Data centres face growing land and power constraints amid AI and cloud boom

As the demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing continues to grow, data centers are expanding at an unprecedented rate, pushing the limits of land and power resources.

The power demands of artificial intelligence and cloud computing are escalating to such an extent that individual data center campuses could soon consume more electricity than some cities and even entire US states, according to the companies developing these facilities, Caliber.Az reports via foreign media.

Over the past decade, the electricity consumption of data centers has surged, paralleling their growing importance in the economy, as they house servers powering the applications businesses and consumers rely on daily.

With the rise of artificial intelligence, developers warn that data centers are becoming so massive that securing enough power and suitable land for them will increasingly pose challenges. These facilities may soon require a gigawatt or more of power — one billion watts — which is roughly double the residential electricity consumption of the Pittsburgh area last year. 

Technology companies are engaged in a "race of a lifetime to global dominance" in artificial intelligence, according to Ali Fenn, president of Lancium, a company that secures land and power for data centers in Texas. “It’s frankly about national security and economic security,” she said. “They’re going to keep spending” because there’s no more profitable place to deploy capital. Developers note that renewable energy alone won’t be enough to meet the growing power demands. Natural gas will need to play a role, which could hinder progress toward carbon dioxide emissions targets. 

Regardless of the energy source, data centers have now reached a scale where they are beginning to “tap out against the existing utility infrastructure,” said Nat Sahlstrom, chief energy officer at Tract, a Denver-based company that secures land, infrastructure, and power resources for such facilities. “The funnel of available land in this country that’s industrial-zoned and can accommodate the data center use case — it’s becoming more and more constrained,” said Sahlstrom, who previously led Amazon’s energy, water, and sustainability teams. 

As land and power resources become increasingly limited, data centers are expanding into new markets beyond the long-established global hub in northern Virginia, Sahlstrom explained. The electric grid serving Virginia is facing reliability issues, with power demand set to surge while supply is dwindling due to the retirement of coal- and some natural gas-powered plants. 

By Naila Huseynova