Data centers house large groups of networked computer servers and related infrastructure designed to process, store, and distribute vast amounts of digital data. They are also a cash crop for fossil fuel expansion. They demand massive amounts of energy, driving the construction of new gas pipelines, coal plants, and nuclear facilities, and drain needed water sources, in the process. As revealed in ‘The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in The South,’ data centers are creating a new wave of environmental and economic extraction in the South—similar to petrochemical “sacrifice zones.”
The information provided below has been gathered from various sources.
Summary
- The South is now the U.S. epicenter of data centers, with $200 billion in projects underway.
- More than 230 data center locations nationwide were in communities already highly overburdened by environmental pollutants.
- Low-income Black communities face the harshest pollution exposure from these plants, while Black workers are disproportionately in roles most vulnerable to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation. If AI growth continues at its current pace, the wealth gap between Black and white households could widen by $43 billion annually within the next two decades because of disparities in who it serves.
Energy
- Data centers already use 8.9% of U.S. electricity (projected to reach 12% by 2028, 56% from fossil fuels).
- Electric bills could increase by 8% nationally by 2030.
- Duke Energy has projected explosive new demand from data centers—equivalent to 4 to 6 nuclear power plants—fueling approval of new gas plants even though state law requires decarbonization.
- Data centers draw power from the local utility grid, and rely on backup generators that burn diesel fuel or natural gas.
Water
- 40% of data centers have been sited in areas of high or extremely high water stress
- Only half of all data center operators track their water use
- Some facilities are permitted to use more water a day than 49,000 Americans use – up to several million gallons of water a day.
Air Quality
- Power plants, relying on fossil fuel, natural gas, or coal, will increase air pollution
- Diesel backup generators, installed at data centers, emit volatile organic compounds, nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxides, and particulate matter — all regulated air pollutants the EPA labels as hazardous to human health.
- Air pollutants emitted by data centers nationwide could trigger nearly 20,000 asthma symptom cases a year
Noise
- Noisy cooling fans run around the clock – harming data center staff, nearby communities, and local wildlife
- Data centers produce between 85 – 95 dBA, well above the World Health Organization guidelines on human noise exposure
- Data center noise can trigger stress, sleep loss, anxiety, heart risks, and in severe cases, tinnitus or hearing loss.
- One resident near one of the country’s largest data centers described the constant whine of industrial chillers as “somebody in pain, crying, crying constantly and moaning in pain.”
Cumulative Health impacts
- Annual public health costs from electricity generation for data centers could reach between $5.7 billion and $9.2 billion.
- Big Tech data buildouts have already led to $5.4 billion in public health costs
Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Repression
- Machine surveillance is being super-charged by large AI models
- Big Tech provides the cloud and algorithms ICE uses to target, detain, kidnap, and deport people.
- AI-driven systems process mass surveillance data—facial recognition (including from Google Photos), WhatsApp memberships, social media, phone contacts, and cellular information
- Data centers and AI have already become one backbone of military violence. The Israeli military has used four digital tools, in violation of international humanitarian law, to murder Palestinians, employing both Israeli and American technology companies, at unprecedented levels and at faster rates.
- Colonial surveillance tools like Pegasus, created by the Israeli NSO Group, are now in use globally to hack journalists, human rights defenders, and activists.
Economic Equity
- The AI boom could represent the ‘most efficient upward redistribution of wealth’ in modern history
- AI infrastructure is competing directly with housing for capital.
- ‘Data centers and AI, rather than deliver efficiency, productivity, and progress, deliver higher bills, frozen markets, and hidden costs’
In NC (to date):
- Currently has 100 data centers.
- In Richmond County, Amazon is planning a $10-$13 billion, 800-acre ‘computing campus,’ threatening to worsen water issues.
- West of Charlotte, a ‘data center corridor’ is underway: Apple’s Catawba County site is part of its $500 billion U.S. expansion strategy, Microsoft is preparing four new facilities in the area, and Google is planning an expansion of its Caldwell County operations.
- Tarboro voted to reject a $6.4 billion facility. In Apex, opposition is mounting to a proposed “digital campus” on 190 acres of farmland.
