More from All the latest updates on AI data centers
Leaders of the village approved plans for the data centers on Wednesday, FOX6 News Milwaukee reports, and the Mount Pleasant Village Board could give final approval “as soon as Monday night.” The data centers would go on land formerly owned by Foxconn.
[FOX6 News Milwaukee]
Two individuals who were driving dump trucks to the construction site in Richland Parish, Louisiana, were arrested on Wednesday. Local law enforcement says ICE “did not enter the Meta site at any time,” but told Bloomberg that agents were sweeping for identification of workers en route to the site.
At least 25 were canceled last year in the US, according to an analysis by Heatmap Pro. It’s a significant increase from 2024 as local opposition to energy and water-intensive data centers grows across the nation.
In Virginia, environmental group Food & Water Watch found that one permanent data center job is created for every $13 million invested. It estimates that data centers account for 0.01 percent of US jobs, but 4.4 percent of electricity consumption, and is petitioning Congress to end all new data center construction.
[Food & Water Watch]
Google’s parent company will acquire Intersect for $4.75 billion to “enable more data center and generation capacity to come online, faster, while accelerating energy development and innovation,” according to a press release. Intersect will “remain separate from Alphabet and Google.”
Google announced a partnership with Intersect last year.
Astronomers and environmental scientists are skeptical.
Old data centers physically cannot support rows and rows of GPUs, which is one reason for the massive AI data center buildout.
The tech industry “needs to earn the social permission to consume energy” for AI data centers he says in an interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner. Nadella also called for faster permitting for new power infrastructure and “innovation” in energy efficiency and generation.
Now, the independent market monitor for the northeast’s PJM Interconnection is asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to only allow large data centers to connect to the grid if there’s enough capacity available to serve them reliably. PJM is struggling to finalize a plan to cope with surging data center growth.
Growing electricity demand for AI and the Trump administration’s love of natural gas have influenced the International Energy Agency’s latest World Energy Outlook, Heatmap reports.
US power grids aren’t moving fast enough to keep up with the sudden rise in electricity demand from AI. Data center developers are forging ahead anyway, adding their own gas turbines and fuel cells.
[The Wall Street Journal]
That’s according to a recent Bloomberg analysis of wholesale electricity prices across the US, which has more data centers than any other country.
There are other factors aside from speculative electricity demand from data centers that are pushing up prices. Updating aging grids with new power lines and recovering from climate disasters is also costly.