How do local governments promote data centers?
Data centers are being built in cities, from Santiago, Chile to Zeewolde, Holland, to Ekrufreni, South Africa.
In Brazil, President Luis Inacio President Lula da Silva is directing data centers by waiving major federal taxes on IT-related capital expenditures, according to Reuters.
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If there is no information, it is up to the community member to perform this task of requesting documents, and investigative journalism is attempting to fact-check many of these greenwashing claims.
Researcher Hannah Baracatt probably says
“Data centers are strategic assets that are subject to geopolitical power dynamics and national agendas. Therefore, they are often ingrained in these concepts of economic development, bringing jobs and economic benefits to the community.”
But once the data center comes to town, large tech companies and local governments have not notified the community about the environmental impact on water and emissions, the report says.
In the US, data centers can use up to 9% of the total electricity generated in the country by the end of the decade, more than twice as much current consumption, according to a report from the Electric Power Institute last year.
Why are communities worried about environmental impacts?
AI is ready to increase the amount of water used by data centers, and power-intensive processors have greater cooling requirements than traditional servers.
In Uruguay, during the peak of the country's drought in 2023, Google's planned data centers expect daily water use of 7.6 million liters (approximately 2 million gallons), the equivalent of daily water consumption, according to information obtained by domestic activists.
The data center project is currently suspended.
“Data centers require an exorbitant amount of water and energy, which puts strain on the electrical grid and creates air and noise pollution that are toxic to these communities,” Barakat said.
According to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), data centers focused on AI will consume as much electricity as 100,000 households, and by 2030, the overall annual energy consumption for the year could be slightly higher than Japan's current annual consumption total.
The use of fossil fuels to power these data centers has been criticized by environmental and community groups in places like South Memphis, Tennessee, USA. The campaign is turning off gas turbines that turn off high-tech billionaire AI companies that power the data centers behind the powerful GROK chatbots.
How is the community fighting back?
The report says companies like Microsoft and Amazon generally claim that data centers are increasing water efficiency or generating their own clean energy to power their facilities.
But access to detailed evidence on how such low impact data centers work is opaque at best, often secretive, and “occasionally happens behind many closed doors,” Barakat said.
“If there is no information, it is up to the community member to perform this task of requesting documents, and investigative journalism can be done that attempts to fact-check many of these greenwashing claims.”
The community is mobilizing social media to organize town halls and harnessing its power at government meetings to request details on the impact of data centres with the aim of suspending or halting the construction of data centres.
The story was published with permission from the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Thomson Reuters' charity arm covering humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, human trafficking and property rights. visit https://www.context.news/.
