AI data centers burn tons of energy. Can consumers and the grid adapt?
In a move aimed at pleasing President Donald Trump and avoiding tariffs on imports from China, Apple pledged to invest $500 billion in the U.S. in the next four years. The iPhone maker says it will accelerate plans for a manufacturing facility in Houston that will produce servers to power cloud-based functions of Apple Intelligence. It will also expand capacity at existing data centers in Arizona, Oregon, Iowa, Nevada and North Carolina.
The artificial intelligence boom has brought an explosion in demand for electricity-hungry data centers. The Department of Energy predicts that in the next few years, data center growth will require double or triple the amount of energy it does now. And that’s raising concerns about downstream effects.
Northern Virginia, known as Data Center Alley, is home to more than 250 facilities — the biggest concentration in the world.
“It’s like walking through the inside of a computer,” said Julie Bolthouse, the director of land use with the nonprofit Piedmont Environmental Council.
She said the hulking, concrete campuses have taken over the landscape in Loudoun County.
“The impact really goes well beyond just the footprint of the data centers themselves,” she said.
A December report commissioned by the Virginia Legislature projected data center growth could nearly triple the state’s electricity demand in the next 15 years.
“Essentially, more demand means the need to build more energy infrastructure,” said Lauren Bridges, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. She researches the social and environmental costs of technology.
Bridges said all ratepayers could be stuck with the bill. “This might represent a form of cost shifting where residents are seen to subsidize the cost of the data center industry.”
Those costs aren’t just financial. Many tech companies are investing in nuclear and renewable energy. But demand is spurring growth in natural gas generation and delaying the closure of coal plants, said Logan Burke at the Alliance for Affordable Energy.
“What is it costing us to continue to invest so much money in fossil gas?” he said. “It’s costing us an awful lot.”
Data centers are an economic boon in many regions, but policymakers are starting to pay closer attention to the energy issue, said Ike Brannon, senior fellow at the Jack Kemp Foundation.
“Politicians on both sides do not want to face the wrath of consumers if they’re told that their energy prices are going to go up by 30% or they start having occasional brownouts,” he said.
States including Virginia, California, Ohio and Texas are considering measures to increase data centers’ transparency and accountability.