All in the Margins: What AI Data Center Usage Means for Our Climate

Transcript

Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering David Lampert: The proliferation of data centers across the U.S. and across Illinois is associated with increased need for AI and for other forms of data storage and the issues with it are heat and electricity usage. For society, we need a certain amount of electricity and a certain amount of water, and now we're adding data centers on top of that one, so that's going to increase beyond the existing capacity. So estimates that I've seen are about 10 percent of all the electricity in the U.S. is associated with data centers in the near future. And 10 percent isn't a huge amount, but because it's all in the margins, that means that our electricity grid is going to be increasingly stressed to provide that extra 10 percent. And the same with our water systems. So in places where there's not enough water, like in the western U.S., there could be issues because all the water is already being used. Whereas in places like Chicago where we have a lot of water, the issues will be more with the infrastructure. So if you look at water infrastructure, if it's already at full capacity and you need 10 percent more, well now we may need to go in and rebuild the pipelines, the water treatment plants, and all the other things associated with the water pump stations. And those could be significant costs even though it may only be a small amount of increase overall because it's all what I would call "on the margins." Most of the water is used for evaporative cooling. That means that any water usage will consume water that would have been available for something else. There's also going to be increased greenhouse gas emissions and then those will cause more climate change, so they could cause additional problems if we don't figure out how we can supply that additional electricity in a more renewable fashion.