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US data centers could wipe out 15 years' worth of progress in greenhouse gas emissions, report claims — buildouts could emit as much carbon dioxide as all of Mexico

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US data centers could wipe out 15 years' worth of progress in greenhouse gas emissions, report claims — buildouts could emit as much carbon dioxide as all of Mexico

Concerns have been mounting everywhere about the environmental impact of data centers, with alarms ringing at various environmental think tanks. The Sierra Club, one of the oldest environmental preservation organizations in the U.S., has now put forth an estimate that by 2030, U.S. data center buildouts will be outputting as much carbon dioxide as the entirety of Mexico, pushing back progress on greenhouse gas reduction by 15 years, Bloomberg reports.

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The Club's principal advisor for climate and energy, Jeremy Fusher, puts it plainly: "the numbers continue to sort of boggle our minds." He's referring to an estimate that with the output from pending data center builds, the output from the U.S. power sector is set to put 2.1 billion metric tons of CO2 in the atmosphere by the end of the decade, an uptick of 42% compared to 2025 figures. The researchers' previous estimates were between a quarter and half of the current projections.

An increasing number of countries and states are enacting laws demanding that new data center builds have a large portion of their power generated by green sources. However, those laws rarely apply retroactively, and oftentimes have a phase-in period.


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