Data Center Drawbacks: The Hidden Environmental Costs

A server room in a data center. Conway has agreed to a memorandum of understanding with an unnamed Fortune 100 company to build a $1 billion, 300,000-SF data center in the city. (Shutterstock)

Though data centers can offer benefits, residents and environmental advocates point out there are multiple drawbacks to their establishment.

A 2024 report from Gradient Corp., a risk science consulting firm out of Boston, found that residents often oppose data centers due to noise, greenhouse gas emissions, strain on local utilities, utility costs, loss of land and air quality issues.

From an environmental standpoint, “these big centers take a whole lot of electricity to operate,” George Wise, chair of the Central Arkansas Group of the Sierra Club, said. “They use an enormous amount of water.”

Data centers often use as much power and water as a small town. Gradient cited an AI prompt as using 10 times the electricity of a Google search. The centers also must have generators or backup batteries, both of which can lead to air quality and noise issues.

As far as water goes, Google alone used more than 6.1 billion gallons of water in 2023, according to its 2024 environmental impact report. Of that, 5.9 billion was potable water. Both Amazon and Microsoft operate more data centers than Google, with companies like Meta and Equinix right below.

Wise said the Sierra Club is advocating for centers to be designed with the environment in mind and to use renewable sources, such as on-site solar power, wind power or cooling water from mines and wastewater.

“We’re a water-rich state, but we need to be mindful and cautious about how we’re using water,” Wise said.

In Virginia, home to the largest concentration of data centers in the United States, organizations have been formed to oppose the centers.

“We are urging state lawmakers to study the cumulative effects of data center development on Virginia’s electrical grid, water resources, air quality and land conservation efforts, and to institute several rate-making reforms for the industry,” the website of the Virginia Data Center Reform Coalition states.

The coalition argues it is “dangerous” for utility companies to approve data center contracts when they do not have plans for providing so much energy.

This spring, the Arkansas Legislature passed the Generating Arkansas Jobs Act, which would make it easier for utilities to create natural gas infrastructure by allowing them to charge customers for facilities during construction, rather than after completion.

While the act does not explicitly ban wind or solar, “it outright makes it difficult for a utility to use renewable energy,” Wise said.

“We think that what was behind this bill is that any new facilities are going to be powered by natural gas, which will be horrible for the environment. You only have to look across the Mississippi to Memphis,” Wise said, referring to Elon Musk’s supercomputer project, which runs off of natural gas.

“People are already complaining about damage from the smokestacks,” Wise said.

Another major concern is a lack of transparency.

“We don’t know who’s going to own it,” Wise said of the Little Rock data center. “We don’t know what the purpose of it is going to be. We don’t know how much electricity it will use.”

There are also claims that data centers don’t provide that many jobs. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Technology Engagement Center, the construction phase of data centers employs an average of 1,688 people for 18-24 months. That number drops to 157 annually once a center is open.