By Jeff St. John | Canary Media
There’s no question that data centers are about to cause U.S. electricity demand to spike. What remains unclear is by how much.
Right now, there are few credible answers. Just a lot of uncertainty — and “a lot of hype,” according to Jonathan Koomey, an expert on the relationship between computing and energy use. (Koomey has even had a general rule about the subject named after him.) This lack of clarity around data center power requires that utilities, regulators, and policymakers take care when making choices.
Utilities in major data center markets are under pressure to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure to serve surging electricity demand. The problem, Koomey said, is that many of these utilities don’t really know which data centers will actually get built and where — or how much electricity they’ll end up needing. Rushing into these decisions without this information could be a recipe for disaster, both for utility customers and the climate.
Those worries are outlined in a recent report co-authored by Koomey along with Tanya Das, director of AI and energy technology policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and Zachary Schmidt, a senior researcher at Koomey Analytics. The goal, they write, “is not to dismiss concerns” about rising electricity demand. Rather, they urge utilities, regulators, policymakers, and investors to “investigate claims of rapid new electricity demand growth” using “the latest and most accurate data and models.”
“Utilities around the country are dealing with the rapid growth of load, much of it is driven by data center expansion, but a lot of it comes from other sources as well. As utilities struggle with how to figure out which projects are real and which are not, it’s important they treat all large energy users the same and not develop special rules based just on what you do with the power.” -Court Rich, director of the renewable energy & utility infrastructure department at Rose Law Group
