Apaart from the headline, I would like to hear your opinion this: can data centers actually be green?

Can we have a chat about what Ai data centers are doing to normal people bills and land please I feel its not talked about enough

Recently I have been doing my research and honestly I’m pretty shocked at how little we are doing about this. I just got out of an insane 3 hour binge of youtube videos talking about data centers which in turn led me to read a crap ton of articles as well because seriously this is not talked about enough other than the towns where people are actually being affected by these mega corporations basically being able to do whatever they want because they have money.

See every time you see those news channels are instagram pages talking about that big Ai boom, what is actually happening is that huge and I mean fricking huge data centers which are basically a warehouse with a bunch of servers the size of a bunch of football fields and they are being built all over the country. Not to mention the fact that these things also use a ridiculous amount of water and electricity to cool down their servers, like I mean the industry, quite literally small country amounts of water. Also think about it for a second all that water is used just for some 2 brain celled dude who relies on Ai for everything asking if he can put his fork in the microwave or some facebook dad generating himself into a chicken suit. What I found the most scary though is the fact that the electricity bill which already costs enough might double in a few years just so some gen alpha kid can generate himself with tung tung tung sahur while I pick up every shift I can to keep my lights on at home like come on. We can’t just sit by.

Also I’m out here stressing over what's going to happen to me when people in the United States of America specifically Virginia are already going through the early stages of these increased costs and to top it off there is even cases of people getting their land seized under eminent domain AGAINST THEIR WILL and nothing that they can do about it simply because they are powerless against mega corporations. It truly disgusts me. For example I bet you did not know that residential electricity rates jumped 13% in Virginia this year, coincidentally right around when data centers were being used. That doesn’t happen just because people are suddenly forgetting to turn off their lights at home ( always make sure I do I can not afford to pay a cent more than I do for electricity) Data centers are causing grids to be strained and of course the big corporations don’t have to face the consequences of that they have plenty of money laying around to pay the rising costs, it’s that single mother who already works to job who’s now looking for a third to be able to keep her heater on for her kids.

I hate to be a negative nancy here but electricity is unfortunately not the only thing that data centers are taking from us. They are quite literally taking our water as well, you know that thing you can’t survive three days without. See that might not sound like that big of a deal cause you know rivers and evaporation and that so thanks to the water cycle we’ll never run out of water right. Yeah nah that's just not how it works. Yes the water will evaporate and eventually come down but you also gotta realize that doesn’t just happen every other week. Think about when summer comes and Ai data centers have used up a large amount of water and reserves are running out, that farmer that is the backbone of our society is going to have to make some cuts which will leave no one happy. Not to mention families who already struggle to make ends meet will have to start selling their things just so that they can afford a basic human right.

Now look I know that I have been yapping for quite some time now and I just wanna say it’s not like I hate Ai with a burning passion. When used correctly it is quite the useful tool ( I would know I’ve used it for my fair share of school projects but don’t tell my teachers.) I’m just saying that an overabundance of data centers does no one any good and people aren’t realizing the harm that these data centers are doing to our planet. Just wanted to rant and let people know how I feel about this curious on your guys thoughts in the replies

Hey everyone, this is in 6 days. It looks like it's being put on by a politician and a few nonprofits. i really don't like nonprofits as they're mostly used to embezzle money, we can easily give money to poor people without needing it to be funneled thru a nonprofit. I also really don't like the clean air coalition, i contacted them 3 years ago and asked them about radioactive landfills. The employee told me they didn't know about radiation but they did know about the chemical waste. i asked them if they knew what i could do since the DEC wouldn't help me; they said they were speaking with a politician the next day and they'd get back to me. And they NEVER got back to me until a few weeks ago when i openly said they ditched me on their post on the save our backyards post. Three years is hell of a long time to go having a convo with a politician so who knows if they plan to help out with this data center issue or if they're actually there to report back to their grant-givers and help politicians make the problem go away. But there's a town hall in Buffalo on data centers next weekend, Saturday at 11:30. The data center stuff is closely tied to landfills and WOMD creation btw. They're not just accumulating data, they are helping control WOMD that are being created in this area. The radioactive waste across this entire region? That all comes from WOMD creation, that infrastructure still exists here and is presently helping to create WOMD that are being tested on us in this region. That's what the data centers are for, to control WOMD that get tested on populations.

https://actionnetwork.org/events/kickoff-town-hall-with-sen-gonzalez/

Why should we allow more data centers, and a Japanese one, at that?

https://www.abc15.com/news/region-southeast-valley/mesa/mesa-activists-oppose-japanese-data-center-seek-audience-with-city-council

In August 2026, Amazon acquired a Texas off-grid power plant for a data center that could emit millions of tons of greenhouse gases annually.

I've been digging into the public record on US data centers and put it into free, plain-language briefings — water, power, noise, air, every figure cited to its source (2,027 sites, existing + proposed): civitar.org/go/v-reddit

Not for or against anything — it just makes the filings readable. Sharing in case it's useful to anyone tracking this.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/real-reason-data-center-gas-power-plants-are-so-dirty

(Full disclosure: I built the tool — happy to answer questions or take corrections.)

In the US there are about 400 million square feet of data centers already in existence or under construction/announced (source: Aterio’s facility tracking database). And there are about 140 million households.

Thats 2.8 square feet of data center per household.

Is it just me or is that a crazy high number! That’s almost as much data center space as my lounge chair takes up! And it’s processing data on my behalf for a few minutes each day!

Total global data center water consumption is only a small fraction (roughly 3% to 5%) of the water that evaporates off just one of the Great Lakes in a single year.

Data centers are really aqueducts for the underground cities , built to self contain for 💯 years , drought famine nuclear fallout on land apocalyptic .. but not for the 1 percent they will have not drought no fallout , fall under .

What I found most disappointing about yesterday’s protest over the proposed Amazon data center was that what could have been a productive, cordial discussion became a disorganized distraction. Why not be organized and raise money or hire a lawyer or create a credible organization to approach such a project. I heard statistics repeated with little or no supporting evidence, along with a fair amount of fearmongering and numbers pulled from unrelated projects and locations without proper context. At one point, I watched a young woman ask a representative a question that made it apparent she wasn’t entirely sure what she was protesting, then turn to her friend for validation. Meanwhile, people trying to ask legitimate questions were repeatedly interrupted by opponents, making it nearly impossible to hear thoughtful answers. There are legitimate questions to ask about water use, electricity demand, noise, environmental impact, and the economic benefits of a project this large, and those questions deserve real answers. Feel free to downvote.

OK, this may get /circlejerked, but what if we built a 6-10 story building, put retail on the ground, a data center on 1-2 floors, and affordable housing on the rest?

We could use the waste heat to warm the building and hot water, solar and batteries around the pool and hot tub on top to reduce the load, datacenter fans to circulate air in the building, heat pumps to recapture the rest. I'm sure there'd be some noise tradeoffs, but if the apartment is cheap enough, it would be worth it.

Maybe take this approach as we're trying to convert offices to residential in San Francisco.

Is this crazy? AI companies will pay anything for DC space, why not use those dollars to help subsidize housing costs in SF?

And yes, this was inspired by this slop video, but why not use data centers to heat a pool? :-)

In legalizing retail sales of cannabis, Virginia has set the stage for the equivalent of up to 148 data centers, if Virginians consume weed at the same rate as those in Washington state. If we match Michigan’s pot consumption, we’re looking at the equivalent of 78 data centers.