Just before President Joe Biden this week issued a last-minute order designed to boost tech companies’ artificial intelligence buildout, his own Energy Department issued a report warning that data centers’ energy consumption, water use, and emissions are already skyrocketing amid increasing electricity costs, droughts, and climate disasters.
Biden’s Jan. 14 executive order calls for the Energy and Defense Departments to lease federal lands to private-sector companies to “build AI infrastructure at speed and scale.”
“Today’s Executive Order enables an AI infrastructure buildout that protects national security, enhances competitiveness, powers AI with clean energy, enhances AI safety, keeps prices low for consumers, demonstrates responsible ways to scale new technologies, and promotes a competitive AI ecosystem,” Biden said in a statement announcing the executive order.
The AI industry already uses more energy annually than 16.3 million American households, and studies suggest that energy use is increasing electricity prices for American consumers.
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The executive order comes just one month after a new Department of Energy report that found energy consumption for data centers — particularly AI data centers — is projected to boom in the coming years, accounting for up to 12 percent of the total U.S. electricity use in 2028.
The report, produced by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, found that data center energy use more than doubled from 2017 to 2023, largely due to AI and Bitcoin mining. The spike in energy use comes after years of relatively stable data center energy usage throughout the 2010s.
The kinds of data centers and storage facilities being built have also changed dramatically. Historically, office buildings had on-site storage for their data. That has since changed as many companies have shifted to cloud computing — or off-site, energy-intensive data facilities accessed through the internet.
The report found that in 2023, U.S. data center energy use accounted for 176 terawatt hours — 4.4 percent of all total electricity consumption nationwide, or more than the total amount consumed by all households in California. By 2028, scientists estimate that data center energy use will be between 325 and 580 terawatt-hours per year — roughly 6.7 to 12 percent of all U.S. electricity consumption, or the amount that 30 to 53 million households currently use.
The explosion in data center energy use can impact consumers’ pocketbooks. A November study from the Jack Kemp Foundation, a public policy nonprofit, found that electricity bills could increase by up to 70 percent due to AI data center energy demands.
The data center explosion is also consuming massive amounts of water. In 2014, data centers indirectly used more than 5.6 billion gallons of water for cooling and other energy purposes. According to the new Energy Department report, that indirect water footprint swelled to more than 211 billion gallons in 2023 — more water than 1.76 million U.S. households use per year.
The report’s authors declined to estimate future environmental impacts of the data center boom due to “potential future changes in the electricity mix.” Still, they noted, “With the projected growth of data centers’ energy use in the coming years, indirect water consumption and emissions are also expected to increase.”
Biden’s executive order calls for the new data centers to use clean energy sources, such as geothermal energy. However, the clean energy stipulation may be in jeopardy as President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20.
Trump, who received more than $32 million from the oil and gas industry during the past election cycle, has promised to “Drill, baby, drill” in order to expand the use of fossil fuels and roll back climate change regulations.
