Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn
167 comments
·February 24, 2025kaonwarb
michaelt
Some reports say carbon offsets suffer from widespread fraud [1] - if you emit pollution, pay someone to 'protect the rainforest' and they 'protect' some rainforest that wasn't at risk anyway? Your emissions haven't actually been offset.
Likewise if you pay someone to plant a tree that'll reabsorb the carbon you've emitted over the course of 40 years, and they cut it down and burn it after 15 years - the carbon's still in the atmosphere.
So putting your data centre right next to a hydroelectric or nuclear power plant is the gold standard.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed...
null
culi
Where do you get the 1.6% figure from? It's not mentioned anywhere in the attached link. Bitcoin mining alone peaked at over 10% of the world's energy usage one year so 1.6 seems exceedingly low
gruez
>Bitcoin mining alone peaked at over 10% of the world's energy usage one year
Where are you getting that from?
ZeroGravitas
I'm a fan of the general concept of credit-based market systems and for carbon or carbon equivalents it is basically fungible by location.
That's not true for other pollutants though, which is one of the reasons that e.g EVs shifting emissions to powerplants is good because cars are used in dense urban environments where the pollution affects more people.
I've seen the work that big tech has published to justify the additionality of their clean energy purchases and offsets. They have the data to refute this if they can do so. I'd guess they can't due to their renewables and other offers being further away from population than these data centres.
freejazz
> additionality
Why do people keep adding "ality" to words? "Addition" works fine here:
"I've seen the work that big tech has published to justify the addition of their clean energy purchases and offsets"
ZeroGravitas
Additionality means "does this purchase of clean/green energy increase the total amount on the grid or does it just take it from other users who are now associated with the emissions of the non-clean energy".
Or more broadly "the extent to which something happens as a result of an intervention that would not have occurred in the absence of the intervention."
qwerty_clicks
Clean air is default. You can’t make ‘more clean’ air to offset dirty air. You can just hide real and compound health impacts with the fact that someone else exercises more in clean air and lives better.
tlb
No, air isn't clean by default. All air has particulates in it at various levels. There are natural particulates like forest fire smoke, blowing dust, and volcano emissions. And there are man-made particulates, dating back to the invention of fire but getting much worse with coal. All are harmful to some extent.
If you do something that causes air in one place to get 1 ppm dirtier and air in another place to get 1 ppm cleaner, and the populations are the same, the net impact on health cancels out.
mmooss
> If you do something that causes air in one place to get 1 ppm dirtier and air in another place to get 1 ppm cleaner, and the populations are the same, the net impact on health cancels out.
The average ppm cancel out but the outcomes don't, because you have more sick people: Let's say 12 ppm is the maximum safe ratio for some pollution [edit: assuming it is a pollutant that has local impact, not like CO2 which has global impact]:
1) If place A has 10 ppm and place B has 10 ppm, then nobody is sick
2) If place A has 15 ppm and place B has 5 ppm, then people in place A are sick
Public policy generally doesn't work well with averages and similar analyses, because outcomes are usually discrete for each individual; it's not a stew where you can mix outcomes together and get something good.
As another example, if the economy results in one person making $1 billion and 999,999 making nothing, the average is $1 million per person - but what does that mean? 999,999 people are still in dire poverty. (It does have some significance, for things society does collectively - fund police and fire, and even help for poor people.)
mschuster91
> If you do something that causes air in one place to get 1 ppm dirtier and air in another place to get 1 ppm cleaner, and the populations are the same, the net impact on health cancels out.
Not exactly. The other place might have people die from poverty, illnesses and godknowswhat much earlier so the effect of pollution shifting doesn't manifest itself or even gets masked off by rising life expectancies in general - that's the dirty secret behind the move of dirty and toxic productions to Asia.
aoeusnth1
The marginal health impact of 1 ppm (of what?) may not be the same across all concentrations, not least because of adaptive behaviors: avoiding outside exercise, using air filters.
But in general I agree that you should be able to look at tradeoffs of a set of actions and allow of the possibility that some negatives are offset by positives.
jrflowers
> Why not?
If your house had a carbon monoxide leak but your neighbor’s house did not, would you consider your carbon monoxide leak to be “offset” by that fact?
kaonwarb
If a mitigating action had decreased CO in my neighbor's house by at least as much as it increased in mine, then potentially yes, a neutral researcher should consider that as an offset at the population health level.
Not sure why we need an analogy, though. How about sticking to standard air pollution, which has direct impact of its own? CO poisoning seems a bit extreme as a comparison.
darkwater
No, it's not that extreme. If the offset comes from a zone where air quality is already "good enough", no extra lives are saved, so it's still net negative.
null
freejazz
One person remains fine, the other is dead. That's a net loss...
dpierce9
Without agreeing with the paper’s general point, imagine a coal plant that emits particles which cause asthma within a 25 mile radius of the plant that also buys legit offsets for all the carbon they emit. They aren’t buying offsets for the local harms.
bombcar
Something else has to be added, or you could just have coal plants perpetually moving around and buying credits by shutting down the previous one.
Now if they offset by buying scrubbers that cleaned similar particulates elsewhere in the world you'd have a "average stayed the same" but the problem moved.
culi
Oh c'mon are we still buying into the carbon offset greenwashing bullshit. There research that it's mostly a big fraud is piling up at this point. Can we stop gurgling on corporate misinformation
SpicyLemonZest
I'm skeptical of carbon offsets for direct polluters. But the idea that Big Tech data centers "costs US public health $5.4bn" comes mostly from the precise inverse of carbon offsets, where a prorated share of the local electric company's emissions is imputed to them. Presumably big tech would be just as happy if the local grid were 100% renewable, and the article quotes Google at least saying they actively try to use clean energy when it's available.
culi
You haven't said anything that disproves the statement you're quoting. Regardless of intention it's still factual.
markhahn
Ugh, this is horrible writing.
For instance, "Data centres cause pollution through high eletricity use" - high relative to what, residential housing? Aluminum smelting?
It's fine to be skeptical of the AI bubble, but this article (ironic for FT) reads like veiled de-development.
We also don't need any fizzy-drinks - shall we calculate the deaths due to pollution caused by that, let alone the primary effect on health of drink-victims? If you don't like what electricity is being used for, argue for specific regulation to make it more expensive.
otikik
It’s deflection from the real polluters
nayuki
Cars and suburban sprawl
kittikitti
Actually, the real danger in society is AI and Big Tech is the only one you can trust. Everyone else should stop research in AI because of carbon emissions!
tbrownaw
> but this article (ironic for FT) reads like veiled de-development.
Hard to tell if they're singling out AI because it's the current hot thing that everyone's talking about (and afraid of being replaced by), or if they're singling out "big tech" because they're rich and cool to hate on.
gruez
Probably the latter. A few years ago the same argument was being trotted out for crypto mining.
mschuster91
And with good reason - some particularly enterprising miners revived a coal power plant of all things. Other meme coins wasted insane amounts of HDDs and SSDs. I'm glad it's mostly Bitcoin and Ethereum that are left over these days.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m...
scarab92
The media A/B tests headlines to see what generates the most clicks.
The journalists then learn what their audience responds to and creates narratives around that.
The result is the reality and the narrative often differ dramatically.
"News" is just "Reality TV" but in text format.
bombcar
As an aside I've noticed this in real time on Youtube - titles of videos just released changing before my eyes.
TheSpiceIsLife
> reads veiled de-development.
> If you don't like what electricity is being used for, argue for specific regulation to make it more expensive.
That reads like veiled de-development.
How do you reconcile saying both those things?
AnthonyMouse
De-development is saying we have to e.g. stop driving cars. Regulations that make dirty power more expensive are the likes of a carbon tax, which you can avoid while still having a car by getting an electric car and charging it from solar panels.
bombcar
The cars is a perfect example. Many people who want there to be much fewer car miles in toto will argue they're polluting, but will also not want anything that makes them not polluting - because they're not actually arguing for pollution reduction, they're arguing against the car.
Same with this, I feel. It's not anti-pollution, it's anti-AI.
TheSpiceIsLife
Practically speaking, poor people can't just get an electric car.
SilasX
Agreed. It reminds me of the article about how self-driving cars, by being safer, would worsen the organ waitlist.[1]
Like, in what other context would you raise this concern about saving lives?
It's the same kind of dishonesty, picking out one hot-button source of pollution, apportioning out its health impact, and complaining about it alone.
[1] https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/self-driving-cars-will-...
pkaye
As someone who got from an organ transplant, I'd still push for self-driving car and safer cars. My hope is pig organ transplants make it through trials soon. That could push a 7 year wait for kidney transplant down to a year which is a big deal because the long time on dialysis can have a lasting impact.
paulryanrogers
Couldn't we just make donation opt out and solve the problem?
rat87
From the article you linked > We’re all for saving lives—we aren’t saying that we should stop self-driving cars so we can preserve a source of organ donation. But we also need to start thinking now about how to address this coming problem.
SilasX
It doesn’t matter how much they try to walk it back and not sound so criminally insane. Refer again to my second paragraph: The issue is, would the author ever think of writing this article for any other instance of saving lives? If not, then it’s a case of selective focus, the same problem in this submission.
I mean, why not just say the organ shortage is bad, without pointing the finger at the latest hip, hot button issue, out of all the possible life-savers?
boxedemp
Sounds to me like the real criticism is dirty electricity generation.
palmotea
> Sounds to me like the real criticism is dirty electricity generation.
Not when that "dirty electricity generation" was planned to be shut down before the data centers arrived: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/14/ai_datacenters_coal/, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m..., https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/31/datacenter_power_crun..., https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/eric_schmidt_speech/.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
Everyone needs a pollution tax, hardly anyone wants one
ZeroGravitas
Mancur Olson's work "The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups" would suggest that lots of people want one, but only a little (they'd gain billions spread over half a billion people) while a few actors who it would financially affect directly really don't want one and the latter wins.
michaelt
Depends on the type of pollution, I guess?
To reduce carbon emissions, one would put a tax on gasoline, natural gas, coal, and electricity from plants powered from those sources.
The thing is, that hits every single voter in the pocketbook.
And what's more, a voter on $20,000 drives about the same amount as a voter on $200,000 - so if the gas tax costs both drivers $1000 a year, the former will feel it a lot harder.
So our politicians are scared to do it.
dv_dt
Its not so much people with little financial interest, but rather interest with more financial power. After all having a life cut short, or being uprooted by climate events or killed is of a huge cost - individually and socially.
mmooss
Everyone pays it, but the distribution of costs depends on nature and not on rational policy. It also depends on having the wealth to avoid certain costs, e.g., by leaving dangerous areas.
kittikitti
You can only trust Big Tech, make sure everyone else stops their AI research (due to environmental concerns of course).
willvarfar
A lot of modern electricity generation is to power data centres and bitcoin mining.
Quick googling found a stat that 1.6% of the whole world's electricity supply going on computing and also https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-big-tech-uses-more-... etc.
And we need more! On day 2 of his presidency Trump pledged to fast-track new power generation to drive data centres in the US. https://www.axios.com/2025/01/23/trump-ai-power-plants-data-...
Drill baby drill! Using electricity on compute is driving future dirty power generation.
AnthonyMouse
> Quick googling found a stat that 1.6% of the whole world's electricity supply going on computing
That would imply that it isn't the major issue. Electricity generation as a whole is less than half of US energy consumption, US electricity generation is 35% nuclear or renewable, and computing is using 1.6% of electricity. This is a rounding error compared to e.g. transportation at 37% of all energy consumption, or HVAC at another double-digit percentage.
> And we need more!
New generation capacity in the US is disproportionately renewables because renewables will remain cheaper until they're closer to half of all generation and then have to really deal with the storage issues. Willingness to approve fossil fuel plants doesn't mean anybody really wants them. The large tech companies are buying nuclear:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/business/energy-environme...
jajko
Fuck future generations, fuck our kids... often touted by folks without any or at least somehow normally functioning family.
I think we are back in 80s with current orange man defining direction like fashion, 'greed is good' at any cost mantra is certainly back
weberer
We've been trying to build more clean nuclear plants for decades, but its been ironically the self-proclaimed environmentalists who have been blocking it every step of the way. We could have had 0 carbon electricity production nation wide since the 1980's.
dijksterhuis
relevant song that i listen to far too much - https://youtube.com/watch?v=VGZ1zZ-drQk
sneak
Greed is why people are going to spend CapEx installing solar to reduce OpEx buying coal.
Greed pushes people out of the status quo.
Greed is why fusion reactors will be reduced in size, cost, and complexity.
ipython
I’m confused by the article mentioning West Virginia as a prime location for data centers along side Ohio - I am not aware of a large concentration of data centers in WV? (Unlike VA, of course)
https://westvirginiawatch.com/2025/01/16/west-virginia-isnt-...
solatic
In broad strokes, take AWS for example with us-east-1 being in Virginia and us-east-2 being in Ohio, respectively, and wondering how to fuel future East Coast expansion, West Virginia would offer similar latencies in a deep-red state (meaning, deals will happen when palms get greased) with a powerful energy lobby (that would appreciate additional energy demand). Being a poor state, the price of labor will be cheap as well, both to build the data centers and to maintain them afterwards.
nindalf
Maybe the author thought West Virginia was the western part of Virginia? I know it sounds preposterous, but I think it’s commensurate with the quality of the headline and article.
bombcar
West Virginia is not West Virginia. Makes more sense if you flip it around.
West Virginia is not west Virginia.
Also West Virginia would more accurately be North Virginia.
ipython
(But not “northern” Virginia aka NoVA, where the data centers are … just to make it more confusing)
henryc47
John Denver made the same mistake
bparsons
Increased levels of NO2, SO2 and PM2.5 are going to have a direct impact on the health of people living close to these facilities. The unlicensed gas turbines in Memphis are probably the worst offender.
faraixyz
The paper in question: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288
allergyX
Thats so unfortunate, it can cause breathing and asthma issues
blackeyeblitzar
Since every activity has some externalities and also unexpected positive effects, isn’t focusing on just the negative effects of this one thing very lopsided?
kergonath
That’s fine, you can have one article on negative implications and another one on opportunities. It’s two different subjects, with different data and different approaches, and possibly different specialised authors. You don’t have to both-sides everything all the time.
gruez
That's true, but the articles on negative implications are being selectively written. For instance, there's a deluge of articles about pollution from AI datacenters (and before that, crypto mining), but hardly a peep about pollution from the US healthcare system, or education, even though those are arguably far higher. As a result, such articles comes across as selectively written hit-pieces rather than objective reporting.
oefrha
There’s nothing specific to data centers here, just electricity use. The electricity use generates a shit load of GDP and soft power for the U.S., way more than $5.4B over 5 years.
So what do these degrowth people want exactly? Cant have resource extraction. Can’t have manufacturing, pollution. Can’t have tech, pollution. Just twiddling thumbs and money will come? Or keep all the benefits while offloading all the downsides to Mexico? And a few years later they will complain about dependence on foreign countries.
myrmidon
> So what do these degrowth people want exactly? Cant have resource extraction. Can’t have manufacturing, pollution. Can’t have tech, pollution. Just twiddling thumbs and money will come? Or keep all the benefits while offloading all the downsides to Mexico? And a few years later they will complain about dependence on foreign countries.
It feels like you're arguing against a strawman.
I can only speak for myself, but I would like CO2 emissions to be taxed appropriately, so that fossil fuel producers and consumers actually pay a somewhat proper price for the damage that they cause (negative externalities).
Sure, that might slow growth, but I see so evidence that this difference in growth has much of a negative effect on US citizens:
How much GDP growth do you think we actually need as a nation to stay satisfied? Double our GDP every 20 years? More? Less?
Because I know that I would trade a good fraction of my "growth boosted" past and present wage in exchange for climate change already being solved (and be happier as a result).
PS: I would also like to point out that any significant constant rate of growth is inherently unsustainable by definition; as a species, we need to arrange ourself with the fact that we'll be unable to continue growing our energy consumption exponentially-- the sooner, the better.
oefrha
Article is about health impact and explicitly not about carbon emissions. It also strongly implies “we don’t want you to pay, we simply don’t want you here”. You can’t accuse me of arguing against a strawman when I’m addressing the article while you’re bringing in something else only loosely in the same category.
myrmidon
> Article is about health impact and explicitly not about carbon emissions.
Yes. But air pollution is a negative externality that is not priced in for polluters/consumers, in exactly the same way as CO2.
You could argue that the case with air pollution is even more straightforward than with CO2, because those damages and costs are fully shouldered by the local population (unlike the consequences of climate change, which is probably gonna be felt more acutely in countries like Bangladesh, and thus less of a problem from a US citizens PoV-- note that this is not an argument I endorse).
> It also strongly implies “we don’t want you to pay, we simply don’t want you here”.
This feels like conjecture to me. The message of the article to me was "Tech giants operate data centers for hundreds of billions, but they are not paying for the consequences of their emissions which are mainly felt locally (costing billions)". That is not "we don't want you here" to me, but instead a "you should be responsible for the consequences of your actions".
I'm not exactly sure what your actual positions is. Are you arguing that industries/consumers should be exempt from paying the actual price for things (including external costs), because this (indirectly) subsidises local industry? And where do you draw the line? Because surely "the local gold extraction industry may freely pollute rivers with mercury" is across that line?
CrimsonRain
They are the people who think only one move in chess. I hope this answers your question.
exabrial
Just wait until you see how much C02 is being emitted sucking down energy from green sources that could have heated homes or supplied other essential services.
This reads as less than useful research to me. E.g.:
"The analysis does not account for the purchase of market-based instruments that are meant to represent investments in new renewable energy in the US and that tech companies buy to offset the pollution from their electricity consumption. ... 'Unlike carbon emissions, the health impacts caused by a data centre in one region cannot be offset by cleaner air elsewhere,' said Shaolei Ren, associate professor at UC Riverside."
Why not? Does clean air elsewhere not matter for the individuals elsewhere? Where is that "elsewhere?"
My admittedly ungenerous interpretation: factoring this context in would be really hard and would decrease the headline factor of the findings, so... publish without.