Environmental Burden of United States Data Centers in the Artificial Intelligence Era

Item Type Preprint Author Gianluca Guidi Author Francesca Dominici Author Jonathan Gilmour Author Kevin Butler Author Eric Bell Author Scott Delaney Author Falco J. Bargagli-Stoffi URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09786 Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Date 2024 Extra Version Number: 1 DOI 10.48550/ARXIV.2411.09786 Accessed 2025-07-12 19:03:54 Library Catalog DOI.org (Datacite) Abstract The rapid proliferation of data centers in the US - driven partly by the adoption of artificial intelligence - has set off alarm bells about the industry's environmental impact. We compiled detailed information on 2,132 US data centers operating between September 2023 and August 2024 and determined their electricity consumption, electricity sources, and attributable CO$_{2}$e emissions. Our findings reveal that data centers accounted for more than 4% of total US electricity consumption - with 56% derived from fossil fuels - generating more than 105 million tons of CO$_{2}$e (2.18% of US emissions in 2023). Data centers' carbon intensity - the amount of CO$_{2}$e emitted per unit of electricity consumed - exceeded the US average by 48%. Our data pipeline and visualization tools can be used to assess current and future environmental impacts of data centers. Repository arXiv