Discussion
Get all the details from the author, Ketan Joshi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOlt-PYcnLk
Thevideo is not so much a TL;DR as to whet your appetite to read the report:
https://mastodon.social/@ketanjoshi.co@ketanjoshi.co/116083027439799872
"Across Europe, irrigation consistently emerges as the largest contributor to freshwater appropriation, particularly in already stressed river basins. Livestock water demand frequently coincides with irrigation, amplifying local pressure.
Energy production is also appropriating large volumes of water.
Climate change will sharpen existing vulnerabilities, making anticipatory action increasingly important."
And here come the data centers.
Families won’t see relief from rising electricity prices anytime soon, as demand from artificial intelligence data centers soars while power supply grows slowly, according to Goldman Sachs.
Here's how much electricity prices jumped in 2025
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/electricity-price-data-center-ai-inflation-goldman.html
How Can AI Address Climate Justice When Women’s Voices Are Silenced?
"Despite their central role in society, women face persistent barriers to digital access and representation: [They are] underrepresed in AI training data, system design and governance processes.
Fctors such as class, race, caste, migration status, geography and age further reveal how AI-driven climate governance aligns technological power with social privilege, reinforcing existing inequalities."
"Datacentre developers are facing pressure to reveal whether their projects will increase the UK’s net greenhouse gas emissions, amid concerns the sites could double national electricity demand."
Why are electricity prices rising so much?
"It's data centers and it's nothing but data centers. And the people who start trying to muddy the waters with EVs and electrification, that's not true. Absolutely not true. There's no data to support it. It's it's not true. Our data shows that it's data centers"
https://mastodon.social/@ketanjoshi.co@bsky.brid.gy/116165529703364314
"A coalition of energy and environment groups, including the Clean Energy Council, Electrical Trades Union, Australian Conservation Foundation and Climate Energy Finance, proposed a set of “public interest principles for datacentres” that include investing in new renewable energy and using water responsibly."
"The report, The Urgent Case Against Data Centers, methodically outlines the need for a moratorium on new data center construction nationwide, so that local, state and federal leaders can take the time needed to thoroughly and adequately evaluate these and other inherent harms and threats from this aggressive, profit-driven industry."
"Despite Big Tech’s best efforts to offset its emissions, many researchers are critical about whether carbon credits will actually help companies to achieve this. A 2025 review paper, analysing 25 years of evidence, showed that failure of carbon offsets to cut planet-heating pollution was “not due to a few bad apples” but rather was owing to deep-seated systemic problems that gradual change to the system will not fix."
Australia has set new expectations for AI data centres – they should serve the public
"The message is simple: if companies want faster federal approvals, they must show their projects are in Australia’s national interest, support the clean energy shift, use water responsibly, create local jobs, and build local capability.
They’re now being treated as major infrastructure, with real effects on the power grid, water systems, land use and local communities."
A lot of ground gets covered in this eye-opening conversation on "AI" with Tinmit Gebru and Karen Hao
"The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma just became the first Indigenous nation to officially ban data center construction from lands under its jurisdiction.
After a tech startup approached Seminole leaders asking to allow a data center on their lands, the Tribal Council voted 24 to 0 to enact a moratorium."
"Our fight is just one small piece of a collective puzzle."
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/seminole-nation-data-centers
"JPMorgan Chase & Co. says aging, run-down grid infrastructure now risks undermining security goals, with everything from extreme weather to cyberattacks posing a growing threat.
In the US, grid investment is expected to hit roughly $1 trillion through 2035. By comparison, the figure is around $1.1 trillion for Europe and roughly $2.6 trillion for Asia Pacific, with China representing more than two-thirds of all grid investment in the region."
"The surrounding areas of more than 6,000 data centers worldwide saw an average increased land temperature of about 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 F. In certain cases, nearby temperatures increased 9 C, or 16.4 F. Researchers calculated these heat islands could be felt about 6.2 miles away from facilities, impacting up to 343 million people globally."
https://fortune.com/2026/04/01/ai-data-centers-heat-island-hyperscalers/
Google to tap into gas plant for AI datacenter in sharp turn from climate goals
"Texas power plant would emit 4.5m tons of carbon dioxide per year, more than that of the entire city of San Francisco.
The move is part of an ongoing about-face for the tech giant, which once pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030 and has long been seen as a pioneer in clean energy."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/02/google-ai-datacenter
"Data centers are the largest driver of load growth in the US."
https://www.wri.org/insights/clean-energy-progress-united-states
"Nearly 20 million households nationwide are behind on their utility bills. If gas prices continue to climb, more families will have to make difficult trade-offs every month just to keep the lights on.
To make matters worse, instead of addressing the cost-of-living crisis, Congress scaled back the very policies designed to expand domestic energy supply, modernize the grid, and lower bills, despite energy prices being a bipartisan priority."
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/need-better-energy-road-map
RE: https://vmst.io/@jalefkowit/116398487960120393
Interesting:
Decisions on data centers have election consequences.
https://mastodon.social/@jalefkowit@vmst.io/116398488073552426
BYOG, not only for data centers
"Georgia’s largest utility, Georgia Power, is launching a new Customer-Identified Resource program that [lets] companies propose and fund their own clean energy projects. It passed with bipartisan support from the state’s public service commissioners on April 7, and is expected to open by this summer."
Well well well
"Microsoft and other US tech companies successfully lobbied the EU to hide the environmental toll of their datacentres, an investigation has found, with demands to block a database of green metrics from public view written almost word for word into EU rules."
What have they got to hide, hmmmm?
The plan: a 9.2-gigawatt, $33 billion power plant to serve a 10-GW AI data center
"There is a “Sherman tank-sized hole” in the idea that consumers will be protected, said Mike Hogan, a senior advisor for the nonprofit Regulatory Assistance Project who has prior experience developing gas power plants. He anticipates that high gas demand—from this project and other new plants being built—will lead to substantial increases in heating and electricity costs for the public."
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02052026/massive-ohio-gas-power-plant-energy-risks/
"While AI may aid the development of new solutions, AI alone will not solve climate change and, most critically, even if it could, we cannot afford to wait for hypothetical AI solutions to take climate action.
We already know the causes of, and solutions to, the climate crisis—and the costs and harms of delaying action. Instead of relying on a hypothetical future AI “solution,” we need to focus on overcoming the real hurdles stalling climate progress."
https://blog.ucs.org/samuel-dotson/artificial-intelligence-wont-solve-climate-change/
"The Stratos Project will likely need 9 gigawatts of energy at full build — more than double the electricity currently used by the entire state of Utah.
[The waste heat] will get dumped into the local environment of Hansel Valley, in the same geographic bowl as the power plant. That actually makes the data complex a 16 gigawatt thermal load project, the “equivalent of about 23 atom bombs worth of energy dumped into this local environment every single day,” Davies said."
https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2026/05/07/utahs-data-center-could-create/
"Residents in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed low water pressure last year.
The utility discovered two unaccounted-for water connections at one of the nation’s largest data center campuses."
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/08/georgia-data-centers-water-00909988
In the PJM region,
"Power prices averaged $136.53 per megawatt-hour in the first three months of 2026, according to a massive new report from Monitoring Analytics. That’s up from $77.78 per MWh in the first three months of 2025.
The report isn’t shy about where we should put the blame: “Data center load growth is the primary reason for recent and expected capacity market conditions, including ... the tight supply and demand balance, and high prices.”"
https://gizmodo.com/power-prices-in-eastern-u-s-spike-76-thanks-to-ai-data-centers-2000759230
More than 100 UK datacentres plan to burn gas to generate electricity
Requests for gas connections by operators amount to more than 15 terawatt hours per year, endangering climate targets
Developers are now increasingly turning to fossil fuels, “in some cases requesting over 100MW of gas power on a permanent basis”.
"[In many places] serious concerns have been raised around data centres guzzling excess water for their cooling systems and consuming vast amounts of energy at the cost of local communities.
"In an energy starved, water-scarce India, these challenges are even more accentuated.
"According to the World Bank, India has 18% of the world's population, but only 4% of its water resources, making it among the most water-stressed countries in the world."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgr417pwek7o
h/t @DoomsdaysCW
Pushback from the inside:
"Activist investors are pushing technology companies to explain how they’re reconciling surging electricity demand for AI with their climate commitments.
The ultimate goal of bringing the proposals is to spur more development of clean energy to power AI, said Kelly Poole, climate and energy coordinator at As You Sow, which promotes corporate responsibility through shareholder advocacy."
Pushback from the EU:
"EU lawmakers want the European Commission to scrap a secrecy clause critics say lets Big Tech hide the energy cost of Europe’s AI boom."
“The US now devotes 6 percent of its total electricity to data centers.”
That could be a significant milestone, as the report warns that "significant community and political pushback starts to occur in nations once their data center footprints have reached the 5 percent consumption level of national grids."
The problems are only likely to get worse though, as tech companies show no signs of slowing down. Annual global data center spending is approaching $1 trillion."
"The “data-centre boom” is driving a surge in gas investment in the US, pushing its fossil-power spending ahead of China.
High demand for electricity to power these data centres has led to companies rushing to build new gas-fired power plants across the country.
This trend, combined with “soaring” gas-turbine prices, drove a threefold increase in US gas‑power investment in 2025 – and the IEA expects this to continue throughout 2026."
https://www.carbonbrief.org/ai-boom-means-us-is-now-investing-more-in-fossil-fuel-power-than-china/
"Investment in grid upgrades, power equipment and electricity generation to support the buildout of data-centre infrastructure around the world hit $105bn in 2025.
This is more than the total invested in the energy sector across the whole of Africa.
The IEA notes that strong demand for gas-power plants for data centres in the US – and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East – is “limiting the availability of turbines for near-term deployment elsewhere in the world”."
https://www.carbonbrief.org/ai-boom-means-us-is-now-investing-more-in-fossil-fuel-power-than-china/
"By 2030, AI's water use will match the needs of 1.3 billion people while its power use triples that of 650 million.
The report finds that AI's environmental cost is being systematically mismeasured. Most existing assessments focus on the carbon emissions. Yet every kilowatt-hour of electricity used to train or run an AI system also carries a water footprint, from cooling and power generation, and a land footprint, from energy infrastructure and supply chains."
https://unu.edu/inweh/news/environmental-cost-of-AIs-Enrgy-use-carbon-water-and-land-footprints
