Data centers are large, climate controlled, facilities for managing, processing, and storing data. They are used for everything from AI to online shopping to off-site data backups to high performance computing. Data center equipment hosts cloud services, websites, applications, and databases.
Old-school datacenters, where the cloud resides, are as old as the internet and were of little worry to communities, as they were just there, in the background. AI Hyperscale data centers are a specialized type of data center that houses compute-intense equipment to support Artificial Intelligence (AI). The large structures take up hundreds of acres and can use about the same amount of electricity as half of Hoover Dam or one commercial nuclear reactor.
In the past 18 months, the demand for AI Hyperscale centers has grown from Georgia needing to double our energy production capacity (adding about 14GW) to needing over 25GW. Just for datacenters alone!
The demand for data centers of this magnitude is new, and because of this it is not yet carefully regulated. This rising magnitude of data center energy use is also likely temporary; data center technologies will quickly become obsolete and new technologies are already providing better avenues beyond these crude mass approaches. In order to protect ourselves against exploitation we need transparency, education, and strategy for our involvement in their approval process on the local scale and consumer and resource protections on a state-wide scale.
Steps to being good neighbors
They are taking more than they are giving because we aren’t asking for them to be good neighbors. But they want our land, our power, and our water. Let’s ask for something in return.
Helpful public opinion polls – US views of how data centers affect the environment, energy costs, jobs and more | Pew Research Center | 12 Mar, 2026
Map of Data Centers
The above map shows data centers and crypto mines as of June 2026.
The black icons represent completed data centers, and the orange data centers in progress. A number over the icon represents more than one data center; these will ‘separate out’ as you zoom in on the map using the “+” symbol in the bottom right.
The yellow triangles represent known Crypto Mines – which are not Data Centers – but still energy and water superconsumers.
If you would like to interact with the map – click here.
The chart below is accurate as of June 2026.
The Human Impact
Educational Videos on Data Centers
Don’t just take our word for it. PBS Horizons did an in-depth video (26 min) on 11 Jun, 2026. It has a good discussion of the issues communities are facing. Horizons from PBS News | Why communities are revolting against data centers | PBS
May 2026 Presentation on Data Centers
see here. Uh we are we are streaming this in case anybody
on YouTube. Very exciting. Uh okay. We’re going to get started though. Okay.
Uh hold on. I got to put my mic on. We’re doing this for um we’re short
stuff today. Uh
okay. Hey, look at that. Hi guys. Does anybody else need food and drink?
You’re good. You all came to learn about data centers. Okay. Um, great. I’m Amy Sharma.
I’m the executive director of science at Georgia. Uh, this is Jessica Owens. She’s
our director of data analytics. Um, thanks for coming. Uh, so, uh, we’ll
give a little presentation. Please, there’s only four of you. Please feel free to jump in and ask questions. Go
tell those people out there that they’re missing out on all the fun, right? Okay.
Uh, okay. We’re going to get started. Uh, no, we’re not going to get started cuz I
have the wrong thing selected on the computer.
All right. Service science for Georgia. Thanks, kids. Um, yeah, uh, typically we
have a staff that’s, um, of legal working age in Georgia, but, uh, two of
our people are out of town. And so, my kids are running tech today. So, thanks
kids. Uh, we exist to make sure science is getting out of the lab and onto the
streets. We do three main things. We do science communication training for university and above students. Uh we do
science outreach events. So thanks for being at a science outreach event with us and um we’re advocating to ensure
science seat at the table. We’re also down at the general suddenly a lot talking about data centers. Um I think
my kids even have this talk memorized. Uh but we also host the environmental
justice and climate protection conference every year. It’s actually in a month and it’s at Georgia Tech. So you
should come check it out. It’s going to be really awesome. And uh we have a big data for Georgia program to make sure
that data is being shared out with people in a way that’s concise, true,
relevant, and actionable. Um Jessica runs this program. Go Jessica.
It’s really good. Um you’ll see some of her maps in a couple minutes. Um so what
we’re going to talk about today is what are data centers? Why are they coming to Georgia? What are
the issues with them? And then what are the solutions so maybe things can get
better? Um, be all here to learn about data centers. All right, great. Otherwise, that was going to get real
awkward. Uh, all right. [laughter] Um, all right. So
before these like hypers scale data centers started coming, data centers
have been around since the invention of the internet um they were uh just rooms
mainly with storage devices in them. They supported small businesses. They were all where our off-site backups were
and the cloud and we could stream and all of those things. Um, and this makes
sense. Like the average home has 21 connected devices that had to go all
those cat videos had to go somewhere. Um, but we didn’t really start freaking out and they didn’t really become like a
scourge on the planet until the AI hypers scale ones came along and those
are where like cha GPT and claude and all of the large language models run. Um
they they have bad parts like surveillance and deep tanks. They do do
good things like research breakthroughs and productivity and stuff like that. Um they also do some unnecessary things
like when I type into a search bar what’s the tallest mountain.
I don’t know why AI has to like I was like Wikipedia could have given me that. Like so there’s just a lot of things
that you’re like I don’t think we needed to waste like 30 gallons of water for this. But um but these guys are very
processor intensive which means they’re very energy intensive which means they’re very water intensive which is
why we’re in this hot mess that we are in. Um so they’re these giant warehouse
buildings like they are ginormous. Who is like driven past?
Imagine like those big Amazon distribution network like distribution
centers except without the trucks. Um but all that’s in them is compute
technology to like do all the computing, storage devices to hold all the data,
network devices to connect everything together, and then because they’re so processor intensive, a ton of pooling
systems. So over 30% of a data cent’s energy usage is for the HVAC alone. Um
and you can see they’re like big there’s not a lot of people in them.
So they employ about as much as your average McDonald’s. Um but we usually don’t provide economic
development incentives to McDonald’s. Not that I don’t love a good McDonald’s here. Um, but people are like falling
all over themselves to bring data centers here, but they don’t for McDonald’s. Um, and the Nvidia CEO who’s
insane, like I really think he should stop giving interviews, was like, “The
jobs of the future are electrician, plumber, and carpenter.”
So, these are not bringing high techch jobs. He’s like, “We’re just going to need a bunch of plumbers and
electricians to put the buildings up and then the computers are going to do all the hard stuff.” I literally sat next to
a guy who’s in charge of economic development for the city of Atlanta or one of the people and he was like, “Kids
really need to learn how to build things these days.” And I was like, “Really?” Like, so he was like actively
like, “We should bring more construction jobs to Atlanta.” [snorts] Um, which
hurt my soul just a little. Okay. Uh why are they coming to Georgia? We have a lot of cheap land power water. They need
big spaces. They need a lot of cheap land power water. We have really good broad brand and internet access. We’ve
spent a lot of time over the past 15 years really connecting to the state. The other hotspots of Texas, Arizona,
and California have a lot less water than we do. We, and I put an asterct, ask them to
come. The economic development authorities of a lot of states and or a
lot of cities and municipalities went out and courted them and asked them to come here because
they were after the property taxes that these guys pay also in a weird plain
perverse incentive structure. So if you’re a municipality and you get like
300 gallons of water a day and I just made that number up. It’s way bigger than
that and you’ve only distributed 10. You’re only getting paid for the 10
gallons of water. So if the city has an aotment of so much and they’re only
using a small a lotment of it, their water works is not making as much money as they could if they were selling all
of it. So the water works kind of it’s weird, right? Like this sounds
backwards, but that’s how our water works have been working. Uh, Georgia
Power only makes money if demand increases, so they want them to come, too. We’ve been doing such a good job
over the past 30 years switching to those light bulbs and like turning our
lights off and more efficient houses and all of those things that even though the
the population of Georgia has like gone up a lot in the last 30 years, our energy demand has plateaued. And so
Georgia Power only makes money if they build transmission facilities.
So they want these guys to come so they can give them power. Okay. Uh oh. Hey,
you updated it. You did. Yes. [laughter] So, we did this chart. We tracked how
many there were. There’s about a hundred right now in Georgia. The hundred right now in Georgia were are of the like
smaller. When [clears throat] we first started tracking these a year ago, this number
of plan data centers was like 20. It’s now jumped up to 75. Um,
they used to need where are we? All right. Um, and the total planned power capacity was like 6
megaww and now it’s 25 megawatt. Yeah. Like it is just off the rails.
Um for for uh reference here um one
plant vogal or plant vogal was the nuclear power plant that just went online. Two new cores went online like
18 months ago. Each core at plant vogal produces about 1.2
gaw and now we’re asking for 25 gaw.
So that’s almost like 25 more nuclear reactors that we
need to do. Yeah. All right. It’s bonkers. The only word for this is bonkers.
We’ve given them We’re supposed to lose $2.5 billion in tax because we’ve given
them all these tax breaks and tax incentives to come. Um at the same time,
we cut our property taxes and income taxes. seems like that was the big celebration about three weeks ago. Um
they could have paid for that by just getting rid of this tax break, but instead they’re going to up our sales
tax. So, yay. Uh this is also just like
me railing on the power company, but I swear it has a point. Georgia Power is owned by Southern Company. Did you guys
know that? Okay. Southern Company also owns the natural gas distribution
infrastructure in the state, which one of the companies is called Atlanta Gas
Light, which I just think is hilarious that their name is Gas Light. [laughter] Um, so Georgia Power/Southern Plumpkini
gets paid every time they build a new transmission plant because if they invest money in building that
transmission architecture, they are guaranteed not only 100% cost recovery but a profit
on that. Then they get money by selling the gas
to the transmission to the gas turbine at the power plant. So they’re building
the power plant, getting money off of it. Then they’re selling the gas to the power plant to get money off of that.
And then they sell us the energy. So they get paid three ways every time they
build a new gas turbine. Okay, great. Um Huh. Yeah.
Who’s who’s giving them the money when they build? Is it the state?
um or is it some other way or so the way uh energy infrastructure
is typically built so Georgia power um is there’s the public service commission
right so Georgia since Georgia power is monopoly the public service commission is supposed to be like the the regulator
of them so Georgia power comes and they say we need to build 10 new gaw power
transmission and the PSC says, “Yay, barely.” Georgia Power starts building
it. Once they’ve started to build it, they can like preill all the customers for
it. And then once it comes online, that’s when they put the cost recovery
into electric bills. So you guys’s electric bills went up a lot in the last two years. That was all
mainly cost recovery because plant vocal went offline. just as a flat rate regardless of what
you regardless of what you those are the cost recovery fees. So even though you
pay a rate and they said they had frozen our rates, they didn’t freeze the fees. So right
now on your electric bill are the cost recovery fees for Planet Bogle. There’s also cost recovery fees for Hurricane
Helen because they had to spend a lot of money redoing the infrastructure on that. And then once these things start
to go online, they can start cost recovering that way.
Okay. Yay. Um I will say Georgia Power is a
publicly traded company. So if you are a shareholder [snorts] of Georgia Power, you’re doing really great right now. Um
so this is Georgia Power’s existing reserves and this is their plan for the
next five to six years. Basically what it breaks down is is they currently have
about 17 gawatt of power generation. They have asked for 14 gawatt of power
generation in the next 5 years which again is a bonkers like it took them
about a 100red years to build the first 17 gaw and now they’re going to double that in about 5 years.
It took them an extra what like 15 years to bring plant online. So like just
think about I really don’t want. So this is a breakdown. Most of it’s supposed to come from um gas turbines. They’re
keeping the coal fired plants on, but they were supposed to retire. And then a wee bit of it will come from like wind
and solar. Okay. All right. Great.
Also, they’re building an expanded gas pipeline. So, there’s a gas pipeline
that runs across basically the fall line of the state in order to get all that extra gas to
all those extra turbines. They have to then build they have to then dig up all the gas pipeline and either replace it
with a bigger gas pipeline or lay a new one next to it. So they also all get
paid to build that too by the way. All right. Cool. And the data center
rates are not going to take that if the PS
openly that yeah um so your power’s going out.
Um so okay the public service commission said that new data centers must cover
any expenses associated with transmission slash like service right
because you all were getting nomad there and they were like well that doesn’t seem fair. Uh so but it’s for their part
only. So if Georgia Power builds like 10 gawatt of power
like data center A is going to pay for like one gigawatt of it, that next data center fee is going to pay for half a
gigawatt or whatever, whatever they actually use. But if they don’t get enough contracts to cover all those 10
gigawatts, guess who’s going to be left holding the bag?
Yay. It’s not really your questions time. And what Jessica alluded to is during the PSC hearings that were like
two weeks ago is they expand they they were like, well, oh,
We didn’t bake into that cost for the gas pipeline expansion what I just
showed you. And also fuel price changes. So our bills are going up because gas is
going up. They pay a fixed rate on their fuel prices and those have not been
baked in. Um anyways, it’s great. Uh but
there was a [clears throat] slight good news. your your bills are going to go down by $4 a month.
It’s really helpful. I think I paid more than $4 for this beer. Uh
storm cost. So, this also was bonkers. They used to be able to get profit off
of rebuilding after a storm. They at least upped it. So, now they
can’t profit off of rebuild. they get they still get cost recovery for rebuild but not profit unless the rebuild is
over $500,000. Um and they removed a bunch of fuel
costs. Um but because that fun fact came out that the data centers aren’t
actually paying for all the infrastructure things, there is going to be a new rate case which we made a giant
nerd. The PSC is like a whole new level of nerdy like legal weird proceedings.
The giant PSC nerds are very excited about the new rape case.
It could be helpful. It might not be helpful. I don’t know. But there’s at least a possibility that we could fix
some of the disaster with the new rates. They forced them into a new rank because they didn’t have to have. So it was a
big victory in nerdy weird men. But like Southern Environmental Law Center who
like lives and breathes these right was very excited about consumers. So I’m going to call it a slight win. All
right. What are the issues? What are the issues? We don’t know how many their location, how much power and water to
use. Everything is hidden behind non-disclosure agreements. So we’re like
guessing most of this stuff. Um we don’t actually know how much tax revenue or
job creation they create. Um, but environmentally this means in the
immediate vicinity, noise and light pollution are very worrisome. If you talk to people in Bville about the QTS
data center that just went online, it’s like lit up like a Christmas tree. It’s like daylight in the night time and
the noise. It’s like this lowle hum which apparently can cause people to go
crazy. It invites some sort of stress response in you. So, it’s not just mental health problems, but also like
physical like cardiac problems. Uh, if the water reasons aren’t right, you’ve
got like flooding and stuff after storms. Um,
just added this one in. What What are they running behind the meter? Cuz now they’re being encouraged to bring their
own power. So, are they going to be like the Elon Musk one in Tennessee where they just like lit up a bunch of diesel
generators or are they going to fuel it off of like solar power? we just go now when the power goes off most of them use
of things and generators um locality strain on water resources
big picture I just showed you power consumption in Georgia is mainly through fossil fuels so it’s going inverse also
these uh this is fate county
uh these are like those giant high tension power lines
yeah That’s someone’s house. Georgia Power came in with eminent
domain and put that up in their front yard to run the power line straight to the
QTS facility. The QTS facility is like the example of everything that can go
wrong because it was one of the first hyperscalers. So like one, they didn’t follow any of the environmental
regulations. Two, they screwed up the water. They were like messing with people’s groundwater. Just turns out
they were stealing 30 million gallons of water from an illegal tap in one of the
water pipes. And because no one fought for them, Georgia Power is just going to
run. If Georgia Power has to run a new transmission line and no one’s paying attention, they’re going to run it a
straight line because that’s cheapest for Georgia Power. Most people ask for the power transmission land and make
them run it along like highways. So, it’s not it’s not a straight line, but
at least it’s on like a traffic border instead of that is like a dude’s front yard. Like,
that is just awful. Um, anyways. All right. And also, two hits on water. The
way we make our power in Georgia is very water intensive.
Um, so you can see here if you’re the states are red, those are water intensive power sources. So we’re not
the only people like most of the northwest over there also gets their
power from very water intensive practices as well. Um, and now people
are wondering if there’s PAS in the water they spit out. No, it’s just like every layer of just like a fun new
surprise. Oh, also we’re in a drought. [clears throat] This was the draw on April 9th. It’s
worse. Do these people want to come in? You want to learn about data centers?
It’s okay. It’s okay. Jessica is going to tell you like I’m I was the doom and
gloom person. So, um uh also just like fun fact, we are in a drought. you guys
know that declaring a drought doesn’t [snorts]
it doesn’t mean anything. So like I don’t know if you guys this was like a new thing I heard like a week ago. So
like you know how like when there’s like a storm coming and the governor declares a state of emergency and that unlocks
like emergency funding and the national guard and like emergency powers so they
can like mobilize. declaring a drought is just like, “Hey guys,
we’re in a drought. You should know.” I And so as we go up
on the drought scale, they can start restricting like outdoor water use and tell you to like only water your lawn
every 3 days. And as they grow up, municipalities can start to negotiate with large uses. But like there’s
nothing. We are in this drought. Nothing’s happening.
That was fun to learn and also like really disappointing. Uh, okay. So, and also I think critical infrastructure
since no one really thought this would these guys use a ton of water. What happens now that we’re in a
drought? There’s been no negotiated. Do we make them turn off? All right. And is
it all a bubble? My god. All right. Sorry. All right. Is this all a bubble? Right. I just showed
you, right? We were supposed to have like six gawatts of plan power like a
year ago and now it’s up to 25 gawatt. Like the number of planned data centers has like quadrupled in the last year.
Is that sustainable? Uh so there’s this thing called the gardener hype. Like
if does anyone remember the dot boom? Remember in like the late 90s how like
we were like oh my god that’s great. It’s going to be amazing. it’s going to be amazing. And then like right around 2000, the bubble burst and like all
these people lost their jobs and we were like, the internet’s awful. How is anyone going to make money off of it?
And now, of course, everyone makes money off the internet, right? So AI is
following that same cycle. Like right now, we’re in the oh my god, AI is amazing. It’s woo, right? But sooner or
later that’s going to And I’m sure in like 30 years we’ll be like, isn’t AI great? It just cured cancer for
us. But like between here and there a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. Um
and so GDP growth was only.1%
without data center and like AI expansion. So like this is a lot of like
speculation at this point in time and people hate.
I mean you like it’s like low super low ratings, right? So like we’re building
all these giant factories to like support AI.
What’s going to happen? Right. All right. So is this your part now? I think so.
[laughter] We totally reversed this. Uh here we go. There it is. Uh technical. Okay. So um
Mr. Rogers. It’s going to get better. Right.
Right. Usually in these talks, I’m the one that brings everyone down and then
someone else is like, “It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine.” So, one, we can the computer and technical people
can do better. There can be better chips built. There can be more efficient algorithms. Like this technology exists
today. It’s just they’re not bothering because we’re giving them so much cheap land power and water that they can just
keep building bigger and bigger and bigger without like trying to innovate their way out of this situation.
There’s this thing called load balancing that would pretty much eliminate the need for new power generation, but they
don’t want to. Load balancing basically says when it gets too high and then like
I’m going to make a bad analogy. I used to watch Travel Channel a lot. This is how old I am. And they were doing a
special on like this Vegas hotel. And the the plumber who built the Vegas
hotel was like, “If everyone in every thousand rooms in this hotel flushes
their toilets and takes a shower at the same time, we will have water pressure.”
No one actually does that though, right? So data centers say that they need that
much capacity at the same like if every one of their customers is asking to do
the most power intensive thing at the same time which hardly ever happens. If
they had load balancing they would just be like hey it’s a bad time you need to wait in line.
They can’t tell people to wait in line because people they don’t have 99.9999%
uptime. They have to pay a fine to their customers. So that’s a regulation thing.
If they were given like a get out of jail free card by the government like hey
you don’t have to do the 99999 up time because we can’t build 30 more like
power generation facilities that could solve it. There’s a lot of cool things I
can do with the cool muscles, too. All right. Transparency.
I did [laughter] I did not say
All right. So, we’re going to go
and you guys can go to this bit.ly order. If you signed in on the sheet, I
can email you uh our map. And
basically I have created a dashboard that allows you to turn different layers
on and off. You can see the water sheds. You can turn on and off the legislative
districts, um the pipeline, the gas
infrastructure, the electric infrastructure and see how these
extractive developments are being placed. Um
the map currently has approximately 75 plan data centers, but we do rely a lot
on community members and just people affected by these uh development plans
to report to us or we also look at the DRI with the state which is the
development regional impact uh reports but not all of them have
those reports filed and even the ones that do at this point do not fill them
out fully. Um 37 out of 41 of the DRI that are in the
system right now do not have a power source selected. So we don’t know where that power is going to come from. Are
they going to build their own gas turbines on site and have their own power plant on site? We don’t know. Uh
so there’s really not very much transparency with this process and a lot
of the uh data centers that are in more rural areas are between like 300 and a
thousand acres and so they’re um
they’re uh taking down a lot of trees and some of these are proposed in wetlands. Belda has its own water
problems. And so, uh, the map is supposed to allow you, no matter where
you live, to be able to understand, uh, how that data center will affect you
as much as possible.
All right. All right. Cool. So, uh, do you want to try and pull it up? We can do that. Maybe after talk people can
make All right. So, it’s really cool and an interactive map that uh we lost a slider that you made. Is that what just
happened? Yeah. Go team the it’s every time the the data
centers know that we’re after them and so it ate her slides. But um this map is
completely interactive and if you want Jessica to like sit with you and nerd out at a computer after this talk if you
would like and show you how to use it because it’s pretty cool. Um, and also
we did want to point out one of these ones down here is the first data center to propose to drill its own well into an
aquifer. All right, but um you were like, “Oh god, what can be done?” All right, so
that was I am going to give you some help. Okay, there are good ordinances
that can be written to make them better neighbors. If you write as a
municipality a really good ordinance, they might show up, but they will at least behave. And then the ones that are
purely speculative in nature or purely exploitative in nature will go somewhere else where they don’t have to follow all
these rules, right? So like um there uh Google was going somewhere in Arkansas
and they got a lot of money out of them to um put it into a weatherization fund
for their communities. That way all the houses in the community to pay to upgrade their homes and their power
bills would go down. Other ones are forcing them to like offset with like solar nearby, not like some weird solar
exchange where they’re like, “Well, we bought some solar power in Brazil. It’s totally cool, right?” Like literally
building solar power for the community. So, there are ways that they can be better. They should be zoned heavy
industrial. They’re loud. They’re noisy. They’re light films. They’re not They
should not sit next to like schools and hospitals. Um the cost should not be passed on to the customers. Um and like
I said, you can do impact assessments. This is the thing that Georgia Power and
the water utilities know how to do impact assess assessment to make sure those transmission lines are being run
along a highway corer and not through someone’s backyard. Um make them sign
minimum contracts. Test their weight waste water for chemicals. have a water
use plan. Um, noise and light abatements. We’re now seeing people try
and run into their dark sky lighting. It’s a thing. That’s like an actual
thing you can put on industrial thing. Um, backup power from non-polluting sources. And this is the big one. End of
life planning. We don’t need any more mills in Georgia or like there’s a giant
husk of a thing. You can get these things called charity bonds. All landfills in Georgia are required to get
them. So this isn’t like a new thing. Shy bond means at the end of life there
is a bond to pay for it to be decommissioned and returned to some sort
of usable state. Um and so that’s a thing that you can
require them to get. Again, a real actual person that’s not just a speculative real estate bro should agree
to this space. um transparent and uniform reporting of their water and
energy use and their taxes paid. And then what are they giving back, right? Because they don’t bring jobs.
But they could pay for weatherization. They could pay to put new chemistry labs in all your local high schools. They
could pay for the AI certificates at the local um TCSG. Like hire local community space
improvements. Like this is kind of this is Google and Microsoft. They have a lot
of money. Who can ask them to build you a new playground? Like I think they can afford it. Um but what can you do?
You can advocate. All right. Um there were over a dozen bills in the
Georgia Tech assembly to address this. Nothing passed. That’s okay. That’s how the legislator works. First time around,
nothing ever passed. It’s right. Like that sounds kind of like a bummer, but there were a lot. Um, and the themes
were to end the tax breaks, um, actually make sure that you don’t have to pay for the power trim, ending those
non-disclosure agreements. There was also this terrible bill that would extend the tax breaks if you build the
data center in a poor county, a coastal county, or if you power it by wood
chips. We couldn’t figure out this bill. Um, we have All of them on our on the
signs for just you can read through what the these were, but there were a lot.
Some of them almost passed. That’s good. Sooner or later, some
things might have passed. Um, and here you go. Um, and these are all linked on
our website as well. Um, and we’ll make sure we get to them. But, uh, our friends at Sierra Club made a data
center community organizing toolkit. So, it’s got like pamphlets and hat handouts and things like that. We also um run a
community organizing like group. So, if people need help, please reach out to
us. Um I keep taking pictures. Yeah. Yeah.
I promise. We’ll send this to you. But we have
this. but also reach out to us because we can get even like um somebody reached out for us from the small town in North
Georgia. She’s already hooked up with like a mentor from another small town. Like we got right like we know um we
have the data center map and we have a bunch of energy burden resources. So I
really truly have to be an optimist about this and think that we can do the right thing. All right, that’s the end
of our talk. It was amazing. Thanks for coming. All right, questions.
That was too much.
So, in terms of planning, Yeah. Okay. So I’m concerned about the picture you showed of town.
What was the interaction like from the first
proposal to actually build? Were they in conversation with this? Who makes that
decision? Um there people that are lobbying for this.
So great great question. Um so in theory the community council can your community
council can make all of those decisions. Um
the county can and so what happens um how the power transmission is figured
out is they like get together and um um Georgia Power
sees how much power needs to get run there. They run a transmission line plan and then they just run the plan and they
usually run it past the county commissioners except most county commissioners are also this is not their
full-time job, right? Like most county commissioners also have like another full-time job. They’re not experts on
power transmission and infrastructure. So they don’t know what to look for. They’re just like well Georgia Power
said it was the right thing to do. They’re the experts, right? And so now, [laughter] like there’s literally a quote in the
newspaper where the county commissioner conveyed it was like, “We did not know that this was going to happen.”
I guarantee you it’s somewhere in the public record where the transmission line plan was, but because no one was
paying attention, like a lot of these are like, “Well, you’re required to post it. you’re required to put it on the
website, but no one they’re not required to like have a community meeting about
it or like or like my favorite is sometimes they’re required to have a community meeting, but it doesn’t
actually have to be they just have to post in the community where it is, but they can have it like 10 miles away in a
place that’s not accessible by public, right? Like all the tricks, right? So now people know to ask for the
transmission line like that’s why I said county was like they have to have a
transmission line plan but now people have to pay attention and fight it to
make it go better. So that’s more like pounding your community council
officials to make sure they’re paying attention and that which is annoying cuz you would think that they would try but
they they have no intent to do the right thing.
Uh so there’s no statewide moratorum.
They somebody proposed a bill that was a statewide. it didn’t pass. Multiple
counties and municipalities around Georgia have moratoriums in place. Um,
that’s usually what we tell a community to do. There’s one coming is to pass a moratorum so you get 90 days and then
sort out when it or something.
Oh, is that dec
where it’s supposed to live? So, a lot of decorator range has like there’s a ton of places
that have mortoriiums now and in theory that gives you like a 90 or 100 days to pause and then work your way through
what a good ordinance should look like and then you can ask for those things and the ordinances
takes a while. Again, it requires a lot of yelling. Like the trivia.
[laughter] What county did everybody come from?
Turkey.
Douglas. You guys got the original Google. Yeah. When I recorded that Douglas has a
hard time, do they? Yeah. The picture you showed where there’s I
think you said the line going through Georgia. Yeah. Yeah. The data in there
or the gas pipeline. Yeah. So they’re going to build that as if
it’s in successful. Does that mean that they just have these?
So it sounds like they’ve already made up their minds. Well, so good news. They’ve submitted
for the permit to build the gas pipeline. It has to go through federal
government review because it’s a federal thing. Uh our federal government’s not
doing what I would call the greatest right now with environmental protections. But as with all of these
things, we’ve usually found that delay, delay, delay is a great tactic. The more
spaghetti we can throw on the wall for things like that are coming to town, these guys don’t
make money until they start reading ground. If they can’t break ground, that’s a victory. So, right now,
it’s a proposed the um environmental impact report
has been submitted and now a bunch of people have put comments on it.
review period like but again it’ll probably be approved and then Southern
Environmental Law Center will do a lawsuit to get an injunction against the
approval and then they’ll try and show that it’s not in the public interest but
stretching that timeline out and then yes because part of it is there is no
demand. So if the bubble burst the board
so but it’s like just keep throwing spaghetti at the wall like every chance
we get it’s slow it down and maybe they’ll start thinking more rationally
about it is this line is this is it supposed to connect with the east of one
they just approved in South Carolina
but I cut south well the
the compressor stations are going to be uh
they’re going to increase capacity and then the additional pipeline will be in the Ela Express uh pipeline. So yeah,
the pipeline between these two compressor stations would have to be
would have to be um increased, but the compressor stations themselves could produce or
increased capacity. So yeah, it’s all related because they’ve already
[clears throat]
Yeah, but there’s plenty of people fighting that one, too. So, I know I know I do know there are a lot of people
very angry about that one cuz it is in a really nice like pristine
where they’re trying to
go. Yay. Any other questions?
All right, we’re science for Georgia. But anyways, uh we have a link to the map here. Um we have if you go to our
website on the um there’s a whole data for Georgia button and that’ll have
links to all the maps and stuff like that. And um please do reach out to us if you have questions or you’re stuck or
there might even already be a community group finding it in your area. made you hooked up with them. Um, it’s like
everyone everywhere is trying their hardest to stop us as friends.
All right. Yes. Also, huge props to my kids. Thanks, guys.
[applause and cheering] You can press stop recording, please. If anybody wants to play with the map and
see what area, you’re welcome to do so, too.
Dec 2025 Data Center Overview Presentation
0:02
Hey y’all, my name’s Doctor Amy Sharma and I am the executive director of Science for Georgia.
0:08
I’ve been giving a lot of data center presentations these days and I thought I would record one so that way y’all can have the audio with the visual in case people would like to experience this presentation.
0:21
Not going to be nearly as funny as when I do it in person, but we will soldier on.
0:28
A little bit about science for Georgia.
0:30
We are a nonprofit science advocacy organization.
0:35
We work very hard to get science out of the lab and onto the streets.
0:39
That means we offer science communication training.
0:42
We do outreach events, mainly centered for adults.
0:45
So we do Georgia Science Junction and climate survival trainings, and we host community forums and town halls.
0:53
And then we’re advocating to assure that science has a seat at the table.
0:59
We have a Thriving Data for Georgia program, which really takes data and connects human health to environmental health.
1:09
So that way we can provide communities with the information that they need to make the case that something is going on in their community.
1:19
A little bit about me, I have a PhD from Duke University.
1:25
A long time ago in my early years I was a microprocessor designer at IBM.
1:33
So about data centers, I am slightly more qualified to talk about them.
1:45
OK, so today we’re going to talk about what are data centers, What are the known knowns, what are the known unknowns, and what are the unknown unknowns?
1:53
And then I will leave you with some solutions on how we can make them good neighbors.
1:58
So let’s dive in.
2:00
What are data centers?
2:03
Data centers make possible the cloud. All the photos you got stored on your phone and in your computer and sharing and all of those things happen because we have the cloud and the cloud has to reside somewhere.
2:18
They also support small businesses.
2:21
I work for a couple startups.
2:22
There’s no way we could have gotten the hardware possible if we hadn’t been just buying space and renting space on data center cloud storage.
2:32
And they also are, are the reason.
2:36
Well, they’re, they’re really booming now because of the artificial intelligence explosion.
2:41
But, you know, we kind of did this to ourselves.
2:45
If you wanted to take a guess at how many connected devices are in a home.
2:49
We will pause here…
2:51
Think of a number.
2:53
It’s about 21.
2:55
So that includes all the phones, computers, gaming systems, thermostats, light bulbs, toasters, fridges.
3:01
I mean they’re all connected to the cloud, and they’ve all got to send data somewhere, but they are really like nothing we have seen before.
3:10
They are giant boxes. Huge warehouse sized buildings and in them are compute technology.
3:20
So that’s where all the algorithms in the computers are doing their little computer work.
3:25
Those are hooked up to storage devices.
3:27
So that’s all the hard disk drives that are holding all your cat videos.
3:31
And then there’s network devices to get the data to and from the storage devices to the compute technology, but then also back out into the real world.
3:41
And then all of this generates a ton of heat, right?
3:46
Your laptop sitting on your lap gets hot.
3:48
Imagine that times a million.
3:50
And so there are enormous quantities of HVAC’s and chilling systems in these buildings.
3:57
And yes, they look like a factory, and they take up the footprint of a factory, but they employ about 30 to 50 people after they have been built.
4:11
There’s nothing in them, right?
4:12
Like we’re all doing this work remotely.
4:15
So they employ less than your average McDonald’s.
4:19
And so as they’re coming to your community, really think about how many incentives you want to bring a McDonald’s size employer to your community.
4:32
Here are some quotes. CEOs of the big device companies are all agreeing it’s out with white collar jobs and in with blue collar jobs.
4:44
So they, we keep saying they’re driving the economy of the future.
4:49
But the CEO of NVIDIA said if you’re an electrician, you’re a plumber, you’re a carpenter, we’re going to need hundreds and thousands of them to build all these factories.
4:59
Once these factories are built, though, there’s no jobs in the factories.
5:04
So we are creating transient construction jobs.
5:09
Here are some more fast facts. Why do they keep coming for us in Georgia?
5:13
We are very attractive to data centers because we have cheap land, power, and water.
5:20
And we’ve spent a lot of time in the last 15 years connecting the state to the Internet.
5:27
We have really good broadband.
5:30
And unlike the other hotspots around the country, Georgia is considered water rich.
5:36
So here we are.
5:38
We’ve created this perfect storm.
5:41
But think about this data center needs parallel our needs. Ahen it is hot outside and your air conditioner is cranked up.
5:51
Think about it, their air conditioner is cranked up.
5:54
They need more power and water precisely when we need more power and water.
5:59
And because it is a great attractive spot for data centers, according to some people I know who work at Georgia Tech, most of the data centers in the state are premium data centers.
6:11
So therefore they’re at a price point that small Georgia businesses can’t really afford.
6:17
All right, so let’s start digging into what data centers are and let’s talk about what we know about these things.
6:35
The first thing we know about these things is that just like everybody else, engineers are trying to get things done in the easiest and the fastest and the cheapest way that they can do it.
6:48
And so that is why data centers are gravitating to Georgia, because we have cheap land, power, and water and because we can just throw these things up willy nilly everywhere.
6:59
The plan of attack from all the big companies is akin to the Russian battle solution.
7:06
They are just throwing bodies at the problem. Because you can just get all the land, power, and water that you need. Why bother to create efficient algorithms?
7:16
Why bother to create more efficient cooling systems?
7:20
None of these things matter because, capitalism.
7:24
And why blame them?
7:30
Another thing we know is that it’s a very variable, volatile, market.
7:37
They’re kind of like locusts.
7:39
They come in, they take all the cheap land, power, and water that they can, and then they move on to the next state that has cheap land, power, and water.
7:47
And as they start to get priced out, or they start to run out of resources, or they start to run into community opposition, they just move to the next market.
7:56
This this chart here from McKinsey shows the black spots are saturated markets already.
8:03
So that’s Virginia, Chicago, Dallas, and Northern California.
8:08
Atlanta’s considered a secondary market, or it was about 12 months ago when this graph was made.
8:15
But you can see that
8:18
The light blue dots are the emerging markets, and you can see they’re popping up in North Carolina and South Carolina because we’re starting to run out of land, power, and water here in Georgia.
8:30
So while these data centers are showing signs of being variable and pretty easy to move around. Here in Georgia, we are just planning like the party is just never going to end.
8:44
Georgia Power has proposed to double our power generation by 2031.
8:50
About a week and a half ago, early in December. The Georgia Public Service Commission approved A10 GW expansion and most of this is for data centers.
9:08
A few more details here about the current expansion and the current approved plans. (Both this slide and the previous chart are from our friends at Southern Environmental Law Center.)
9:26
Here’s where the expansion requests are going to go.
9:29
And you can see that about five gigawatts of it is going to be for gas powered plants and another 1.2 is for a different type of gas powered plant.
9:42
So approximately 6.5 gigawatts of this are going to come from new or upgraded gas powered turbines.
9:57
And, fun fact, Southern Company, who owns Georgia Power, and also owns the regional gas infrastructure, has proposed to expand a lot of the gas pipelines around the Southeast, including the SSE4 pipeline that is coming from Columbus to Augusta.
10:21
And rate increases. Yes, there’s been about a $43 a month bill increase on our bills for Georgia Power customers for over the past 18 months or so.
10:34
Most of this was for previous expansion that had already been planned and approved.
10:40
So none of this new expansion is currently sitting on our current power bills.
10:45
And there’s a lot of speculation about how much of this will be paid for by the new incoming data centers, and how much of this will be left to the consumer.
10:57
So what is it doing to your power bill?
11:00
So there’s been a couple studies done that show that in some states with the most data centers, electricity bills are surging.
11:11
Bank of America reported that rising utility bills are linked to data center construction.
11:21
So that’s your power bill.
11:22
But people are asking, “Well, what do these things do to the environment and the community that I live in?”
11:28
So in the immediate vicinity of these, we’re talking about noise and light pollution. If they are not properly constructed, or not built up to code,
11:44
We’re talking water runoff and some other issues.
11:49
There’s been reports of… As pressure is building on the water supply people’s wells are ending up with murky water and things like that.
12:00
So there’s a lot of dangers to the local water system.
12:04
And what we’ve also started to hear is once these things get turned on, they produce a low-level hum and a low-level hum has been linked to increased stress.
12:15
And if you are under increased stress 24/7, you actually start to go insane.
12:20
And you can also have cardiac issues as well.
12:24
So that’s your immediate vicinity. When the power goes out again, they need to run 24/7 and so they crank up their generators.
12:34
And right now a lot of these generators are like diesel generators, right?
12:39
So imagine what happens when a just like a parking lot of generators all cranks up and is running 24/7.
12:48
That is not good for local air quality and also local noise pollution.
12:56
Now, outside the immediate vicinity…
12:57
We’re talking a strain on water resources.
13:00
They do use a lot of water, there is loss of trees cover, and possible impact on property values.
13:08
We have some pictures from our friends in Fayetteville where high tension power lines needed to be run to a new data center. Because of that an eminent domain claim was made…
13:21
We’re talking giant high tension power poles in people’s front yards.
13:26
So the infrastructure also will have an impact on local poverty values.
13:31
And then, big picture, power consumption in Georgia, you just saw we’re proposing 10 more gigawatts and it’s mainly via polluting sources and it is very water intensive.
13:48
So what does this say here about cooling…
13:52
There is talk about closed loop cooling and targeted cooling and things like that.
14:00
So there are things that data centers can do to cut down on the amount of water that they are using by being a little bit more strategic about their cooling strategies.
14:12
It saves some water.
14:13
It does not save all the water.
14:16
And because nothing in life is free, if you cut down on the water, you raise your electricity bill.
14:22
And so, it’s a tradeoff here.
14:25
But what we’re hearing from a lot of places is that if a data center is coming in, the least you need to do is insist on them using closed loop cooling.
14:38
All right, what are the unknowns about data centers?
14:43
What’s going on that we don’t know about?
14:46
So I just gave you that whole list, but we honestly don’t know how many there are, or their locations.
14:54
We don’t have accurate reporting on their power and water usage.
14:58
We don’t know who their power providers are.
15:00
We don’t know the amount of tax revenue that they’re providing to localities and to the state.
15:05
We don’t actually know the job creation.
15:10
They will come in and claim that they have created hundreds of jobs, but no one ever distinguishes in those reports between temporary construction jobs and full-time employment jobs. And there are additional infrastructure demands.
15:23
There’s just a lot of unknowns that are hidden behind NDA’s and trade secrets and other things.
15:30
And so there’s just a complete lack of transparency here.
15:36
So we’ve done our best. Science for Georgia, working with some partners, and then I sent some interns on a scavenger hunt a couple months ago, looking at tax records, DRI filings, the whole deal.
15:53
Here’s where the current and proposed data centers are, that we know of, that Science for Georgia and partners have found as of December 2025.
16:05
So you can see that they’re mainly in the Atlanta area.
16:09
That’s a big 74 covering all of Atlanta.
16:12
They’re starting to spread out from Atlanta.
16:15
If you look at this map, there’s these little yellow triangles.
16:18
Those yellow triangles are crypto mines, which are like a special subset of data centers.
16:24
They’re basically just giant trailers. The cargo container you put on an 18 wheeler.
16:35
They pack them with specialized computing equipment.
16:38
They put these giant air blower fans on them, and they just like pop them up in the middle of the field.
16:44
They’re their own special version of community noise nuisance and they only run Bitcoin mines.
16:54
Here’s our count as we have right now.
16:58
Currently we have about 97 running and operating.
17:04
We have about 42 more that have been planned and announced. There are about 35 crypto mines.
17:12
And you’ll see as they grow, they get spectacularly bigger.
17:19
Data centers have been around for like 20 years
17:22
They were where we did off site storage a long time ago.
17:25
But only in the past like 2 years have these things called ‘hyperscalers’ that have come on the market.
17:29
So you’ll notice current data centers, about 100 of them, are only taking up 44 million square feet.
17:36
The proposed 42 more, those are going to add 116 million square feet
17:41
So these are big guys.
17:42
The total power capacity, if everything that has been announced is built, is another 15 gigawatts, 15!
17:55
I just told you that Georgia Power got approved for another 10 gigawatts.
18:00
Like these are bonkers numbers.
18:03
If you put all of these centers together, existing and planned, that’s about enough to power 10 million homes.
18:10
There’s only 4.6 million housing units in Georgia.
18:14
This is bonkers.
18:15
And then the total water usage is again another 30 billion from the planned data centers.
18:23
All of this combined is about the same water uses of 1.8 million people.
18:31
And so if you look at it, the Savannah metro area is about 431,000.
18:36
So this is just insane amounts of power and water.
18:40
And the reason this is in the known unknowns is because there’s the NDA’s and trade secrets and everything else. These are all just estimates that we have been able to glean either from DRI filings or press releases. Or we used industry standard ways of taking the square footage and the compute power and turning that into water and power usage numbers.
19:04
I would welcome more transparency and then we can get updated facts here.
19:10
But just to put this in perspective, if everybody’s sitting around and they’re like, what is a GW?
19:16
That is a lot?
19:18
All four reactors at Plant Vogtle.
19:20
There’s four nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle that produce approximately 4.6 gigawatts total.
19:30
So each of those reactors is about 1.1 to 1.2 gigawatts.
19:35
Some of these proposed data centers are going to take up a gigawatt of power, which is the entire output capacity of 1 nuclear reactor.
19:48
And data centers create two hits on our water system.
19:51
There’s the direct consumption at the data center itself with the cooling and all those things.
19:59
And then there’s indirect consumption, because in Georgia we rely on coal and gas and nuclear, and all three of those power sources are very water intensive.
20:12
So if you look at this map here shows the States and their indirect water consumption.
20:18
So this is how they get their power and what power sources they use.
20:21
So if you see in the in the West and in the Northwest and then here in the Southeast, we are red. And red means it’s a high water consumption for our power generation.
20:38
What else are we losing?
20:39
Tax revenue.
20:41
Georgia has a sales tax exemption for data centers.
20:47
We also have other construction incentives.
20:49
Sometimes these guys get ad valorem tax incentives to come into various places around Georgia.
20:56
Based on a report from Good Jobs First, an independent organization, Georgia has lost $300 million in tax revenue alone, just in 2025. Just in 2025.
21:18
All right, what do we not know about these things?
21:21
Is it a bubble?
21:23
Growth is very speculative.
21:24
What happens?
21:26
I mean, technology changes in the blink of an eye.
21:29
What happens if they come up with a brand-new algorithm that only needs like a tenth of the space of these current centers?
21:40
What if all this AI hype doesn’t live up to what people actually think?
21:45
For those of us who were, as my daughter says, so last century, does anyone remember the dot com bubble bursting around 2001?
21:57
Is this what’s going to happen here?
21:59
But when these guys fold, we’re stuck with a bunch of empty shells and a lot of stranded assets and a ton of new power generation capacity. And who’s going to be footing the bill for cleaning all that up?
22:13
And just a little bit more about this.
22:16
A Harvard report came out in October of 2025 that showed without data centers, GDP growth was only 0.1% in the first half of 2025.
22:28
So most of our economic growth in the year of 2025 has been driven by data center construction and all of those needs.
22:36
Oh my gosh, shouldn’t we be diversifying like our portfolio or economic portfolio?
22:48
And here’s another fun question that needs to be answered is: “are these things mission critical?”
22:53
So right now data centers go up, they provide services, and people sign what they call service level agreements with them.
23:04
And so the data centers themselves guarantee a certain level of uptime.
23:08
And usually it’s 99.9999% of the time they will be up and running and providing services.
23:14
What happens when we have a drought or a heat wave or an ice storm or a natural disaster?
23:21
Where are these guys in the queue to get back on the power grid and to get back the water supply?
23:28
How many diesel generators are they going to be running while they’re waiting for the power to turn back on?
23:35
My friends in Augusta and Valdosta and like down on the coast after Helene, they didn’t have water for two weeks.
23:44
A lot of them didn’t have power for four weeks.
23:47
Are people not going to get running water or not going to have power turned on as quickly, so that we can have cloud services?
23:55
These are the questions that need to be answered and need to be put in ordinances and contracts as they’re being proposed and built.
24:05
I talked a lot about this, but really AI is here to stay.
24:11
If I disconnect the video game system from the Internet, there will be a riot in my household, right?
24:20
Like we use the Internet, we use the cloud, we use AI.
24:25
But we’ve got to make them be better neighbors.
24:29
Remember I showed you that slide and I said that they were lazy engineers, right?
24:34
There are plenty of power saving technologies that can be implemented right now.
24:39
There are compute enhancements, new efficient programming, new architectures.
24:46
The biggest thing that could happen right now is load balancing.
24:51
So an ironic twist, AI can be used to save AI.
24:56
A study just came out of Duke University that showed if data centers went to load balancing. Which means that they only perform a certain number of operations, and then once they got up to a limit, they just made people wait in line for their services. Rarely does a data center reach its peak operating capacity. Rarely would people be made to wait in line.
25:15
We wouldn’t need hardly any new power generation.
25:18
They could be running right now at a much more efficient clip.
25:21
That would require them, though, to have some sort of get out of jail free card for their service level agreements.
25:28
Because they’re not going to do load balancing until they won’t get dinged on service level agreements because they’re making people wait in line.
25:40
There’s much more intelligent networking and there’s a lot of things that they can do for their cooling systems.
25:45
All of these could really tamp down their power and water needs.
25:49
Like right now.
25:52
There’s some other things that we can do as a state to make them much better neighbors.
25:58
We can provide community protections: making sure infrastructure is paid for by the data centers themselves.
26:06
Also, as data centers roll into town, having them draft up community benefit plans with the community would be great.
26:15
I’ve said multiple times, they don’t bring a lot of jobs, but they do bring tax revenue.
26:20
And it is Google and Meta, and Microsoft, these people have money.
26:27
They you could turn around and have them invest in the town.
26:31
Accountability and transparency.
26:34
We need to coordinate planning statewide.
26:39
These things use as much water as a factory, except, we put in one Hyundai plant, and we’re not going to put in another one nearby, because there’s not going to be enough workers. And all of those other like support services.
26:50
Whereas data centers, like I said, don’t need a lot of workers.
26:55
So you could line them up all in a row.
26:58
That’s like an untenable, unsustainable, way to use power and water.
27:02
We do have water planning districts in the state.
27:07
We do such a good job with our water planning.
27:11
The Chattahoochee, and the Flint, and all of them, know exactly what comes in to their river, and exactly what comes out, and who’s getting what intakes and outtakes along the way.
27:26
And we do this for agricultural uses and other things.
27:29
So what if we added this for industrial uses?
27:32
We also need transparent and uniform reporting.
27:34
Remember I said I don’t know what any of these things are using.
27:38
How can we plan for the future, if we don’t know what they’re taking right now?
27:42
We need to give them responsible incentives.
27:44
Right now they just get tax incentives for showing up in the state.
27:48
They need to be aligned with doing the right thing and working with communities and having sustainable practices.
27:54
And then finally, they claim to be powering the future workforce and the economy of the future.
28:04
All right, well, cool.
28:05
If you’re walking into a town, let’s upgrade the local STEM labs at the at the high schools.
28:12
Let’s provide AI certificates at the local community colleges and TCSGs.
28:18
Let’s have hire local.
28:20
There are a bunch of ways that they could be enhancing the education and workforce around the state.
28:28
And then on a local level. If all of this got you a little nervous, we have a local outreach toolkit with educational materials and flyers and stuff like that.
28:42
And also in concert with a couple of our great partners we’ve put together ideal moratoriums and zoning ordinances. That way they can come in, and they can be good neighbors, and communities are not caught unaware and unprepared when they roll into town.
29:01
We are here to help you as they roll in.
29:06
I really did want to end this on a slight message of hope: Georgia can make the right decision.
29:13
This situation has come out of nowhere.
29:15
It’s been very fast moving.
29:16
And whenever things are very fast moving, sometimes we’re overwhelmed, and things just happen.
29:21
But we can keep up
29:24
And we can make a decision.
29:26
We can keep going right now on the status quo, which is, I think, unsustainable in terms of our power and our water and our depleted resources and taking from communities and not giving back.
29:38
Or we can turn. There are tools right now and ways to make it happen that they can support a thriving tech economy, that they can support thriving communities around Georgia.
29:51
And so it’s up to us as Georgia to call on these data centers and make them be good neighbors.
30:01
I really thank you very much for your time.
30:05
Sorry about the lack of dad jokes in this presentation.
30:10
I’m glad you listened to this.
30:12
If you need anything, here is our toolkits and the map of data centers and resources and everything else are at bit.ly/DataCenterGA.
30:24
And please reach out to us at Science for Georgia.
30:27
We are happy to help out or get you in contact with the right people.
30:32
Thank you very much.
FAQs
We don’t quite know for certain:
–USA Data Centers listed 219 in Georgia in June 2026 (it was 96 facilities in April, 2025)
–Georgia Data Centers – Providers Map in Georgia, United States – listed 71 facilities in April, 2025 and lists 116 as of November, 2025, and 153 in June 2026.
Science for Georgia’s map has 103 in use, and 76 planned.
Approximately 30 permanent jobs at a Data Center – Why data centers fail to bring new jobs to small towns | TechRepublic
Virginia data centers generate just 1 permanent job for every $13 million invested, based on Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) data dating back to 1990. In contrast, it cost a mere $137,000 to create 1 job outside of the data center sector — nearly 100 times less investment.
—Artificial Jobs: The Illusion of Big Tech’s Data Center Employment Claims | Food and Water Watch
Data Invasion: How Data Centers Affect Your Bills – TrustDALE | 10 Jul, 2026
This June 2025 study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University, said that “Data Center Growth Could Increase Electricity Bills 8% Nationally and as Much as 25% in Some Regional Markets“
Why your electric bill is going up faster than a data center’s – The Washington Post | 15 Jan, 2026
Georgia Power bills to rise if PSC approves data center buildout, analysts warn | AJC – 24 Nov, 2025
Electricity bills in states with the most data centers are surging | CNBC – 14 Nov, 2025
Bank of America Report on Rising Utility Bills and Link to Data Centers – 17 Oct, 2025
Data Centers Are Already Increasing Your Energy Bills. We Have the Receipts. – Union of Concerned Scientists – 29 Sept, 2025
LG&E customers could see higher bills under proposed rate hike | Business | wdrb.com – 9 Sept, 2025
Power use can vary – but it can be estimated at about 150 Watts (W) to 300W of power per sq foot.
Thus, using the estimate of 200 W per sq foot – Project Sail at 4.9Million square feet would draw about 980 Megawatts (MW)
For comparison – Georgia Power estimates that 1MW of power can support 450 homes. Thus, Project Sail is about the equivalent of 441,000 homes.
Data center’s power consumption comes from
- Compute technology – millions of computer chips executing algorithms and computations on enormous quantities of data. All this data requires:
- Storage devices – hard disk drives that hold all the data. To get the data and answers back and forth to the data centers and within the data centers there must be:
- Network devices – that provide connectivity. All of these things combine to create a tremendous amount of heat which require complex
- Cooling systems – from AC units to water chillers.
Understanding Data Center Energy Consumption – C&C Technology Group
A program was announced in Apr 2026 that would allow large users to bring their own (BYO) energy.
The impact of this program is uncertain – it could be great – it could be terrible. A few factors impact the outcome:
- How much of this BYO energy will be from clean, renewable, sources?
- Will this then cut down on the amount of power generation that Georgia Power builds? (If not – then the risk of costly overbuild is even higher!)
This is worth paying attention to – and hopefully items will begin to be addressed over this upcoming year at various PSC hearings.
Learn more here: Georgia Power will now let data centers bring their… | Canary Media | 15 Apr, 2026
In summer 2025, there were 97 in use and 19 planned data centers.
Total Power Capacity of 68 centers: 6500 MW
Total Power Capacity of 19 planned: 6200 MW
Total in-use and planned: 12,700 MW
From those 97 in-use, we were able to find reported power capacity data for 68 centers, and total square footage for 64 centers (not all the same centers). We then used the square footage from the 64 centers to estimate power capacity – which was close to the reported power capacity – and low and high water usage.
For the 10 more in progress, we had announced capacity for 11 of them, and then square footage for 17 of them (note – we had square footage for one data center that we did not have power capacity for). We then used the square footage from the 17 centers to estimate power capacity, and low and high water usage.
Water estimates vary.
It is anywhere between 2 Gallons per Watt to 4.15 G per W.
Data centers are not required to track their water usage, and many still water an “inexpensive commodity.” In 2021, a survey of over 500 global data centers found that 49% did not track water use, with 63% stating there was “no business justification for collecting water usage data.”
There is minimal reporting required for data centers in Georgia.
Many data centers deals are protected by non-disclosure agreements.
“Fewer than half of data center owners and operators are tracking the metrics needed to assess their sustainability and, in some cases, to meet pending regulatory requirements.” – Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2024 | Uptime Intelligence
When the water usage estimate is not provided in public documentation – we can estimate it from the rated power of the data center.
The Total Water Used = Water Use Efficiency (WUE) * IT Energy Consumed
Let’s break those terms down:
Water use efficiency (WUE) is a measure of the total water consumed divided by the number of kilowatt hours (kWh, there are 1000kW in a MW).
As an example. A data center that uses 100,000 liters of water per day and 50,000 kWh of energy in a day has a WUE of 2 liters/kWh:
WUE depends on the type of cooling system that a data center uses.
- Evaporative cooling systems are typically estimated at 1.8 liters/kWh
- A fully closed loop system would approach 0 liters/kWh as they only fill their system once every few years.
- Hybrid systems (partial closed-loop) have a range of 0.3–0.7 Liters/kWh
For our purposes we will estimate WUE as:
- Unknown system: 1.8 liters/kWh
- Evaporative systems: 1.8 liters/kWh
- Hybrid systems: 0.5 liters/kWh
Daily IT Energy Consumed. Then we need to understand the actual power draw of a data center – the total capacity is called ‘rated power’ or ‘name-plate’ capacity – which is the total power if everything was on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But, not all the equipment is being run, at full capacity, all the time.
This ‘in use’ draw is estimated via:
Daily IT Energy (kWh) = Rated Power (kW) × 24 hrs/day × Utilization Factor
The Utilization Factor measures the average amount of ‘on-time’ for processors and systems. For example, the power grid is typically built to be able to let everyone turn on all their lights, appliances, air conditioners – all at once. But in general, that doesn’t happen. The grid is ‘utilized’ at a fraction of that capacity. This is the same thing.
A 2026 paper gave a range of utilization factors from 0.48 to 0.7. The 0.7 number was for the high-AI scenario. In 2024, Lawrence Berkly National Labs estimated a factor of 0.50.
For the purposes of our calculations – we will use a utilization factor of 0.6 – as AI use is on the rise.
For our full calculations:
Water Use in Millions of Gallons per Day (MGD)= rated power hours used × utilization factor × WUE
There is no such thing as a ‘typical’ data center. But for illustrative purposes – here are a few examples using a 500 MW data center.
A 500MW data center is ‘mid-range’ for a hyperscale. 500 MW can power about 225,000 homes and is about half the output of a single nuclear reactor (and a quarter of Hoover Dam’s output).
This article is also a good read on the subject:
Four Va. counties will pump almost 20 million gallons of water a day to Amazon. Cause for concern? • Virginia Mercury | 19 June, 2026
Power estimates are usually easier to find than water estimates – as they are used in marketing and sales.
If no power estimates are provided, we can estimate the power from the listed square footage.
Power per square footage can vary due to equipment age, type, and usage. C&C Wavetech, a power solutions company, estimates about 200 to 400 watts per square foot (for a hyperscale data center). About a year ago, the same group estimated 150-300 watts per square foot. This makes sense, as companies are packing more compute density into smaller spaces.
We will pick 300 watts per square foot. This is the middle of the 200-400 range.
To calculate rated power from square footage:
Rated Power (MW) = Estimated Square Feet * 300 Watts / Sq Feet * 1 MW / 1,000,000 W
Sometimes there are two data centers with the same name. For example, T5 is called Atlanta IV data center in two different DRI filings, one in Coweta County and one in Fulton County. We can’t decipher the reasoning for this duplicate, but it does make tracking more difficult for those trying to understand the landscape of data centers in GA.
Residents living next to AI data centers have another problem — ‘man camps’ and schools proposed for the workers that will build them | MSN | 6 Jul, 2026
If you have heard the marketing pitch from Target Hospitality providing “mission-critical turnkey services for remote data center builds,” you may have read the article by The Digital Weekly which reports that the detention camp developers are now offering what is being called “Data Center Company Towns”. “Turnkey” refers to the services offered including: accommodations, food, transportation, security, healthcare, waste, and maintenance services. This sort of camp is being compared to company towns of the past where your social and economic stability is at the whim of the owners of your livelihood.
Company towns are monopolies compared to “the European feudal system” since there is one owner of all goods and services the employees access. In 1840 Chicago, railroad developer George Pullman “ran his town the way he ran his business, with total control and a sharp eye on the bottom line” in what is often called “corporate paternalism.” One glaring difference between company towns like ones built and owned by Pullman, Hershey, and Pacific Lumber Company or many of the orchards in the US and these data center company towns is permanence. The temporary company towns resemble the petroleum boomtowns known for creating ghost town because “When wells dried up or prices crashed, communities collapsed, leaving environmental hazards and decaying infrastructure.”
There are obvious concerns when a company town is suggested as a solution to skilled labor shortages. First, labor and materials are brought in to meet all of their needs resulting in the developers and their staff not contributing to the local economy. In a company town economic structure there is no reason for the employees to leave the camp. Physical and social needs are supposedly met within the walls of the camp, cutting the staff off from the outside world.
The good people near Plant Vogtle would be happy to share the stories of the “temporary man camps” that sprung up to build the reactor.
Yes! There are reports of a low-level hum or vibration coming from data centers (think of multiplying the noise of your air conditioner by 1000).
The Cloud Has Sound: The Unrelenting and Unseen Cost of A.I. Data Centers – The New York Times | 16 Jun, 2026
While there have been no specific studies (yet) on data center noise – there are studies on the impact of noise on human health.
Noise pollution can have an impact on our hearing, our physical health, our sleep, our mental health, and our children.
Over time, noise can cause hearing loss and tinnitus, and it puts the body’s stress response into overdrive, raising blood pressure and increasing the risk of heart disease, stroke, and even early death. Nighttime noise is especially problematic, because it messes with sleep, which then has a knock-on effect on mood, focus, and long-term physical and mental health. In fact, noise pollution has been linked to higher rates of depression and a generally lower quality of life.
Kids are particularly vulnerable, exposure to noise can permanently affect their hearing, their ability to concentrate, and even their emotional development, which can follow them all the way through their education and beyond.
And it’s not just people who suffer; animals are affected too. Noise disrupts how wildlife communicates, finds food, and reproduces, putting real pressure on certain species.
Read more here – including the recommendation that Data Centers be measured in dBC to account for the low-level nature of the noise.
“As the United States rapidly builds massive data centers for the development of artificial intelligence, many Americans are concerned about the environmental impact.” – Americans worry AI data centers harm environment | AP News | 23 Oct, 2025
This is true.
Power lines have been run through people’s backyards and frontyards. Some have even lost their homes.
“Before the data center boom happened, the transmission plan at that time said, ‘We’re going to build 50 miles of new right-of-way, high-voltage transmission across the entire state in the next 10 years,'” [Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Bob] Sherrier said.
“It’s now 1,000 miles of new transmission lines in the next 10 years,” Sherrier said.
The exact mileage, as described in public disclosures by Georgia Power, is 1,065 miles.
— Georgia Power has a massive plan for new power lines. What does that mean for the homes near them? | Georgia Public Broadcasting | 23 Jun, 2026
When Data Centers Come for Your Backyard – The New York Times | 15 June, 2026
Georgia Power’s data center build-out raises fears of eminent domain | AJC | 15 May, 2026
2026 Study showed “local microclimate zones” or heat islands.
- Average temperature change measured about 3.6 degrees F with highs of 16 degrees F above surrounding area temperatures.
- Within metro Atlanta, this can exacerbate heat waves for surrounding residents leading to negative health outcomes
- Rural areas can see ecosystem disruption.
- DOI:10.48550/arXiv.2603.20897
News Stories
AI and data centers leave goliath-sized environmental footprints globally | AP News | 3 June, 2026
From: Balancing Data Center Growth with American Agriculture | Market Intel | American Farm Bureau Federation | 23 Apr, 2026
The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) supports responsible data center development in rural areas that delivers meaningful economic benefits while respecting local resources and private property rights. State and local policymakers play a critical role in balancing growth with long-term land preservation by recognizing farmland as a strategic economic asset, protecting against unnecessary conversion of highly productive agricultural land, and prioritizing brownfields or previously developed sites whenever possible.
Because data center projects often move quickly and can outpace local planning processes, strong local governance is essential. Transparent zoning and permitting decisions, along with early and consistent engagement with landowners and other stakeholders, help ensure that communities have a voice in development decisions and that outcomes reflect local priorities.
AFBF also emphasizes the importance of responsible resource management. Data centers should be located and operated in ways that protect agricultural water resources, including clear disclosure of water use and the adoption of water‑efficient technologies such as closed‑loop cooling systems. Policy frameworks should address shared demands on critical resources by encouraging continued innovation in water efficiency, supporting energy infrastructure that benefits both agriculture and data center operations, and promoting solutions that strengthen the resilience of rural communities overall.
Water use varies significantly depending on climate, course size, irrigation, and annual rainfall. According to “How Much Water Does a Golf Course Use? Understanding Golf Course Irrigation Practices,” a typical American golf course uses around 312,000 gallons of water per day. However, using national averages is misleading, since water needs depend heavily on regional climate.
Research shows that water use for golf courses has declined over the past two decades. A nationwide 2025 survey found that, due to improvements in irrigation technology and water management improvements, overall water applied per acre decreased by 15% between 2005 and 2024.
For Georgia and the broader Southeast region, using regional data provides a much better estimate than national averages when calculating water use. According to the survey, the median golf facility in the Southeast applies 192 acre-feet of water annually, or about 62.6 million gallons per year. This brings us to 171,500 gallons per day per (.17 MGD) course. This creates a discrepancy where national estimates applied to the Southeast overstate values by around 40-50%. If we compare this to a mid-sized data center (500 MW), which is estimated to use between .95 to 3.42 million gallons per day depending on the cooling system, we see upwards of 5 to 20 times the amount of water a golf course uses.
It is important to note that golf courses in the Southeast have higher annual rainfall totals than ones in arid regions, which reduce irrigation demands. In response to public scrutiny, golf courses have adopted more efficient irrigation practices to reduce overall water consumption over time.
Sources: