A new research report provides a sobering account of the damage data centers are having on the global environment and what their growth could mean for the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The report, published June 3 by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health<\/a>, found that the energy, land and water used by AI dwarf the needs of hundreds of millions of people globally. The findings are relevant for the Dallas area, which is home to over 230 data centers<\/a> with\u00a0more on the way<\/a>,\u00a0making it one of the largest data center markets in the United States.<\/p>\n The environmental cost of data centers<\/p>\n The researchers estimated that in 2025, global data centers consumed enough electricity to power the homes of the 1.3 billion people living in sub-Sarahan Africa for 2.6 years, based on electricity usage reports from the International Energy Agency<\/a>. By 2030, it is predicted that data centers will consume 9.3 trillion liters of water and cover 14,500 square kilometers of land. And AI infrastructure could generate up to 2.5 million metric tons of\u00a0e-waste annually by 2030, the equivalent to discarding nearly 250 Eiffel Towers every year.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n For Texas, the water implications alone are staggering. \u201cThree to 10% of our water use in the state of Texas could become devoted to powering data centers,\u201d said Ian Seamans, the city hall advocate for Environment Texas, who was not involved in the report.<\/p>\n Related:<\/strong> Data centers power \u2018everything that we do every day.\u2019 Here\u2019s what to know about them<\/a><\/p>\n The report also highlights the social harms these data centers can have, noting how data centers remain concentrated in a small number of locations.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe benefits might go into the pockets of a certain group of people who are not even in that region,\u201d said Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University institute that produced the report and the report’s lead investigator.\u00a0\u201cBut it would be the locals who have to suffer from the impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Locals are already feeling the impact in places like the Granbury area, which has a notoriously loud data center. \u201cThe sound impacts from that data center have been reported nationally because of how terrible they are,\u201d Seamans said. Residents described the constant noise as sounding like chainsaws or gas leaf blowers being used outside their homes, he said.<\/p>\n