A report by the Union of Concerned Scientists says California is expected to see data center growth in the coming years.
Cities across the state are banning the centers, with concerns about energy dilution for the people who would live by them.
The California Energy Commission is projecting there'll be about two gigawatts of additional data center growth by 2030, UCS’s Mark Specht told KNX News’ Karen Adams.
He says this energy usage is similar to about 4% of peak demand on California’s electric grid and that the state is not ready for that kind of growth.
“The state needs additional policies in place to protect the grid, ratepayers, and communities that are nearby to data centers just to make sure the impacts from these facilities aren't felt too hard,” Specht says.
Noise, water, and air pollution are some of the impacts that Specht says data centers could bring to neighboring communities. He also says Californians may be paying the electrical bill for the centers.
“We don't have policies in place to make sure that data centers are paying for the grid infrastructure that gets built to connect those data centers to the grid,” Specht says.
Currently, data centers are small due to state regulations, according to the UCS report. Any center over 100 megawatts would have to be certified as a power plant.
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