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According to a new report from the Kansas Institute of Health, data centers for AI and other digital use cases are consuming increasing amounts of energy and water, complicating the work of policymakers and community planners seeking to protect the health and safety of residents.
According to the report, data centers in the United States consumed about 183 TWh of electricity in 2024, accounting for more than 4% of the country’s total electricity use. That demand is expected to grow 133 percent by 2030, to 426 TWh, KHI said, citing data from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Water use is also a growing concern: U.S. data centers consumed about 17 billion gallons of water directly by 2023, KHI said, and “this use could double or quadruple by 2028,” according to a series of scenarios modeled by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Just five years ago, 20 percent of U.S. data centers were already located in water-stressed areas of the country, according to the report.
The institute’s analysis “aims to provide policymakers, public health professionals and communities with objective information about the environmental and public health considerations associated with data center development so they can make informed decisions,” Emma Uridge, a KHI analyst and lead author of the report, said in a statement.
Currently, the electricity generated to run data centers comes 56% from fossil fuels, 22% from renewables and 21% from nuclear, the report states.
Data center growth “is delaying the closing of coal plants, slowing or impeding national, state and local priorities for the clean energy transition,” the report found. “Renewable sources are insufficient to meet both hyperscale data centers and the needs of existing users.”
And data center developers are facing a generation shortage, according to a report from Bank of America analysts. They expect the U.S. to need more than 230 GW of new generation capacity over the next five years, but regulated utilities are expected to add only about 93 GW of credited supply, leaving a gap of more than 100 GW.
Data centers alone could add roughly 125 GW of U.S. electricity load through 2031, BofA analysts said.
Local crackdown on data center development is growing across the country. Last week, New York became the first state to impose a moratorium on data center development, halting construction of large projects for a year while it assesses their environmental impact.
“Policy responses vary and often reflect a tension between promoting state-level economic development interests and balancing local community health and environmental concerns,” KHI noted. “States are primarily concerned with energy reporting, taxpayer protection, and environmental assessment. Local governments have tended to act more directly on land use, zoning, and permitting, driven by community opposition and the immediacy of local resource impacts.”
