{"id":283752,"date":"2025-11-10T18:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T18:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/283752\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T18:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T18:57:07","slug":"if-the-us-has-to-build-data-centers-heres-where-they-should-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/283752\/","title":{"rendered":"If the US Has to Build Data Centers, Here\u2019s Where They Should Go"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tech companies have invested so much money in building data centers<\/a> in recent months, it\u2019s actively driving the US economy<\/a>\u2014and the AI race is showing no signs of slowing down. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg told President Donald Trump last week that the company would spend $600 billion on US infrastructure\u2014including data centers\u2014by 2028, while OpenAI has committed already to spending $1.4 trillion.<\/p>\n

An extensive new analysis looks at the environmental footprint of data centers in the US to get a handle on what, exactly, the country might be facing as this buildout continues over the next few years\u2014and where the US should be building data centers to avoid the most harmful environmental impacts.<\/p>\n

The study<\/a>, published in the journal Nature Communications on Monday, uses a variety of data, including demand for AI chips and information on state electricity and water scarcity, to project the potential environmental impacts of future data centers through the end of the decade. The study models a number of different possible scenarios on how data centers could affect the US and the planet\u2014and cautions that tech companies\u2019 net zero promises aren\u2019t likely to hold up against the energy and water needs of the massive facilities they\u2019re building.<\/p>\n

Fengqi You, a professor in energy systems engineering at Cornell and one of the authors of the analysis, says that the study, which began three years ago, comes at \u201ca perfect time to understand how AI is making an impact on climate systems and water usage and consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AI industry \u201cis growing much faster than we expected,\u201d he adds\u2014especially with the Trump administration\u2019s laser focus on the industry. \u201cThis whole thing is just getting so much momentum right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all data centers are created environmentally equal: a lot of their water and carbon footprint depends on where they\u2019re located. Some US states may have grids that run more on renewable energy, or are making big strides in putting more clean energy on the grid; this greatly lessens the carbon emissions from data centers that draw power from those grids. Similarly, states with less water scarcity are better suited to provide the large amounts of water needed for cooling data centers. (Cooling also constitutes a big part of data center energy use.) The best locations for a data center over the next few years in the US are states that strike a balance between these two inputs: Texas, Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota, the analysis finds, are \u201coptimal candidates for AI server installations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the data center buildout in the US has historically focused on places like Virginia, the data center hub of the US, and Northern California. Being close to Washington, DC, and Silicon Valley was important to data center companies, as were the dense fiber connectivity in those regions and their skilled workforces. Virginia has also offered substantial tax breaks for data centers for years\u2014one technique other states are turning to to lure development. According to Data Center Map<\/a>, an industry tool that tracks data center development, of the 4,000-plus data centers in the US, more than 650 are in Virginia\u2014the most in the country\u2014and California has more than 320, ranking third.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tech companies have invested so much money in building data centers in recent months, it\u2019s actively driving the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,7258,1871,1872,192,79,74,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-283752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-data-centers","12":"tag-emissions","13":"tag-energy","14":"tag-environment","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-water"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}