As widely reported, Georgia’s Chamber of Commerce is attempting to discredit popular opposition to datacenters. To reduce further confusion and resulting hostilities, please consider several key factors.
Although existing use of datacenters by artificial intelligence (AI) systems only accounts for about a third of current total activity, forecasted growth in demand for digital processing and storage facilities is dominated by AI. Industry analysts predict that between 65% and 70% of U.S. demand for new datacenters built by 2030 will be driven by AI – increasing total capacity and power demands of these disruptive facilities by 50% across the nation.
Georgia’s chamber is also attempting to diminish opposition to datacenters by emphasizing that water consumption will be moderated by ‘closed-loop’ cooling systems, using air to remove heat from a nominal amount of water needed to cool micro-processor operations. Yet this explanation fails to address the problem of waste-heat itself as a destructive threat to public health and the environment caused by datacenters. Datacenter overheating harms to wildlife and community health are significant.
Experts report that datacenters increase surrounding air temperature by up to 4°F and land-surface temperature as much as 16°F. This thermal pollution intensifies so-called ‘heat-islands,’ unfairly increasing local air-conditioning dependency and costs. Moreover, as widely documented, average temperatures are already increasing due to climate change, aggregating hazards to public health and the environment. These problems will be worsened by added heat from datacenters.
Whatever the alleged economic benefits of datacenters, harms caused by these facilities – and AI – justify rigorous controls.