A report published Tuesday by Western Resources defenders warns against the need to prepare for the amount of energy and water that the data centers require, in particular in the dry interior of the west.
“The expansion of AI and other technologies has created a precipitation to build data centers so that we must now quickly extend our large -scale energy network. We are at the dawn of monumental changes, and we cannot afford to be mistaken, “said Deborah Kapiloff, political advisor of the advocacy group.
“Without proactive regulations, there is a significant risk that residential customers will be on the hook for higher energy bills, and the progress we have made to reduce pollution of fossil combustion combustion could be lost.”
The report notes the extreme quantity of energy data centers which must be calculated as well as cooling to protect the computer equipment they house.
If the projections of the growth of the charges of the data center of the main public services in the region become reality, these new installations in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah could have an annual use of water of 21,600 acres (7 billion gallons) by 2035, according to data. This amount of water meets the annual needs of 194,000 people.
In the new organization of the organization, the impacts of the data center in the West: political solutions for water and energy consumption, energy and water experts for Western resources of resources have a summary of electricity load forecasts for data centers in the region as well as the potential impacts of water.
They claim that robust regulatory policies can protect customers, ensure that water resources are preserved and stimulate investments in clean and innovative technologies. The key recommendations for this report are focused on three main categories: progress clean energy, preserve rare water resources and protect electricity customers.
Some of the organization’s political solutions include water efficiency and data declaration and change of load, which uses energy at times when there is no cutting edge, if possible. In addition, incentives for economic development should only be at stake if it is shown that energy demand does not have a negative impact on existing customers.
Stress on the grid
The organization warns against electricity bills in hiking due to demand on the network which is already trying to follow.
“Collective annual energy requests for public services in the WRA region should be 32% higher in 2030 and 55% higher in 2035. During the period 2025-2035, which is equivalent to an annual growth rate of 4.5%. This forecast is considerably higher than what public services project a few years ago, which is without what growth does not summarize growth.
A UTAH solution?
But this last legislative session, Senator Scott Sandall, R-Tremonton, proposed a measure to isolate current taxpayers against explosive growth in the demand for load and allow the developers of these centers to operate in a competitive space to find their own energy.
“What we have now is an exponential increase in demand where companies come and want to place data centers. They want to do the AI and these big charges are, honestly, very difficult to serve in our normal regulated monopoly system that we have in our state. Authorize, ”said Sandall.
He made several key points in legislative testimony.
“This would only apply (would apply) in the geographic area of Rocky Mountain Power and allow Rocky Mountain Power to compete with individual contracts,” said Sandall. “It also gives a way for external entities to come and are service providers for these big charges,” said Sandall. “As I mentioned with the substitute, one of the biggest collage points was that we have tried to create this wall between the new charges and the existing customers to ensure that the costs are not allocated to regular or normal or existing customers to accelerate in these new charges.”
Sandall’s bill, SB132, was promulgated at the end of March by the Governor of Utah Spencer Cox.
“The decision -makers must respond to the immediate dispute to respond to the emerging energy and water requests from the data centers, while developing policies that guarantee that data centers accelerate progress to energy, water and long -term climatic objectives,” said Kapiloff. “With Smart Policy Solutions, there are possibilities for feeding data centers with renewable resources and sustainable water use practices. Now is the time to do things well. ”
