As the world keeps warming and electricity bills take center stage in national politics, the data center boom will drive up US carbon emissions and electricity costs. But a few simple policies could help bring both emissions and prices back down.
That’s the message of a new analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists released Wednesday, which models a variety of scenarios for how to fuel the coming AI boom. The US is poised to see a 60 to 80 percent increase in electricity demand through 2050, with data centers alone making up more than half of the increase by the end of this