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 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: 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.<\/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 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 Related: \u00a0 Texas Shouldn’t be crypto\u00a0Wild West<\/a><\/p>\n Can infrastructure and policy keep up?<\/p>\n Researchers caution that the explosive growth of AI usage needs to be taken seriously, especially considering the impact AI can have on the environment. But they also say it\u2019s difficult to develop policies or infrastructure at the speed necessary to keep up with the growth of data centers.<\/p>\n The researchers involved in this report experienced those difficulties firsthand. \u201cAs we were doing the study, new models were being introduced. New products were coming into the market and we had to bring them in to do the analysis again,\u201d Madani said. \u201cThat meant that some of our numbers got outdated as we were doing the study.\u201d<\/p>\n People on a group tour look down into Dallas TX1 data center’s server vault at the NTT Data center campus in Garland, Texas, March 4, 2026. (Tom Fox\/Staff Photographer)<\/p>\n That experience, Madani said, reflects the speed of change in this sector, which is a cause for nervousness as much as excitement regarding the future of technology.<\/p>\n \u201cThe data center boom is real, and it’s really growing at a frenetic pace,\u201d said Venky Shankar, the Briarly Endowed Professor of Marketing and academic director for the Briarly Institute of Customer Engagement at Southern Methodist University\u2019s Cox School of Business, who was not involved in the report. Shankar likened the growth of AI and data centers to a train that has already left the station.<\/p>\n![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2f51c7717189fb415e7aac944ae3a201.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
![\"Construction](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/fb90cba71ba5990a33609a20d2411373.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n