by Mike Buza
Before the legislative summer break, a debate about how Michigan should handle data centers ensued. In the view of environmentalists, the primary issue is that data centers are energy and water hogs. They also produce noise pollution. The excessive heat they produce can damage the surrounding environment. Data centers have the potential to undo the hard-fought battles in the legislature from last year to put Michigan on the path to a 100% clean energy grid.
There is good cause for concern. An article in Time magazine said that in 2020, Microsoft had a goal of being carbon-negative in a decade. It has reneged on that goal and has increased its target emissions by 30%. This is mainly due to its increased ambitions for artificial intelligence (AI). Even more worrisome is that tech companies are becoming more secretive in their projected use in electricity for data centers.
We are getting more and more severe storms. The destructiveness of these storms is progressing faster than many scientists projected. The goal espoused by climate scientists is to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius. It is universally accepted by the scientific community that we are behind where we need to be at this point. To achieve these goals, we need to electrify most transportation, home heating, manufacturing and other sources of fossil fuel carbon emissions. The added burdens the spread of these data centers would put on the grid would slow the electrification of these resources.
There are several proposals out there to link data centers directly to nuclear power plants. The Sierra Club and many other environmental organizations are opposed to nuclear power because of safety concerns and the problem of disposal of nuclear waste.
There are issues beyond this. The clean energy legislation recently passed by the Michigan legislature has off-ramps in case we absolutely cannot meet our clean energy goals. These off-ramps protect the population from the loss of electricity, but they do not stop the inexorable march of climate consequences if we keep pumping greenhouse gasses into the air.
With the increased demand for electricity, there will most likely be a delay in the closing of fossil fuel plants. Frequently, fossil fuel plants are in neighborhoods of disadvantaged, communities of color. In many of these areas, people already suffer from a higher incidence of asthma and other lung disorders. To add to this difficulty, there is substantial resistance in many rural communities to building clean energy wind and solar farms. Another of the possible challenges posed by data centers will be that Michigan has had more major power outages than any other state except for Texas during the past two decades. The power outages in Michigan are often lengthy, leading to the use of generators run with diesel and other fossil fuels, adding to local air pollution in these areas.
Michigan leads the nation in the development of clean energy projects. The development of data centers would not help our state in any significant way. Data centers produce very few jobs and they are a big drain on the use of water for cooling.
A recent article in Planet Detroit urges Michigan to look at Virginia as an example of problems data centers can cause by giving out tax breaks to encourage development. In one area of concentrated data centers in Virginia, there are over 4,000 diesel generators in case of power outages. Many are the size of train cars. These can cause huge emissions problems during power outages.
Data centers not only threaten air and water quality but can cause noise pollution. Virginia, with its tax incentives and lax rules around the development of data centers, has recently approved a 1,200-acre site for a data center and has an additional 732-acre site proposed. These large-scale data centers can demand 30 – 40 times as much energy as previous data centers. This often means an upgrading of the grid and ratepayers can be stuck with the bills. This can further burden low-income ratepayers.
We should leverage data center development in Michigan to elevate, implement and celebrate Michigan’s major 100% clean energy win by ensuring these policies are well-aligned. Failing to do so has the potential to undermine our clean energy standards in the near and long term. We don’t want to trigger a need for coal plants to stay online, or build out gas facilities to meet energy demand. We want data centers to help drive renewable energy buildout, energy efficiency and demand response best practices, and battery storage deployment. We also want development to help ensure safe and affordable water by requiring state-of-the-art water efficiency practices, and holding ratepayers harmless by making sure data centers are paying their fair share.
Michigan must require that these companies deliver value to Michiganders in siting mega data centers here; we must not take corporate promises on faith. Failure to set enforceable, high standards now will inevitably lead to long-term data center issues in our state. Now is our opportunity to lead once again on strong freshwater and climate policy while investing in Michigan’s future. Your state legislators will be getting back into session after Labor Day. Contact them and encourage them to protect Michigan’s natural resources and its residents’ health from runaway, poorly regulated data center development. They worked too hard in 2023 to pass clean energy legislation to give it away this year. A position statement from the Sierra Club Michigan Chapter can be found here.
Questions or comments can be directed to Mike Buza at theoriginalzuba@yahoo.com.