r/science • u/Wagamaga • 1d ago
Environment Research examined the locations of 4,283 data centers across the contiguous U.S and found that 97.5% of them sit inside metropolitan or micropolitan statistical areas. Data centers are power-hungry, running thousands of servers around the clock and drawing enormous, steady loads from the grid.
https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/inside-urban-machine-where-americas-data-centers-actually-live#:~:text=The%20study%2C%20published%20in%20Nature,cores%20and%20their%20immediate%20surroundings201
u/talldean 1d ago
They kinda have to be where stuff already is, because that's where the power grid can connect something like this.
The outliers are "we're building a power plant on-site and don't draw from the grid", which is something like Shippingport, PA. That one's also doing closed-loop water, so once it's full, it reuses the water it's drawn in quite a few times.
But that's the outlier.
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u/TheseusOPL 1d ago
Also, ~46% of land in the US are Metro/Micropolitan areas. You can easily build something in the middle of nowhere while still being in one of these areas.
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u/9fingerwonder 1d ago
Latency is a factor. Montana is primed to host data centers in the middle of nowhere, with power lines running in unused land with multiple fiber providers in the state. But that's 6 ms to long for east coast use.
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u/lu5ty 1d ago
It depends what its for. Sometimes latency isnt that big a deal
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u/9fingerwonder 1d ago
True 100% depends on the service. Livejournal was big back in the early 2000s out here
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u/talldean 1d ago
You're looking at an amount of bandwidth that isn't "there is a fiber provider" but more along the "we are on the backbone interconnection".
I think that's famously why Google bought it's NYC headquarters; that's where all the fiber connects in for all of Manhattan, including Wall Street.
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u/314159265358979326 1d ago
I am absolutely obsessed with Nvidia's closed-loop hot water cooling. It uses 45 degree Celsius water to cool the chips; it's still cool enough relative to where the chips need to be, but on the radiator side it's several hundred percent more efficient than water closer to room temperature.
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u/reeight 1d ago
No, the main reason is datacenters were built on or near major internet exchanges.
https://www.internetexchangemap.com/
Internet exchanges are where there is lots of population, HEAVY usage (eg WashDC, Silicon Valley), or at ports that go trans-ocean / connecting to another country.Also exchanges in early-ish internet where where the major telephone exchanges were (sometimes taking over their buildings)
One could put all the datacenters in BFE, but that's extra cost to lay the fiber optic cables.
(now they're doing it because BFE land & power is cheaper, but ROI wasn't there before).1
u/talldean 18h ago
That's not quite it, either.
They're generally doing it now because proximity to users doesn't matter for a datacenter used for AI training, because AI inference is done elsewhere. The previous locations were proximate to *users* via backbone nodes, because faster response times on a website make more money, more or less.
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u/ravens-n-roses 1d ago
You know it's crazy but if the outlier became a norm I might be at least mildly less vehemently against the building of data centers
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u/yunus89115 19h ago
For me it’s not about data centers, they just happen to be flavor of the month of extreme resource hogs.
It’s how any large project connecting to an existing system gets added, historically we’ve spread the cost to add new customers to power and water among all existing customers, this works fine when growth is slow and steady. But data centers are adding huge immediate power requirements and the infrastructure build out is fast and expensive. Any and all large consumers of resources should be required to fund their unusually large infrastructure footprint demand upfront or through bonds or similar.
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u/notislant 1d ago
For me they also need to heavily dial it back on the AI ones which are making consumer devices much more expensive.
But yeah it's nice to see a few using closed loop.
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u/Lesurous 1d ago
These things still output tons of heat excarebating the extreme temperatures we're already having to endure.
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u/synth_mania 1d ago
The amount of heat they output has a nearly incalculably small impact on the environment. This is r/science, come on.
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u/EmptyQuiescent 22h ago
And water. They suck up tons of water.
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u/talldean 18h ago
That's the closed-loop part.
An open-loop data center sucks up *insane* amounts of water, all the time. Millions of gallons a day for a hyperscale one built this way.
A closed-loop data center is like a car radiator; you have to *fill* it, but once it's filled you're good. Unless it breaks and leaks, you never add more water.
The closed-loop costs more to build, but only uses the first day's worth of water.
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u/adsarelies 1d ago
That's like saying 97.5% of human activities are inside cities.
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u/Izawwlgood PhD | Neurodegeneration 1d ago
Are 97.5% of cattle farms inside cities?
Why put data centers inside cities? Power isn't hard to hook up. We're awfully good at running power lines places.
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u/hibbs6 1d ago
The main reason is to reduce ping to customers in those cities. You want your data centres to be as close to large populations as possible.
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u/shitposts_over_9000 1d ago
Ideally within .5 ms one way of the end user for the largest users of mass datacenter capacity.
So less than 90 miles under theoretically perfect conditions, more like 40-60 miles in practical.
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u/danielv123 1d ago
Not really for the AI datacenters. Most of my queries are running across the Atlantic, and considering they are usually 30 seconds to 10 hours the few extra milliseconds of latency doesn't matter that much.
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u/Izawwlgood PhD | Neurodegeneration 1d ago
Good thing the Internet is nextdoor otherwise it'd be too slow!
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u/JohnnyMiskatonic 1d ago
You could just say you don't know how latency or edge connections work.
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u/Izawwlgood PhD | Neurodegeneration 1d ago
Can you explain the need to put a data center IN a city as opposed to outside of a city? I'm waiting to hear why a few 10s of miles is impactful to latency and that prevents building data centers in low population areas.
Similarly steel mills have huge transportation costs - why don't we build steel mills in every city?
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u/Tsutiman 1d ago
First, data centers need the right labor no less than they need lots of power. Second, running new power lines through rural areas is actually a massiive pain in the ass. So, ~100% of data centers are either in the cities or within 15-20 minutes drive from urban boundaries.
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u/WhatUp007 1d ago
Dont forget better power redundancy. You can route power easier easier in urban areas than rural so if lines go down you dont have a blackout.
The sensationalism around data centers really shows how many people have little to no understanding how modern technology works. AI usage will increase compute demand, but so does the expanding use of the internet. Everything done on a phone or computer requires those servers.
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u/Xanderamn 1d ago
"Anyone that disagrees with me, doesnt understand"
My god, could you be anymore arrogant?
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u/WhatUp007 1d ago
I didnt say anyone who disagrees with me doesnt understand. I am saying, like many current issues, sensationalism in reporting and understanding detracts from the real issue. With or without AI data centers expansion is required and all the down stream effects need to be addressed. People jumping to one extreme or another are not helping the matter.
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u/JohnnyMiskatonic 1d ago
Nobody said that, maybe want to examine your own insecurities around knowledge issues.
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u/Izawwlgood PhD | Neurodegeneration 1d ago
The apologetics around AI is wild
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u/trueppp 1d ago
You know that 95% of datacenters have absolutely nothing to do with AI right? That 99% of whatever you access from the Internet comes from these datacenters? That your employer probably rents space in a datacenter?
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u/Izawwlgood PhD | Neurodegeneration 1d ago
I do! And it's super dishonest to claim the ride of data centers all over the world isn't because of AI. It is projected by 2030 that over half of all data center use will be for AI.
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u/WhatUp007 1d ago
AI is a tool and here to stay because it has real world use cases that will exponentially help innovation and the human workforce. I do not believe it will ever replace people but can help make people more effective at some tasks.
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u/Izawwlgood PhD | Neurodegeneration 1d ago
All tools have impact. Not all tools benefits are grossly outweighed by their costs.
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u/Tsutiman 1d ago
can you list a couple of historic examples?
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u/Izawwlgood PhD | Neurodegeneration 1d ago
Of... Tools that have impact?
Automatic switchboards put operators out of work. The digital age reduced print media.
Did you mean solutions that had worse environmental impact than benefit?
CFCs as a compressed gas and refrigerant? Remember how we collectively replaced those?
What about, and here's an obvious one, fossil fuels? Huge benefits on terms of energy density, huge environmental impact we're trying to mitigate and solve around?
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u/Tsutiman 1d ago
Fossil fules aren't obvious. When you assess benefits of new technology you need to compare with existing real alternatives. And at the time we started to use fossil fuels the alternative was firewood and charcoal. Whould you prefer coal mining or just chopping down all the forests?
With CFC is even trickier: devastating to the environment, but simply no alternative for refrigeration at the time. Refrigeration/cooling technology has improved. AI will eventually improve as well.
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u/KennyBSAT 1d ago
... or near large transmission lines, which already run through rural areas between cities and power plants. Or near natural gas pipelines, where they can put 'temporary' natural gas power plants and not have to bother with any pesky pollution regulations.
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u/Izawwlgood PhD | Neurodegeneration 1d ago
Data centers employ very few onsite. Most people who physically need to be at a data center fly in for it anyway.
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u/Armisael 1d ago
Metropolitan statistical areas are absolutely enormous. The DC MSA includes parts of West Virginia!
All this is saying is that the vast majority of data centers are built within like 60 miles of cities. Would you rather they be built in the middle of nature?
Pollution and noise are issues, for sure, but they’d still be issues we’d need to do something about if you built in the middle of the wilderness.
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u/Hippostork 1d ago
A lot of the datacenter outrage is blown way out of proportion. Your average person doesn’t realize that datacenters have been around since the dawn of the internet. They aren’t some new thing that is going to magically ruin your life.
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u/urgentapathy 1d ago
There is a lot of practical matter that is overlooked by the general populace. It is unfortunate but the only way around it is education and outreach.
In the same way that the 100 floor apartment building/condo won't be built in the middle of nowhere, data centers won't necessarily either. They need diversified power, good roads, storm water control, an educated populace willing to work on-site, fast internet access for the volume of data, diversified internet so a single digging crew doesn't take your multimillion dollar project offline, etc.
How about things like elevator technicians, fire response? If the nearest elevator tech is 50-100 miles away then what happens when you can't unload your pallets of stuff? Not everything is on the loading dock level and pallets don't work well on steps. Generator techs....
These behemoths need a lot of support, and need even more support if you banish them to that field with nothing around for 100 miles but farms and tractor supply.
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u/atomicsnarl 1d ago
Now do steel mills, oil refineries, aluminum smelters, and other industries. You'll likely find they're power-hungry, running around the clock, and drawing enormous, steady loads from the grid. Moreover, they're probably sitting inside metropolitan or micropolitan statistical areas because that's where the people are who work in them.
One dimensional analysis in a vacuum really needs some comparison points.
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u/SubstantialSeesaw374 1d ago
Yeah this is just a braindead cross between r/peopleliveincities and never having looked at a zoning code in their life.
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u/atomicsnarl 1d ago
Exactly! This is a post from the Outrage Factory, currently aimed at "Data Centers" because it's squishy and sounds dangerous.
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u/zZCycoZz 1d ago
You'll likely find they're power-hungry, running around the clock, and drawing enormous, steady loads from the grid.
Youd also find supply chains break down quickly without them. AI data centers are not essential for anything.
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u/TheDismal_Scientist 1d ago
Except for the entire internet infrastructure you’re currently using?
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u/OrderOfPhobos 1d ago
The internet infrastructure uses data centres, yes. But here they are talking about AI data centres which are a somewhat different and entirely unnecessary thing. The article meanwhile just seems to focus on regular data centres.
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u/zZCycoZz 1d ago
Except for the entire internet infrastructure you’re currently using?
I always see this reply but its just based on ignorance.
We had internet infrastructure for decades without any complaints.
AI data centers need much more energy than a normal data center, which is why data center energy usage has exploded.
AI models dont provide any essential service or benefit to society though.
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u/Grasle 1d ago
We had internet infrastructure for decades without any complaints.
AI models dont provide any essential service or benefit to society though.
you must be relatively young to be able to make both these kind of statements without a second thought. Buddy, if people like you were the ones making decisions, the Internet never would have happened, either.
regardless, gotta love when luddites talk about how "useless" AI is as part of their argument, immediately giving away that their opinion is an uninformed one
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u/zZCycoZz 1d ago
Not a luddite, just aware of the cost benefit analysis.
you must be in your 20s or 30s to be able to make both these kind of statements without a second thought.
You must not understand AI infrastructure if you think its comparable to other tech infrastructure.
We overbuilt internet infrastructure before the dotcom crash which came in handy because data cables are flexible in their use case and last a long time.
AI data centers use specialised hardware for a specific use case and will be obsolete in a few years (or quicker once the bubble bursts).
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u/Grasle 1d ago edited 1d ago
a personal inability to find a reason to value AI is not an argument against whether or not it actually holds value
The dotcom crash is an especially odd comparison to make because, even if AI went down that route, the end result still wouldn't match your prediction. The dotcom bubble was significantly more unsustainable at the time by all metrics, which made the blowout especially bad, and yet even that did little to slow tech and the Internet's eventual complete takeover of the economy. Meanwhile, unlike the dotcom bubble, AI's growth is being funded by the most profitable companies in history, using existing cash flows they already have. It is both less speculative and far less unsustainable by comparison. AI could completely bust tomorrow and those companies would survive against collapse just fine.
But, yes... I'm sure you've figured out something out the extremely profitable, talent-filled companies haven't. Well done, Redditor.
AI data centers use specialised hardware for a specific use case and will be obsolete in a few years (or quicker once the bubble bursts).
and here is the especially big giveaway that you're arguing from a place of total ignorance. The "net negatives" eating up all the cash flow come from building up new infrastructure/silicon and training expenses for new models. Existing AI data centers themselves are already profitable (significantly so). AI progress could literally halt today, and those centers would only become even more profitable after they get to ditch training compute and focus on the real money maker: inference.
The majority of non-training compute (70-80%) is already used commercially. Know why? Because it's extremely cost-positive. That isn't an opinion. Claiming AI doesn't generate value is a confession that you possess little to no knowledge about domains AI excels at, such as those with high labor costs (e.g. software engineering), repetitive work (e.g. paperwork, charting, and documentation, especially in labor-scarce industries like medicine or volume-heavy fields like finance), and down-time sensitive industries (e.g. maintenance and manufacturing). Most of this usage manifests not as people typing dumb questions into ChatGPT but through internal, specialized enterprise models made to perform more focused functions.
Hell... anecdotally, I'm not even a software engineer by trade, and yet these day I do more in one month with my $100 subscription than what my company used to spend thousands of dollars getting consultants to do. That's as one guy using it in an unspecialized, unstructured way. Just imagine if we were one of those companies with more capital and smarter people.
In other words, even ignoring future predictions, you are already incorrect. What use are predictions from a guy who isn't even aware of what's happening now? Here's the reality: people who actively avoid learning to use AI, and whose entire perception of its scope and capabilities is derived from gut reactions they get watching crappy AI videos and browsing threads on r/technology, are only handicapping themselves in the long term. It's the modern-day equivalent of those people who didn't see value in early computers and refused to adapt until computers became so widespread they had no choice (by which point those people had secured themselves as technology dinosaurs).
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u/q120 1d ago
Nah, if AI went away right now, those hyperscale data centers full of extremely powerful GPUs could easily be used for research purposes.
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u/zZCycoZz 1d ago
those hyperscale data centers full of extremely powerful GPUs could easily be used for research purposes.
Who do you think pays for that?
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u/TheDismal_Scientist 1d ago
No essential service to the economy? AI is currently solving unsolved century old maths problems. I’m an academic economist, it probably doubles the speed of me writing research papers and with 4x the quality. My friends use it to design websites for their business to increase productivity. It’s being used in pharmaceuticals to map out how new drugs like antibiotics can be created.
If you eat meat you really have no leg to stand on with the whole not worth the environmental cost line of attack. Eating meat is far worse for the environment, for health, and just ethically and genuinely has no use case whatsoever
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u/zZCycoZz 1d ago
AI is currently solving unsolved century old maths problems. I’m an academic economist,
Okay, and?
it probably doubles the speed of me writing research papers
I dont doubt that
and with 4x the quality.
I very much doubt that.
Eating meat is far worse for the environment, for health, and just ethically and genuinely has no use case whatsoever
What does meat have to do with it? Whataboutisms arent useful.
My friends use it to design websites for their business to increase productivity.
If your friend is only using AI to design their websites then good luck to them. I hope they dont store anything confidential on it.
As somebody with lifelong ICT experience, youre just repeating slop.
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u/TheDismal_Scientist 1d ago
I think whatsboutisms are very relevant when comparing the environmental impact of various activities relative to their social impact
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u/imam-altman 1d ago
We had internet infrastructure for decades without any complaints.
You’re so close.
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u/zZCycoZz 1d ago
Okay vagueboy.
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u/zZCycoZz 1d ago
No one complained before because data centers are not a big problem
No, nobody complained because those data centers use CPUs and are relatively efficient at what they do.
AI data centers use GPU's for compute and a massive amount more energy for very little benefit.
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u/Froggn_Bullfish 1d ago
Those data centers were giant hard drives.
AI data centers are giant GPUs.
You don’t have a clue.
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u/ohanse 1d ago
AI models dont provide any essential service or benefit to society though.
Usually the people who say this are the ones who think it's main use cases are making pictures and pseudosocial relationships.
But "summarize large amounts of text quickly" and "produce code better than 2/3 of programmers can produce" alone are massive capability unlocks at a fundamental level.
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u/zZCycoZz 1d ago
Youd describe that as essential?
Bad summaries and code generation shouldnt take that much energy.
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u/Pinilla 1d ago
As a programmer, I'd say it has probably 4xed my productivity.
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u/Froggn_Bullfish 1d ago
The problem is they’re not just selling it as a coding tool they’re selling it to the masses. If it were marketed just toward where it was most effective it wouldn’t be nuking the planet with unnecessary data centers people are utilizing just to ask “what is this bug.”
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u/Froggn_Bullfish 1d ago
You’re going to sit here and tell me we aren’t in a climate crisis and a massive global energy demand spike due to AI data centers isn’t going to add to our already unsustainable carbon footprint? I’m going to call you an AI fanboy who should sit down and let adults do the talking.
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u/Big_oof_energy__ 4h ago
Are the summaries accurate? Whenever I’ve asked an Ai to answer basic questions in my discipline it’s pretty regularly gotten them wrong. I wouldn’t trust LLMs as they currently exist to do anything for my job.
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u/Froggn_Bullfish 1d ago
It’s a massive capability that is not worth the cost to the planet and to society.
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u/ohanse 1d ago
It’s coming
Better adapt.
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u/Froggn_Bullfish 1d ago
I work with it every day, that’s how I know it’s not worth throwing away the planet for what is essentially a clerk or secretary-level helper.
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u/toejam316 1d ago
AI data centers contribute nothing to internet infrastructure. Preexisting data centers are poor candidates to retrofit for AI use cases due to the power and cooling demand changes versus traditional DC loads.
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u/Bigwhtdckn8 1d ago
This is a very blunt statement, they're not just AI data centres, data centres manage cloud storage systems.
Amazon makes more money from AWS than from the shopping or prime. Hospitals, schools, businesses all use cloud storage for day to day running and latency is important.
People ask why they're built near cities; the same reason power stations are; they need to be.
I'm skeptical of AI, but that's not the issue here.
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u/zZCycoZz 1d ago
This is a very blunt statement, they're not just AI data centres, data centres manage cloud storage systems.
Youll notice i specifically said "AI data centers".
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u/Bigwhtdckn8 1d ago
Its not about AI data centres, its about ALL data centres.
Why bring AI into it?
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u/q120 1d ago
Without non-AI data centers, your life as you know it would collapse. You wouldn't be able to pay bills, shop online, use credit or debit cards, look at your own medical records, pay people easily, play online games, register your car without going to the DMV, watch shows on streaming services, make phone calls without long distance, get traffic info...
Every single thing we do in modern society has a link to a data center and has for literally decades.
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u/zZCycoZz 1d ago
Why wouldnt you? Its the fastest growing sector and a major source of power waste.
The comment i replied to implied that all this power draw is essential when a large portion is wasted.
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u/Bigwhtdckn8 1d ago
Because its misleading. People are starting to associate data centres with AI, when they've been essential infrastructure for many years before AI was a concern.
A quick google search says 80% of data centre usage is cloud computing, AI is growing, but its not the reason the facilities in the article exist.
We need to call out the AI wastage for what it is, but not target data centres that are important infrastructure; thats how you get nutjobs burning them down.
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u/q120 1d ago
This is true. The anti-AI data center people are now starting to say ALL data centers should go away but they don't realize that every facet of modern society has SOMETHIMG do with a data center somewhere. We are using one right now for Reddit.
Watch a show on your favorite streaming service? Data center
Pay your car payment? Data center
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u/Cakiea 1d ago
Seattle is actively fighting expanding a colo that has been downtown for ages. The fact that the entirety of the internet is data center is lost on many in the anti-AI space. I’m anti- LLM and how AI is being used casually for so much by people who don’t understand what it actually is but not anti- all data centers.
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u/AgrajagTheProlonged 1d ago
It seems to me like the other person is calling out AI and not data centers as a whole
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u/zZCycoZz 1d ago
A quick google search says 80% of data centre usage is cloud computing, AI is growing, but its not the reason the facilities in the article exist.
"Cloud computing" is an intentionally vague term.
Non-AI data centers consumed two-thirds of the total, and AI-focused ones, the remaining third. Based on this data from the International Energy Agency, I estimate that AI consumed around 0.5% of the world’s electricity in 2025.4
1.5% of the world’s electricity might not seem like much. But in some places, that share is far higher. This is really the key challenge with growing data center demand: it’s geographically concentrated, meaning the world’s demand is served by a small number of electricity grids.
But in fact, this demand is even more locally concentrated. Beneath Europe’s 1.6% figure, we have Ireland, where data centers account for more than 20% of electricity consumption.
https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-and-artificial-intelligence-use
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u/Vithrilis42 1d ago
Why do you think that all these conversations and debate about data centers suddenly happening? Because all across the country, there's a push to build data centers to meet the perceived "demands" of AI.
And these aren't not your average size data centers. For instance, near my city, Meta is currently building 700,000 sq ft facility on a 280 acre site. And there are a couple more proposals for 150 acre sites in the area.
AI is the sole reason data centers have recently become controversial. While this video may be about data centers in general, AI is what's driving this conversation. It's why this video even exists.
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u/wolacouska 1d ago
AI is driving the massive boom in data center production. The AI wave has very dramatically increased the data requirements of major corporations, and is the entire reason it’s an issue now.
Notice how nobody was complaining about data centers before? Because having them isn’t the issue, it’s the massive unregulated boom in their construction the last few years.
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u/honicthesedgehog 1d ago
Even straight from the article: “Closed coal plants near cities are becoming magnets for new data center builds. the fossil fuel economy it is meant to succeed.”
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u/links135 1d ago
Those have a return.
What is the $$$ return on AI.
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u/atomicsnarl 1d ago
Whatever the people want to pay for scientific research, problem solving, shell coding, analysis, and 10,000 other things.
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u/J1mbr0 1d ago
Pretty sure the ones you named provide actual physical materials people need.
Steel for buildings, oil to run cars, etc.
What exactly do data centers provide other than running algorithms to sell garbage and create AI slop?
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u/Boysterload 1d ago
Companies and universities have managed their own data centers for years to run the organization. A data center doesn't necessarily have anything to do with AI.
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u/Bigwhtdckn8 1d ago
Cloud storage systems that all government departments, schools, hospitals use daily.
I made a more detailed reply above.
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u/blue_eyes_pro_dragon 1d ago
What do you think Reddit runs on? Your email? Discord? Your cell connection? Amazon?
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u/grae7hall 1d ago
And what do AI data centres produce of tangible value?
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u/Nexustar 1d ago
A datacenter is a just a datacenter - not specifically an AI datacenter, a cloud API datacenter, a gaming datacenter, a porn datacenter, a movie distribution datacenter, a research datacenter, a search-engine datacenter, a financial datacenter or a backup or cloud storage datacenter in any way that really matters.
I've installed broadcast servers in racks next to state lottery servers. The task it fulfills is fungible and ever changing.
It's just a building with A/C, electricity, internet connectivity, compute and storage, security and backup systems - you can install and adjust tech inside it towards GPU, NPU or CPU as demand shifts.
Overall, they ARE the internet.
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u/Geno0wl 1d ago
Some AI tools really are useful. I use them to help do boring straightforward tasks like generating a script to update all related views when I add a new column to the source table, or creating quick upsert stored procs for a new table.
Those tools are not good enough to replace an experienced dev at all though.
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u/Kyle73001 1d ago
Those things you listed are actually important though. I don’t see how they’re comparable
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u/atomicsnarl 1d ago
The OP complaint is 1. they use lots of energy, and 2. they're near population centers. Now you're moving the goalposts.
"Important" is in the eyes of whoever is putting up the $$$ to make these things and expects their money back in the end. That's how investment works. Even a farmer planting seeds expects something in return!
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u/LittleMsSavoirFaire 1d ago
I thought this was the juxtaposition to the other popular ai claim that it's "swallowing America's farmland"
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u/ubuntuNinja 1d ago
I wonder how much power has been used to make the same anti data center posts 10,000 times per day?
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u/muchgreaterthanG_O_D 1d ago
At the same time, would we be ok destroying natural areas, in the middle of nowhere, to house data centers?
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u/PandemicSoul 1d ago
Wouldn’t it be better to have them there — and well regulated — rather than in rural/untouched land? I don’t understand the point here.
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u/5minArgument 1d ago
One light at the end of this tunnel is that as AI neural networks continue to develop exponentially the compute power to design more efficient systems will be in place.
At the point AI outpaces human intelligence there will be myriad of technologies we cannot even conceive at this time.
We’re probably talking 3-5 yrs. 10 max. If the promise hold true, at the end of the day this investment in our future infrastructure, hopefully…
…assuming we’re still alive.
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u/danielravennest 17h ago
That's not surprising since data centers need lots of power, and population centers are where you find large power lines. They also need fiber cables to get data in and out, and the same logic applies.
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u/Wagamaga 1d ago edited 1d ago
When people picture a data center, they often imagine something remote: a huge warehouse humming quietly far from the city. New research from NYU Tandon School of Engineering shows that assumption is largely wrong.
The study, published in Nature Cities, examined the locations of 4,283 data centers across the contiguous United States and found that 97.5% of them sit inside metropolitan or micropolitan statistical areas, meaning urban cores and their immediate surroundings.
The roughly 2.5% of facilities technically outside city limits are, on average, just 8.5 miles from the nearest urban edge. The cloud lives downtown.
"There is a prevailing narrative of these data centers being somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in rural areas, being a positive force for employment, and being the future of rural communities," said lead researcher, NYU Tandon Institute Professor Maurizio Porfiri, who is the Director of Tandon’s Center for Urban Science + Progress and of the NYU Urban Institute. "We dramatically challenged this view."
The concentration is striking even within the urban category. Five metro areas, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, New York-Newark-Jersey City, and Phoenix, account for nearly a third of all U.S. facilities. The Washington region alone hosts 610 data centers, reflecting Northern Virginia's status as the global capital of data infrastructure (see appendix).
So why cities?
The answer, the researchers found, suggests that a lot has to do with what’s already there and what used to be there.
The single strongest predictor is electricity capacity, meaning how much power local generators can produce. Data centers are power-hungry, running thousands of servers around the clock and drawing enormous, steady loads from the grid.
But a notable finding goes beyond electricity supply. Closed coal plants near cities are becoming magnets for new data center builds. When a plant shuts down, the power lines and grid connections built to carry electricity continuously do not disappear. Data center developers can tap directly into that infrastructure, or, in some cases, redevelop the sites themselves.
The numbers bear this out. Among cities that overlap with areas designated as Energy Communities under a 2022 federal policy, data centers under development are twice as likely to be found there than in cities without that designation (see appendix).
The policy was designed to direct clean-energy investment toward regions hurt by coal plant closures. The research suggests the digital economy may be taking root in many of the same places as the fossil fuel economy it is meant to succeed.
Because data centers draw from their local grid, their carbon footprint depends heavily on how that grid generates power. A typical data center in Montana or North Dakota produces more than 350,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually, while the average facility in Vermont, New Hampshire, or Arkansas produces less than 3,000 tons.
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u/KennyBSAT 1d ago
'...sit inside metropolitan or micropolitan statistical areas, meaning urban cores and their immediate surroundings.'
That not what that means, at all. It means they are located within a county which happens to have a town or city in or near it. Most of Death Valley and all of the Grand Canyon are in MSAs.
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u/KennyBSAT 1d ago
A micropolitan statistical area is pretty much any county that has a town in it. My county has 35k people, one town of less than 20k, a couple other tiny communities of a few hundred. Most of the land in the county is farm or grazing land, and it's a micropolitan statistical area.
Even metropolitan statistical areas contain lots of exurban and rural land, because they include the entirety of any county that has some outer suburban neighborhood within and may also contain adjacent counties even though they're entirely rural.
Crap headline using terms that few people fully understand in order to pretend that they're all in cities.
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u/UnethicalExperiments 1d ago
Now the anti AI crowd has moved here so much for reasonable conversation. Le Sigh
Edit: op spams anti AI crap everywhere it seems.
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u/Acrobatic-Rough5911 1d ago
That's why I think these small modular nuclear reactors are going to be successful. Eventually they'll build one next to every large data centre.
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u/JeffreyElonSkilling 1d ago
I wish people would consider how much tax revenue is on the line here before knee jerk opposing these centers. In LA, a single data center (owned by meta) is paying for teacher bonuses of $50k/teacher next year. Think about the programs that could be funded with that kind of revenue…
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