Data centers #1

This week, I participated in the Michigan Statewide Environmental Justice AI Data Center Summit. Activists from around the state came together to share information, develop strategies and tactics, and to dream about the kind of world we have yet to create.

Techno-billionaires are telling us that massive data centers are necessary and inevitable. They tell us that these centers will provide thousands of jobs and do it all without harming the ecosystems on which we depend.  

Yet more and more of us do not believe this.  The future offered by techno-elites and military contractors backing massive data centers is a future that does not hold the promise of improving the quality of our lives.  It is endangering everything we cherish.

This is not an exaggeration. We have the experience of our neighbors around the country who are living with some of these new mega centers. They are bearing witness to the burdens of high energy costs,  and threats to fragile ecosystems. 

Until the last few years, most data centers were small, manageable sites. In the Great Lakes region, three-fourths of the centers drew about 10 megawatts of electricity and could be built on parcels as small as 20 acres. In 2022, the average land base for a data center was a little less than 100 acres.

Less than a decade ago, in 2017, Grand Rapids had the largest and most advanced data center in the Eastern United States. Using the old Steelcase property of less than 150 acres, it drew 20 megawatts of power.

In contrast, the proposed Saline center will require 1,400 megawatts — equivalent to powering 280,000 to 900,000 homes — and sit on 575 acres.

Michigan didn’t have a single hyperscale data center before 2024, when the Legislature passed a tax incentive package. Since then, communities across the state are being inundated with proposals for new mega centers.  

Currently, our region has 368 operating centers, and another 738 are planned. These centers, both individually and collectively, place a staggering demand on water, land, and infrastructure. 

Helena Volzer, senior source water policy manager for the Chicago-based nonprofit Alliance for the Great Lakes, explained, “It’s about the cumulative impact” of these centers.

Volzer recently authored a report projecting that hyperscale data centers could withdraw up to 150.4 billion gallons across the country over the next five years. 

This strain on our water is more than the water required to cool the centers directly. It is compounded by the increased demand for electricity. Data Centers will require additional capacity to produce electricity. Whether we increase coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plants, all will require more water for cooling, and none are good for the future.

A report from the Weldon Cooper Center projects that by 2049, data centers could account for nearly half the total electricity demand across the eight Great Lakes states.

Thanks to the direct actions of communities around our state, the development of these centers has been slowed. Nationally, over the last year, local opposition has blocked or delayed $64 billion in data center projects. People around the country are deeply concerned about the kind of future these centers represent.

In Michigan, as in most other states, each new project is often considered in a vacuum. Centers that are close to each other geographically are often in different jurisdictions, with little communication across city, township, or county lines.

So, this summit was important to advance our collective knowledge of the real dangers of these centers and their role in advancing AI. It also provided an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of the importance of resistance to these centers to think anew about the kind of communities we want to live in and to pass on to future generations.