More than 200 environmental groups demand halt to new US datacenters
www.theguardian.com
Exclusive: Congress urged to act against energy-hungry facilities blamed for increasing bills and worsening climate crisis

Exclusive: Congress urged to act against energy-hungry facilities blamed for increasing bills and worsening climate crisis

A coalition of more than 230 environmental groups has demanded a national moratorium on new data centers in the US, the latest salvo in a growing backlash to a booming artificial intelligence industry that has been blamed for escalating electricity bills and worsening the climate crisis.

The green groups, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Food & Water Watch and dozens of local organizations, have urged members of Congress halt the proliferation of energy-hungry data centers, accusing them of causing planet-heating emissions, sucking up vast amounts of water and for exacerbating electricity bill increases that have hit Americans this year.

“The rapid, largely unregulated rise of data centers to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans’ economic, environmental, climate and water security,” the letter states, adding that approval of new data centers should be paused until new regulations are put in place.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
    1·
    14 hours ago

    Perhaps they can invest in additional power transmission and clean generation.

    Never thought I’d say this but for my area apparently it’s the Jones’s Act. Here in New England as we shut down coal and nuclear we were never able to get natural gas pipelines. Now that there are better options our attempts to build power distribution lines keep getting blocked. Our offshore wind farms keep getting blocked. We’re stuck on natural gas but without a pipeline we’re stuck importing LNG by ship and because of the Jones Act and there being no American built LNG ships, the only choice is importing from other countries

    Let us build our wind farms. Help coordinate with other states so we can build long distance power lines to our buddies in Ontario

    The datacenter bubble is a Republican chance to platform energy independence, cheap and available energy. Build more businesses, help the economy …. Let’s create solar and wind incentives to speed that up and let’s go gangbusters on power distribution to make America great.

    Forget these natural gas turbines on a five year back order. Are they made in American? I didn’t think so. Time to go gangbuster on solar where most of the cost is local labor

  • henfredemars@infosec.pubEnglish
    501·
    2 days ago

    I’ll bet you $100 what side Congress will take in the matter, and it will be on the side of money.

    I look forward to my first $400 power bill.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
      1·
      14 hours ago

      I long for those days, but live in a place where electric prices have been high for a while.

      A couple months ago I got a heat pump installed but was unable to get solar before the incentives are gone. The heat pump functions down to any temperature but the cost threshold is like 45°F …… and it’s currently 8°F outside. Unless they let us build a lot more solar and wind we’ll never be able to transition to cleaner appliances

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
      22·
      2 days ago

      I’m so fucking tired of the cynical voice in my head being right all the time. I read this headline and immediately thought of Arthur Dent face down in the mud in front of a bulldozer.

    • DrPop@lemmy.world
      5·
      1 day ago

      I’m already there buddy. My power usage has not changed but my bill has tripled it feels.

      • JordanZ@lemmy.world
        7·
        1 day ago

        I’m starting to question what they’re putting in them…

        Hard drives are on a 2 year backorder which forced some to move to SSD’s. Which is really only exacerbating the already ridiculous ram shortage. That is in turn also messing with graphics cards.

        So at one point or another they’re gonna have to stop even if they otherwise don’t want to…we can only manufacture so much. Unless they really like just building empty structures…

        • InputZero@lemmy.world
          7·
          1 day ago

          Oh man they’re totally going to do that. It’ll be like China’s housing boom but with commercial construction. Anthropic and OpenAI will start building data centers with the promise of putting a data farm inside. Except there will never be enough hardware to fill the space, that won’t matter. They’ll be able to sell investors on the promise of data dominance.

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
        9·
        1 day ago

        Nah, just need to break the social taboo around breaking the rich and powerful. I want to commit viking raids apon these profligates with all the bad that comes with.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    14 hours ago

    This is kinda stupid. The centers shouldn’t be stopped but taxed appropriately.

    We will never need less energy in compute period. So it makes no sense to artificially limit it, instead it needs to be priced to the point where it’s net positive for environment rather than net negative and if any industry has the incentives and money for this it’s tech.

  • Gammelfisch@lemmy.world
    3·
    1 day ago

    Corporations and business owners will find any excuse, data centers or not to raise prices. However, I would be concerned with water consumption to keep the servers cool.