{"id":232684,"date":"2026-07-01T11:25:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T11:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/232684\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T11:25:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T11:25:30","slug":"data-centers-could-reshape-pittsburghs-environment-and-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/232684\/","title":{"rendered":"Data centers could reshape Pittsburgh\u2019s environment and economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Edgar Thomson Works opened in 1875, few could have imagined that Southwestern Pennsylvania would one day be dotted with former steel mill sites, now called brownfields, in states of repair and reuse<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As the new industrial revolution of AI data centers sweeps the region, it\u2019s just as difficult to crystal ball its effects on the landscape and environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t build your way out of a congestion problem. You have to plan your way out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rob Altenburg, PennFuture<\/p>\n

Over the next 150 years, some environmental advocates and researchers say Southwestern Pennsylvania could see a deluge of hyperscale data centers \u2014 those that cover 10,000 square feet and typically use at least 100 megawatts of electricity. They worry that the facilities will siphon large quantities of local energy and are concerned about effects on water supplies.<\/p>\n

As these resources are pushed to their limits, though, a full transition to clean energy could be in store for the future. <\/p>\n

The data center buildout could also turn out to be narrower than anticipated, as operators focus on \u201cright-sizing\u201d their operations in anticipation of a bursting artificial intelligence bubble.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Poised for growth, but with caution\u00a0<\/p>\n

High-quality coal and river access drove the development of mills and steel towns, and history may be repeating itself.<\/p>\n

\"TwoLauren Posey and Yvonne Sorovacu of Protect PT, a Southwestern PA citizen advocacy nonprofit (Sarah Narrarato\/Pittsburgh Media Partnership)<\/p>\n

Yvonne Sorovacu, an environmental scientist at ProtectPT, said she imagines a future in which little separation exists between data centers and the power generation sites that power them, particularly in rural areas. Established in 2014, Protect PT<\/a> advocates against fossil fuel activities in Westmoreland and Allegheny counties. In Westmoreland County\u2019s Upper Burrell Township, she said fracking well pads could surround the proposed data center campus there in the future.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you think about that buildout, I think about Texas and I think about the landscape there<\/a> and what it looks like from space, and I\u2019m like, \u2018Prepare for parts of our counties to look like that,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

More than 4,300 data centers<\/a>, or facilities that store servers and offer computing services, dot the country. Virginia, home to over 600 data centers with another 500+ in planning<\/a>, is considered the \u201cdata center capital of the world<\/a>.\u201d Other top data center hubs sit in Texas, Arizona, Georgia, California and Illinois, said Dan Diorio, the vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition<\/a>, a membership group for data center operators.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The energy demand for data centers in the U.S. will triple by 2030, according to some estimates<\/a>. As the industry quickly grows in the near term to fill demand, Diorio said the commonwealth has stood out as a tertiary market \u2014 far behind Virginia or Texas, but also \u201cone of the strongest growing markets out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania doesn\u2019t publicly track data centers, but some<\/a> estimates<\/a> show roughly 130 data centers are operating, proposed or under development. At least 12 sites are planned for Southwestern Pennsylvania, according to the crowdsourced Data Center Proposal Tracker<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>A map showing data centers in Pennsylvania as of June 2026, according to trackdatacenters.com<\/a> (Screenshot)<\/p>\n

The commonwealth\u2019s well-established energy industry could make it the next hotbed of hyperscale data centers, said Lauren Posey, an environmental policy advocate for ProtectPT. Only Texas bests the commonwealth in natural and shale gas production, and Pennsylvania outranks all other states in its number of operating coal-fired power plants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The next few decades, however, will be marked by data center operators \u201cright-sizing\u201d their infrastructure, Diorio said. Broad concerns of an AI bubble loom over his members\u2019 heads, and future buildouts will be informed by demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t want to underbuild because then you\u2019re not meeting demand, but you don\u2019t want to overbuild because then you have a stranded asset where you\u2019re not providing a service and you have infrastructure still on the ground that you spend billions of dollars in capital on,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Karen Feridun, a co-founder of the renewable energy advocacy group Better Path Coalition<\/a>, said some global markets are already scaling back their hyperscale data center production.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have already been examples in China<\/a>, among other places, where they\u2019re scaling it down so much, that this kind of massive, hyper-scaler that\u2019s gonna take up football fields worth of space \u2026 that\u2019s just not gonna be necessary,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that we\u2019re gonna end up with a lot of stranded assets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Energy limits may compel clean power<\/p>\n

Rob Altenburg, PennFuture\u2019s senior director for energy and climate, said building more power generation only to meet the demands of increasingly large data centers won\u2019t be sustainable over the long run \u2014 in the same way that additional lanes on a highway won\u2019t cure traffic issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t build your way out of a congestion problem. You have to plan your way out of it, and the [electrical] grid works a lot the same way,\u201d he said. PennFuture<\/a> is an environmental advocacy organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He noted that data centers still face a comparatively energy-efficient competitor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe human brain uses about 20 watts, so you can do intelligent things with a lot less power,\u201d Altenburg said. \u201cThis is the big engineering problem: How do we make these big things use much less power to accomplish their goals? I think that\u2019s probably gonna be a trend, but we\u2019re not heading [in] that direction yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Central processing units, as well as graphic processing units, serve as the brains of data centers. Several of the small pieces of hardware are stored in servers to carry out general computing, graphics processing and AI-related tasks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Researchers are increasingly finding ways<\/a> to make these chips more efficient, and a new market of local startups are finding early success from building more efficient AI chips<\/a> or energy-saving coding techniques<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While the commonwealth\u2019s Governor\u2019s Responsible Infrastructure Development (GRID) Standards<\/a> don\u2019t require data centers to use less energy, they do require operators to commit to building or purchasing their own electric energy before taking advantage of tax credits and permit fast-tracking programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The state will need to produce cheaper forms of energy, such as wind or solar, Altenburg said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Julie McNamara, the director of federal energy policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, also predicts the country\u2019s future energy generation will be \u201cunequivocally clean.\u201d The group<\/a> researches and advocates for policies related to climate change. McNamara said the future could also present new renewable energy options that extend beyond what exists today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Companies known for utilizing hyperscale data centers \u2014 Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon included \u2014 have already been contracting increasing amounts of clean energy. The four companies now collectively contract<\/a> around 135 gigawatts of clean energy, five times more than they did just four years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Water use may drop<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania\u2019s waterways still carry raw materials to mills as they\u2019ve done since the industrial revolution. In this revolution they serve a different, critical function by supplying water to cool data centers.<\/p>\n

Most small-scale data centers, such as the ones that dot Pittsburgh\u2019s North Shore and Downtown, use air to cool their servers, while hyperscale data centers often use water instead in order to save energy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Susquehanna River Basin Commission in March modified its agreement with Amazon Data Services regarding its daily \u201cconsumptive use\u201d \u2014 meaning the water never returns to its source \u2014 of 129,000 gallons in Luzerne County\u2019s Salem Township. For comparison, the average restaurant consumes around 300,000 gallons<\/a> of water in a single year. Another data center proposed for nearby Hazle Township would use 67,000 gallons of water daily if approved by the commission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most power generation plants also need water to cool off, creating a data center-driven \u201cdouble hit\u201d on the water supply, Altenburg said.<\/p>\n

Diorio, however, said that data center operators \u201cdon\u2019t get a pass on any water discharge or water use, water intake\u2026 We have to follow the same rules that any other development follows.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pointed to a study<\/a> conducted by Arizona State University in which researchers found data centers there consume less water than beverage and semiconductor producers.<\/p>\n

More efficient water uses are already emerging. The data center slated for Springdale Borough, for instance, plans to use a closed-loop system<\/a> that requires only an initial withdrawal of water equivalent to an Olympic swimming pool. Newer techniques also directly cool down processors rather than submerging entire servers in water.<\/p>\n

Still, the state\u2019s water suppliers, electric grids and ratepayers will hit their limits at some point, Altenburg said, pushing data centers to become ever more efficient.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Near-term concerns of pollution, health risks<\/p>\n

McNamara said she\u2019s most concerned about what happens in the interim.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that 150-year ballpark is incredible to imagine, that future place. But I worry so much about the near-term years to come. There is so much at stake in these next few years.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition to potentially straining local energy and water supplies, data centers can cause air pollution by running on-site, gas-fired turbines. The resulting noise pollution can also affect nearby people and wildlife.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AA person looks towards the development of Hazelwood Green as they walk along Tecumseh Street in August 2023 (Stephanie Strasburg\/Public Source)<\/p>\n

And when \u201cyou have dirty, noisy businesses, you usually have an environmental justice issue,\u201d Altenburg said, \u201cbecause they tend not to put them in the wealthy neighborhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are also indirect effects, such as air pollution from off-site power generation sites and harm to organisms that live in the waterways from which water is extracted for industrial use.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But similar to how operators must follow water use regulations, Diorio said that they must also follow the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s regulations for backup generators and other on-site power infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In its latest report<\/a>, the U.S. Global Change Research Program noted communities living near oil and gas extraction sites would face increased health issues in the future. Previously mandated by Congress, the research program<\/a> produced annual reports on climate change. An industry-wide effort to reduce emissions could still leave those communities burdened with pollution, according to the report.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Data centers proposed near Pittsburgh, including the Homer City campus, are primarily expected to use natural gas<\/a> to fuel their operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The state has already revived old power generation sites to support new data centers. Even if a complete transition to renewable energy occurred tomorrow, remediating land where oil infrastructure used to exist poses a major financial hurdle to states such as Pennsylvania, McNamara said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe past is shouting at us: \u2018Don\u2019t do this again. We\u2019ve made this mistake before.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Mia Hollie is the economic development and housing reporter for Pittsburgh\u2019s Public Source. She can be reached at [email\u00a0protected]<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This story was fact-checked by Emma Folts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Edgar Thomson Works opened in 1875, few could have imagined that Southwestern Pennsylvania would one day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2116,1131,73,75,74,9880,1128],"class_list":["post-232684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-data-centers","tag-environment","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-semiquincentennial","tag-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}