News : When Big Data Comes to Small Town: Data Center Blog Series Part 3
By Kenny Bruno
This blog is based substantially on research in a Sept. 29, 2025 unpublished paper by Peter Montague
Part I: Fabrications, Hallucinations, Scheming and Untruthfulness
Part II: The Hype in HyperScale
Part III: BYONCE is Possible
Introduction
Way back when, about a year ago, we almost never heard a peep about data centers. Now every day its data center this, data center that. To some they are a bogeyman to be opposed outright, to others an inevitable nuisance, to others a hopeful development, and to still others they’re OK as long as they’re powered by clean energy rather than polluting methane gas.
To the oil and gas industry, they are a pretext to build even more methane burning power plants, because, after all, that is what AI demands, and we can’t possibly deny AI what it “demands.” And we couldn’t possibly meet that “demand” with “alternative” energy like solar and wind. Or could we?
- In this 3-part blog, we look at the hype in hyperscale data centers. In Part I, we look at Generative AI itself, which is what the new giant data centers are serving. In Part II we look at the numbers behind energy needs for new data centers, and why they will raise electricity bills. In Part III we look at some of the real world impacts of data centers, especially around noise, water use, jobs and pollution, and whether those impacts can be avoided.
Part III: Byonce is Possible
In Part I we saw that lying AI can’t be trusted, and neither can the hype around it. In Part II we saw that the AI hype = data center hype = power plant hype, and that the richest companies in the world are taking subsidies and raising your electricity rates. In Part III we’ll review some of the impacts of real world data centers, and explore whether they can be mitigated.
Poorly-designed data centers can create unfair and unnecessary burdens on local communities, including:
Water Use
Some data centers consume large volumes of water for evaporative cooling even though water-free cooling is already available and being used in well-designed data centers;
Noise
Noise levels inside data centers can exceed OSHA standards, which can cause hearing loss. Outside, data centers also typically emit a loud low-frequency hum or buzz 24 hours a day 365 days a year that is very disturbing to humans and wildlife and is difficult to reduce. This constant noise can travel one kilometer (0.6 miles) or more and can cause headaches, stress, and sleep disturbance.
Jobs
Like any project, data centers will hype the jobs being created. But it’s worth looking closely at such claims. Most of the jobs are probably in construction. Of course, construction jobs are usually good jobs, but they probably only last 1 to 2 years. And how many of those jobs will be filled by local people, versus workers brought in from somewhere else?
More fundamentally, how many jobs is AI displacing? Workers, even those getting short-term jobs, must consider the long-term impacts of AI on employment and on union membership. AI, like all robots, is coming for human jobs.
Methane emissions and pollution
One of the biggest controversies around data centers revolves around what kind of energy they will use. In 2024, over 90% of new power plants built in the US were wind or solar. This is because they are cheaper!
According the US Energy Information Administration, here are the average costs of electric power generation, per megawatt hour:
- Combined cycle gas power: $645.55 MWh
- Combustion turbine: $133.88 MWh
- Solar PV: $31.86/MWh
- Solar PV / battery hybrid: $53.44 MWh
- Onshore wind: $29.58MWh
- Offshore wind: $88.15.MWh
According to EIA, Solar PV is cheaper than gas in most regions even without the tax credit.
Methane Gas-fired power is polluting both to the local environment and to the world’s climate. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and “fugitive” emissions are a constant.
Some data centers already are being run entirely on renewable energy with storage, so new well-designed data centers do not need to be powered by dirty fossil fuels. And yet we are hearing that data centers are the reason we need more gas-fired power plants. It’s just not true.
Advantages of renewable energy
Compared to fossil energy, renewable energy with storage is faster and cheaper to build, requires no water, and emits far less greenhouse gas.
Renewable energy has an important advantage over the fossil alternatives: If a renewable-powered data center fails to thrive, its renewable power source will still be useful to replace fossil energy on the grid, thus advancing the urgent energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
No modern data center should ever require fossil energy as its primary power source, and fossil fuels should be the choice of last resort even for long-term backup power.
Specifically, diesel generators for extended backup should be rejected because they must be run frequently to prove they are still working, they produce lots of fine particle pollution, and they are very noisy.
As Amory Lovins and his RMI consulting firm point out, large-scale renewable energy sources can be built within a couple of years but connecting them to the grid requires a wait of 5 to 7 years (depending on location). RMI recommends a solution: build renewable energy with backup storage near a shuttered fossil fuel plant that has previously been connected to the grid. They call these situations “power couples.”
For Swifties, another cute way to describe a good attitude toward clean energy is That’s A Yes, Lord, On Renewables (TAYLOR). A more specific policy is “BYONCE” – Build Your Own New Clean Energy. The energy must be clean (that does NOT include methane gas), it must be new and additional so that you’re not displacing someone else’s clean energy who then has to use dirty energy, and you must build an actual physical power plant. No phantom clean energy credits or pollution trading.
Now we just need someone (Claude?) to figure out what energy policy BadBunny stands for. Contest ends Feb 8, Super Bowl Sunday.
Summary
On the one hand, this blog series has argued that we might not need as many data centers as the hype would have you believe. On the other hand, we have over 5,000 already and a certain number of additional hyperscale data centers seems likely, if not inevitable.
Even if a community does not oppose a data center, there are conditions that will benefit any community, and should be codified in a legally binding community benefits agreement. Data Center owners can commit to:
Substantial financial benefits to the host community:
- Little or no water use
- No noise pollution
- No fine particle air pollution
- No greenhouse gas emissions
- No destruction of farmland
- Siting far from schools, cultural sites and community amenities.
Owners of proposed data centers should show how their proposal minimizes environmental and social harm.
Then let the community decide.