A look at what’s happening in California shows that even in an environmentally progressive state, unhealthy emissions and resource depletion is a problem needing a solution, an academic report says.
Allowing data centers to get through the permitting process quicker if they’re energy and water efficient and located in areas with abundant clean power and water is one way to manage data center growth while minimizing their negative impact, according to a report by researchers from the University of California at Riverside and Next 10, a policy group.
The report focuses on California — the third biggest data center state behind Virginia and Texas — but its implications go further as other states look to see how the state is addressing its data center impacts.
“California can continue to demonstrate that economic growth in the digital sector can be compatible with ambitious climate action and community well-being, setting a model for other states and regions to follow,” says the report, released this week.
Disproportinate impact
Even though two-thirds of California’s power is produced using clean energy, the state is seeing increasing environmental impacts from the growing percentage of power going to data centers, says the report.
Between 2019 and 2023, electricity use by California data centers increased 95%, and projections are for that to increase to as much as 356% by 2028, the report says. That means data centers would be consuming 25.3 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of 2.4 million households.
Carbon emissions from the state’s data centers are also skyrocketing, almost doubling from 1.24 million tons in 2019 to 2.38 million in 2023, and they’re projected to reach up to 5.56 million tons by 2028 — an increase of 348%, the report says.
Water consumption is increasing at a similar rate because of the way the facilities rely on large amounts of water to keep their systems cool, creating a problem for a state that’s already facing a water crisis.
“Volumes of fresh water for cooling and electricity generation … could rise to 116 billion liters annually — a concern in a state that regularly faces drought and water shortages,” says Shaolei Ren, associate professor in UCR’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering and co-author of the report.