More from All the latest updates on AI data centers
At least 25 were canceled last year in the US, according to an analysis by Heatmap Pro. It’s a significant increase from 2024 as local opposition to energy and water-intensive data centers grows across the nation.
In Virginia, environmental group Food & Water Watch found that one permanent data center job is created for every $13 million invested. It estimates that data centers account for 0.01 percent of US jobs, but 4.4 percent of electricity consumption, and is petitioning Congress to end all new data center construction.
[Food & Water Watch]
Google’s parent company will acquire Intersect for $4.75 billion to “enable more data center and generation capacity to come online, faster, while accelerating energy development and innovation,” according to a press release. Intersect will “remain separate from Alphabet and Google.”
Google announced a partnership with Intersect last year.
Astronomers and environmental scientists are skeptical.
Old data centers physically cannot support rows and rows of GPUs, which is one reason for the massive AI data center buildout.
The tech industry “needs to earn the social permission to consume energy” for AI data centers he says in an interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner. Nadella also called for faster permitting for new power infrastructure and “innovation” in energy efficiency and generation.
Now, the independent market monitor for the northeast’s PJM Interconnection is asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to only allow large data centers to connect to the grid if there’s enough capacity available to serve them reliably. PJM is struggling to finalize a plan to cope with surging data center growth.
Growing electricity demand for AI and the Trump administration’s love of natural gas have influenced the International Energy Agency’s latest World Energy Outlook, Heatmap reports.
US power grids aren’t moving fast enough to keep up with the sudden rise in electricity demand from AI. Data center developers are forging ahead anyway, adding their own gas turbines and fuel cells.
[The Wall Street Journal]
That’s according to a recent Bloomberg analysis of wholesale electricity prices across the US, which has more data centers than any other country.
There are other factors aside from speculative electricity demand from data centers that are pushing up prices. Updating aging grids with new power lines and recovering from climate disasters is also costly.
OpenAI said in a blog post that it would “put Stargate ahead of schedule to secure full $500 billion, 10-gigawatt commitment by end of 2025.” The news comes one day after the company announced a strategic partnership with Nvidia, which will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as it builds and deploys “at least 10 gigawatts of AI datacenters with NVIDIA systems.”
