Thanks in large part to the training and running of artificial-intelligence models, the amount of power California data centers are using is surging — as are related environmental and health effects, according to a new report.
The amount of power used by data centers in California nearly doubled between 2019 and 2023, and by 2028 could be more than double the 2023 total, according to a study by UC Riverside researchers published earlier this month by public and environmental advocacy group Next 10. Data-center carbon emissions and water consumption are expected to follow a similar trajectory over the 2019-2028 time period, according to the study.
Meanwhile, pollution-related health costs linked to the state’s data centers more than tripled between 2019 and 2023. Although such costs will likely continue to grow, they’ll likely do so more slowly than power usage in coming years, according to the report.
“The data-center industry in California is growing really fast,” said Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside who has conducted a series of studies on the environmental effects of data centers. “Even though California has a cleaner grid than many other states in the U.S., even still, the environmental impact is growing very quickly.”
San Francisco and the broader Bay Area have served as ground zero for the AI boom. OpenAI and Anthropic — the two most highly valued and best-funded privately held AI companies — are both based in The City, as are a slew of smaller startups. Meta and Google, which offer two of the leading rival models to those offered by San Francisco’s AI giants, are based in Silicon Valley, as is Nvidia, which dominates the market for AI chips. Both Meta and Google have offices in the The City, and Nvidia reportedly just leased space here.
The surge in AI development has brought in a huge amount of venture cash to San Francisco, helped to start buoying The City’s struggling real-estate market and boosted revenue at Google and Nvidia. But the Next 10 report joins a growing collection of studies that indicate that AI’s economic windfall has also had a darker side for the state and its residents.