{"id":776890,"date":"2026-07-03T04:23:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T04:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/776890\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T04:23:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T04:23:26","slug":"heat-adds-to-strains-on-areas-with-data-centres-intensifies-ai-debates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/776890\/","title":{"rendered":"Heat adds to strains on areas with data centres, intensifies AI debates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A data center built by the Markley Group looms over a residential neighborhood in Lowell, Mass., on June 30.Matt O’brien\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Eileen Castle\u2019s swimming pool, the only one for blocks around, was once a refuge for neighbourhood children on hot summer days.<\/p>\n

But even as temperatures soared this week, Castle, 82, said she won\u2019t be filling the pool \u2013 not with the data centre behind her house buzzing with the sound of its industrial air conditioners and its backup diesel generators belching fumes at unexpected times. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think about the air quality, the water, what effects it has on the kids in the area,\u201d she said on her front stoop as children whirred past on bicycles.<\/p>\n

Hot weather of the kind sweeping the eastern U.S. drives up electricity demand for data centres, adding to their strain on power grids and worsening air quality for surrounding areas. The impact on communities like the racially diverse Sacred Heart neighbourhood in Lowell, Massachusetts underscores why the artificial intelligence industry is feeling so much heat over the fast-sprouting facilities.<\/p>\n

Around the country, data centres have been blamed increasingly for a host of environmental ills. Some tech industry figures say the facilities have become lightning rods for concerns over broader economic and societal changes posed by the AI boom. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A data center built by the Markley Group looms over a ballpark and residential neighborhood in Lowell, Mass., on June 30.Matt O’brien\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

But on sweltering days, it\u2019s hard not to see the effects on Castle\u2019s neighbourhood, which the state government has designated as facing higher environmental and health risks because of a population that\u2019s been historically excluded from political decision-making. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s majority low-income and working family, family members who are working hard every day to just try to put food on the table,\u201d said state Rep. Tara Hong, a Democrat who represents a heavily Cambodian American district in Lowell, a city of about 115,000 people northwest of Boston.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an inclusive place there and that data centre is just smack in the middle of everything,\u201d Hong said.<\/p>\n

A heat wave is \u201calmost the worst situation for data centre operation,\u201d said Shaolei Ren, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who has studied AI\u2019s environmental toll. A data centre\u2019s racks of computer servers run hot and pose a power grid challenge and a water system challenge, Ren said.<\/p>\n

There are two ways to keep data centres running without interruption, Ren said: refrigeration-based cooling, which is energy-intensive, and evaporative cooling, which is water-intensive. <\/p>\n

Data centres lead to a surge in Ottawa grid requests<\/a><\/p>\n

Some data centres will turn to backup diesel generators as a \u201cpreventative measure\u201d to mitigate the likelihood of an outage, Ren said. If the grid is highly stressed, grid operators will sometimes request that data centre operators turn on their generators as \u201cthe last line of defence,\u201d Ren said. <\/p>\n

Diesel emissions can have harmful effects on human health, even with short-term exposure. If too many diesel generators are fired up to supply the electricity during heat waves, Ren said that could be \u201ca disaster for the local air quality.\u2033<\/p>\n

The operator of the Lowell data centre, the Markley Group, said it has planted more than 2,000 trees nearby to improve air quality. CEO Jeff Markley said in a statement to The Associated Press that the company has switched on generators in an emergency only a handful of times.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are not run pro-actively or continuously; they engage only during an actual power disruption to keep critical systems online, plus brief weekly testing of about five minutes per unit, run one generator at a time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Markley said he chose Lowell because of its abundant water for cooling \u2013 supplied by the same Merrimack River that powered 19th century cotton mills in the Industrial Revolution. He said the Lowell facility uses about 118,000 gallons of water per day at the peak of summer, a small fraction of the city\u2019s daily consumption.<\/p>\n

Castle, a lifelong resident, was among those who welcomed the Markley Group a decade ago when it first started building on the site of an abandoned Prince spaghetti factory that had employed generations of neighbours from 1939 to 1997. But about two years ago, when the Markley Group plopped its second cooling tank behind her above-ground swimming pool, along with a growing number of surveillance cameras, the relationship had soured.<\/p>\n

In response to growing opposition, Lowell\u2019s City Council voted 10-0 in February to pass a moratorium that blocks further data centre expansion for a year.<\/p>\n

Opinion: Hamilton just hit pause on all AI data centres. This is big<\/a><\/p>\n

Data centre electricity use has grown in the last few years, said Jonathan Koomey, a researcher who has been studying the computing warehouses for 30 years. But it\u2019s \u201cvery much a local phenomenon,\u201d he said. On a national scale, Koomey said demand growth has been moderate in recent years and he doesn\u2019t expect that to change. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a national crisis. It\u2019s not explosive growth nationally,\u201d he said. But in communities surrounding data centres, there are environmental costs, local economic costs, traffic and other concerns that need to be accounted for, Koomey added. <\/p>\n

When temperatures climb into triple digits \u2013 as they\u2019re expected to this week in New England \u2013 it\u2019s harder to push heat out of a data centre. Keeping it cool then requires more power, as is true of commercial buildings and homes. That can put a strain on power grids and can pose a \u201creal risk\u201d of power outages, Koomey said. <\/p>\n

That strain looks different from the typical summer AC rush. In those instances, systems operators are dealing with \u201ca lot of small loads\u201d that are \u201cnot 100% co-ordinated\u201d when individuals turn on their home air conditioners, which is to the power system\u2019s benefit, Koomey said. <\/p>\n

Opinion: AI data centres are becoming the wedge issue of our era<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the challenges that the data centre operators face is that these data centres are pretty big loads. They are big enough that they have to think about how to co-ordinate them and make sure that they\u2019re not all cutting off at the same time or coming on at the same time,\u2033 he said.<\/p>\n

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a non-profit that develops and enforces standards for the utility industry, recently issued an alert about the \u201cunprecedented challenges from a surge in large power consumers\u201d and developed guidelines to mitigate the \u201cimmediate risks posed\u2033 by AI data centres. <\/p>\n

Tensions ran so high in Lowell this week that police officers temporarily detained a 14-year-old girl who spoke out of turn at a city-led community forum fielding input on data centre zoning.<\/p>\n

Opinion: AI data centres\u2019 voracious thirst for water makes their environmental footprint even bigger<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not hurting anyone,\u201d the girl shouted Monday evening after police officers escorted her from a middle school auditorium. \u201cWe just don\u2019t want data centres!\u201d<\/p>\n

A coalition of data centre opponents is increasingly clashing with electricians employed by Markley and other data centre backers who say the facility boosts Lowell\u2019s ties to the tech industry.<\/p>\n

Criticized for calling police to the contentious meeting and later asking an officer to remove the girl, Lowell Mayor Erik Gitschier, whose office is non-partisan, told local talk radio station WCAP he didn\u2019t know her age at the time and defended his efforts to try to bring decorum to a topic he said deserves debate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was warm out,\u201d he said. \u201cYou had people who had definite, passionate positions and they were screaming.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A data center built by the Markley Group looms over a residential neighborhood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,901,276,277,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-776890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alberta","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}