told that the World Economic Forum projects 69 million net new jobs globally by 2028 from AI and automation. IMHO that is likely to be a gross underestimate. I expect the AI revolution to be like the industrial revolution but much faster. The lift in living standards is hard to visualise but should be dramatic. If your country doesn’t keep up, move to one that does (that’s my advice to my grandchildren). If America doesn’t lead, learn Mandarin and kiss goodbye to a bright future as it gets trampled into oblivion.
I was involved with a large automation program for a major oil company in the early 80’s. The program was justified on reduction of head-count. Overall head-count actually increased but with a much different base skill set. Yet the program was almost 10x more profitable than estimated. This was because automation required the company to well define it’s systems and business processes. It turned out that well over 50% were either redundant or unneeded.
The artists should sue the humans who are using AI to steal the Name, Image, and Likeness of the artists.
The electronic parrots can be trained to generate much better content than semi-literate “jujunalists” recruited from outrage bloggers, so bad news for them, yes. And seeing them run like a bunch of beheaded chickens can be fun, sure.
But they are a drop in the ocean. Also, any of 999999 NGOs can give them made-up jobs for the same money, probably laundered from treasury anyway via air castle contracts to woke enterprises. Thus, ultimately this does not matter.
If all these troughs were closed permanently, they would have much worse problems than a bunch of jumped up fat tumblrinas and slimy soyboys losing in competition with electronic parrots. Seeing how the backseat drivers won’t even let Trump close more than a single department in rotten NASA, this obviously isn’t going to happen. This leaves but another storm in a teacup… and perhaps a distraction.
” left wing artists ”
This has me going Hmm! I searched for “left wing art” and the only interesting thing that popped up was the left wing of a Monarch Butterfly. I wonder what the average earnings are for a left wing artist. Do they have a 2nd income?
You must be referring to those who graduated after spending $$$$$$ (6 figures) on a 4 year degree in Liberal Arts.
Intermittent wind and solar systems can’t supply the 24-hour, seven-day-per-week power needs of ANYTHING.
FIFY. There’s an illustrative example in “AI” of the abject failure of wind and solar as “energy sources,” but that applies in general. People have a reasonable EXPECTATION that the grid will be ON 24/7, NOT at the whim of the weather and/or time of day.
Wind and solar can never provide that, they are nothing but parasites and are worse-than-useless.
“they are nothing but parasites and are worse-than-useless.”
Absolutely!
From the article: “the cumulative rate of inflation of 22.7% over the five-year period”
Inflation.
If you are a Baby Boomer, you are familiar with how inflation works. Generations born after the Jimmy Carter era (1980) are not familiar with how inflation works. During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, we had double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates and double-digit unemployment. It took Ronald Reagan two years to get the U.S. economy back on track after he was elected in 1980. I believe after that, the U.S. economy was growing at about a seven percent rate.
Explaining how inflation works is pretty simple: When a period of inflation occurs, the prices on things can increase in a short period of time. When the inflation rate goes back down, the prices of things Do Not go down immediately. They fall very slowly, which is why high inflation is such a problem: It jacks up the prices and the prices stay high even after the inflation rate comes down.
That is the situation we are in now.
But things are looking up. Gasoline prices are falling, falling, falling. This allows businesses that desire to do so to lower their prices because their products are being received and delivered at a cheaper price so they can afford to lower prices.
Other prices come down when businesses compete with each other. One business lowers its prices to increase customers and its rival across town then has to lower its prices to compete with the first business. And both can lower their prices because their input prices are lower. But this all takes time.
So people who expect Trump to completely eliminate the effects of Biden’s inflation overnight are not familiar with how things work, or they are leftwing propagandists trying to rhetorically harm Trump with distortions and lies. There is no quick fix for inflation, but Trump is doing the things that will bring prices down. Saying otherwise, is a lie and a distortion.
Yes, and business & consumer confidence in the order of markets and economies rather than chaos is what holds off recessions.
“During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, we had double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates and double-digit unemployment.”
Caused by OPEC drastically raising the price of oil. Because Kissinger suggested to Iran to do it and OPEC obeyed.
I remember those gasoline lines.
We had certain days where we could fill our tank, and certain days when we were not allowed to fill up, based on whether your car tag ended on an even or odd number.
Jimmy Carter told us to wear warm sweaters.
I was driving through NYC, on the way back from my trip to Dixie, and in NYC I got in a line with the correct license plate so I should have gotten my gas pumped- and a guy at the station told me to get lost- he was going to serve locals. I then drove to a police station to complain. The cop said, “don’t bother me- I just got a call about a murder I have to investigate”. Amazing I can remember that since I can’t remember more recent stuff. 🙂
From the article: “New York approved a new gas pipeline to New York City. New York also postponed their statewide ban on gas appliances in new construction that was scheduled to begin in January.”
Somebody is wising up in New York!
It is my understanding that a sizable amount of homes and apartments in New York still have natural gas service. Burning natural gas in the home or business is the most efficient use of the gas.
So I guess the big conversion to electric heat in New York is no more. That’s a very good thing.
“New York approved a new gas pipeline to New York City. New York also postponed their statewide ban on gas appliances in new construction that was scheduled to begin in January.”
Now if only NY encouraged more drilling for gas within that state- which would also greatly benefit all of New England.
Yeah, like the tv commercial says: “They are sitting on a Gold Mine!!!”
Face it, no matter what change the future brings there will always be someone opposed to it.
Let’s call a cat «cat».
To run extensive surveillance, and try to win the culture war with brute force by helping the publisher oligopoly to rip the authors off… and then cancel those authors at will for supposedly ripping off their rip-offs (as anyone who paid attention to Google shenanigans should see coming by now).
I for one would not weep if US Outer Party types get what they were asking for, only to find themselves on the wrong end of a bludgeon… again. But those smelly substances have an unfortunate tendency of flowing downhill to spread far and wide.
With that in mind, well… pity they cannot both lose.
These environmental groups are simply exploiting the latest development in the American political scene, the politics of affordability. The rise of radical socialist-communists such as Zohran Mamdani in New York City is a direct reflection of the emerging politics of affordability. More such people will be coming on to the American political scene before this decade is out.
It is the adroit exploitation of the politics of affordability by the Democrats, combined with other long-standing facets of American politics such as the Republican Establishment’s continuing betrayal of the constituencies which elected them, which is likely to give control of the Congress to the Democrats in the 2026 mid-terms, and full control of the federal government to them in the 2028 presidential cycle.
As for AI, it is impossible for the power grid to expand nearly as fast as the growth of conventional AI data centers requires. And so if more AI data centers continue to be constructed using traditional I/O bound computing architectures inside the AI data server farms, the power these data centers require must be taken from other industrial and residential customers.
That is a real issue which cannot be hidden from an American voting public which will be expected to pay for the rise of AI data centers in their own power bills, or to go without the power they need on a daily basis because AI data centers are consuming a constrained supply of electricity. Before the decade is out, this is an issue which will be exploited to the max by far left politicians in their quest to fully socialize America’s economy.
Possible story tip:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
You do not need super computers to run AI software.
You will get results faster, though.
Now consider why the same companies bringing online advanced computers and data storage centers want you to link all your devices and put all your data in the “cloud.”
But, you say, the cloud is secure.
In point of fact the security protocols are to prevent external penetration.
No one ever talks about how your data is an open book to the owners of the cloud.
Internal security is lacking.
I refuse to link my devices.
I refuse to put my personal or professional data in the cloud.
I logged on to Chrome yesterday and found, without my say and without notification, my work computer had been linked to my home computer. Without my permission.
I fixed it.
A few weeks ago, Edge offered to import all of my other browser’s bookmarks, passwords, history, etc. I said no. I do not want Microsoft watching me.
I just discovered Edge imported all of my Chrome data without my permission.
I fixed it.
It seems we are being disallowed to personally manage our data.
Big Brother is here.
Call this a conspiracy theory if you wish but do think about it.
Meanwhile the SPEED act bill just passed in the House, headed to the Senate.
Very nice. We need to start calling these people something other than environmentalists. Environmentalism represents positive things to me clean air, water, production, waste treatment and so on. That is not what these people stand for. I frankly don’t know what they stand for they just seem to be against everything.
Envirowackos
Envirosocialists
Environutzies
Thing is going to happen.
+ Thing would not happen in USA
=
Thing happens outside USA
+ USA citizens pay to use it remotely
(+ design decisions do not necessarily favor USA sensibilities)
Who is financing all the ads against data centers?
Russians like they financed part of the anti fossil fuel / global warming garbage?
Special interest groups?
Political parties?
China who wants to stop other nations from developing it so that China can rule the AI roost
Of course. We sacrificed carbon-intensive heavy industry and jobs to China in exchange for tech. 30 years later, we’re now we’re supposed to sacrifice tech to China. For what?