Everyone is afraid of AI. Data centers have become the ultimate scapegoat. | Latest Tech News
Data centers have become the stylish new enemy among activists.
Critics declare the centers are utilizing inordinate quantities of electrical energy and water to energy artificial intelligence, inspiring protesters to take to the streets and Democratic lawmakers to head to Albany to stymie their development.
However, some consultants say the anti-data middle push is more of a ethical panic than an empirical one, often based on speculative and sometimes bunk projections.
Protesters are opposing AI data centers, with many citing environmental issues. LightRocket via Getty Images
It appears that data centers are the boogeyman onto which bigger fears about the influence of AI are being projected.
“The estimates of future data-center development may be overestimated by a factor of three to five,” Jonathan Koomey, an vitality researcher who has been finding out data-center electrical energy usage for many years, told The Post. “It is not as simple as saying, ‘We don’t want data centers to use water.’ You have to think about the trade-offs.”
Concerns about data centers have largely centered around the concept that they’re huge guzzlers of vitality and water, which (alongside aircon) is used to cool banks of servers and electical tools.
Worries about water consumption have been popularized via an oft-repeated statistic about the water consumption of a Chilean data middle from journalist Karen Hao’s e-book, “Empire of AI.” The only drawback: Hao had by accident exaggerated the water usage by a issue of 1,000.
Karen Hao admitted to vastly overestimating water consumption at a Chilean data middle. dpa/image alliance via Getty Images
According to the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, just 0.2% of New York state’s water and 3.5% of the state’s electrical energy had been used by data centers in 2025.
David Mytton, a researcher of sustainable computing at Oxford University, says “people tend to focus on very large numbers” that “sound very large by themselves” but are completely devoid of context.
For instance, the last dependable data for data middle water usage is a research by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which estimated the 2023 data middle consumption of water in USA to be 17.4 billion gallons.
It could sound like a lot, but is dwarfed by other water makes use of. Swimming Pools use 200 billion gallons and Golf Courses 476 billion gallons, on average, per yr. 1,000,000 gallons of water movement into New York City each day for its 9 million residents.
“Data centers account for less than 1% of US water consumption. The largest user is agriculture, which accounts for around 80% of water consumption in the US,” Mytton said.
“When you’re talking about millions of gallons of water per day going into some data centers, the equivalent in agriculture is tens of billions of gallons per day.”
Data middle vitality usage may very well be overestimated by as a lot as 5 instances, according to some consultants. REUTERS
Jonathan Koomey beleives that international actors are fomenting anti-data middle sentiment. Courtesy of Jonathan Koomey
And while more data centers are being constructed, they’re also turning into more environment friendly. Amazon said it used 2.5 billion gallons of water in its data centers in 2025, and is 75% of the manner there to being “water positive” by 2030.
Koomey’s analysis of data middle electrical energy consumption also discovered that projections about future vitality usage are based on very unsure predictions of future industry growth and also often double rely sure amenities, main to overestimation in the public creativeness.
“If I had to choose one thing that is leading people to think this is a bigger deal than it is, the double-counting issue is a big one,” he said.
Powering data centers in the US in 2026 will use 270 terawatt-hours (TWh) according to the Lawrence Berkeley Lab. That’s barely less than is used for residential and commerical lighting over the yr, and about 60% of the 437 Twh of electrical energy used to energy air conditioners across the nation. The US is estimated to have consumed 4,200 TWh of electrical energy in complete in 2025.
A Microsoft data middle in Aldie, Virginia, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. Bloomberg via Getty Images
Still, the concept Data Centers are uniquely environmentally evil has endurance among protesters, who rally behind mottos like “data centers are energy vampires” and “hot sl—ts hate data centers.”
It’s a panic that New York Dems have latched onto. This month they handed a one yr pause on the approval of building large data centers, the first moratorium of its type in the nation.
“All these politicians want to be populists and they all want a scapegoat to blame; data centers are just the latest example,” Ross Marchand, govt director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, told The Post. “Whenever politicians see that people are afraid, they see an opportunity to sow division, turn people against each other and mobilize the public.”
Data centers are more problematic in areas without dependable water sources. LightRocket via Getty Images
Data centers actually aren’t completely innocent and shouldn’t be constructed with reckless disregard. As Mytton factors out, they’ll change the texture of rural communities and be particularly detrimental in areas that already wrestle with water access.
“None of these are insurmountable problems,” he said. “They require engagement and explanation with the local community. This all comes down to community engagement and understanding the concerns of the local population.”
But the anti-data middle activism has expanded from those straight impacted in their communities into an online anti-capitalist motion that makes use of the centers as a straw man for attacking tech innovation.
Protesters have embraced foolish slogans in their opposition to data centers. @byboyfantasy/X
It’s a pattern that Koomey suspects international adversaries are encouraging in an effort to stymy American progress in AI.
“I’m 100% sure that there are people ginning it up and fomenting discontent,” he said. “Some of it is bottom-up, from people who are actually concerned about their communities… [but] there are state actors whose goal is simply to cause there to be dissension inside the United States.”
Unfortunately, many people are susceptible to falling for these kinds of anti-progress narratives — merely because they’re scared.
The anti-data middle craze is less a consequence of real numbers and more a symptom of one thing far more vital: our anxiety about what AI will do to our financial system and our lives. Claims about water and electrical energy are a tangible stand-in for our basic uncertainty about where we’re heading.
Young people have lots of causes to be involved about AI. But they need to focus on the real ones, instead of peddling misinformation.
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