Newsom touts climate leadership while blocking data center impacts bill

In a recent study conducted by researchers at UC Riverside, the authors found that in just the past few years, data centers in California have seen sharp increases in resource use, with both energy consumption and climate warming emissions nearly doubling, and water use rising even faster. As demand continues to grow, the researchers warn that the resulting strain on the grid could drive additional air pollution and related health impacts, especially when fossil fuel plants are needed to meet peak power needs. But accurately measuring those impacts is difficult because there is little publicly available information about how much energy and water these facilities consume — especially colocation centers, which represent more than 95% of California’s data center market, according to Shaolei Ren, one of the study’s authors. “We just have extremely limited information about the colocation — how much energy they are using, how much water they’re consuming. We simply don’t know,” Ren said.