The disproportionate effects of AI data centers on local communities – and what can be done about it

Part one of our Keep Calm and Count the Kilowatts series showed how AI prompts are only a small portion of a person's daily power use. Part two explored how AI’s power, water and carbon footprints stack up on a global scale.

But the real environmental impact here isn't the tiny sip of power your individual prompt uses; it's the massive, concentrated impact new data centers can have on the specific towns and ecosystems they're built in.

Disproportionate effects

AI-specific data centers leave a bigger, messier footprint than other types of data centers, and are large industrial facilities that impact power grids, water supply and air quality.

There are two main problems. Power density – running AI often means cramming loads of high wattage GPUs into a small area, and the resulting data center can use a lot more power than one of the same size ...