Prior to January of 2025, identifying the urgency with which we needed to reduce carbon emissions and propose alternate ways of decarbonizing were commonplace. At least on the left. 

But I haven’t heard much mention of climate change, reducing emissions or the risk of  higher temperatures and more extreme weather since then. This despite our having already experienced quite a bit of extreme weather — a historic ice storm — and record temperatures — it reached 63 degrees in South Haven last week, Traverse City set a new daily record high on Jan. 9.

The lack of language and leadership around climate change has become far more concerning as the number and size of data center proposals in Michigan has increased. 

The only thing that has grown faster than the electricity demand necessary to power these centers is the number of residents opposed to their development. For once, that opposition is occurring on both sides of the political divide, at least in our neighborhoods.

In Howell, meetings about the hyperscale data center proposal had to be moved to larger buildings to accommodate what seemed the entire town attending to voice their frustration and opposition. The result was only a six-month moratorium.

In Saline, local officials denied a hyperscale data center developer their permit, only to be sued and then forced to capitulate weeks later concerned about the legal fees required to fight what appeared inevitable. They are revisiting that decision potentially in favor of a moratorium after the Michigan Public Service Commission conditionally approved DTE’s contracts.

Even the “small” data center proposed for Lansing, a comparatively innovative system proposed by the UK developer Deep Green that relies on closed-loop cooling and would provide waste heat to the Lansing Board of Water & Light at no charge, has become downright controversial. I’ve stepped gingerly into that fray already. 

The argument in favor of data centers, as is typically the case with all large-scale energy infrastructure, is economic. They’ll generate tax revenue. They’ll create jobs — at least during the construction phase. They’ll support continued investment in and optimization of AI, which some have argued has accounted for over a third of real US GDP growth. They’ve even been identified as a way of supporting affordable housing. They’ll also make whomever the current landowner is the wealthiest individual or organization in town.

The argument against these developments is more expansive. It’s environmental: where will all of the water necessary to cool thousands of microchips come from? What will that water look like when it’s returned to the environment or out your tap?

It’s also about electricity. Where will all that power come from? What will happen to the cost of electricity when hyperscale data centers demand anywhere from a quarter to more than double what’s currently being generated by Consumers or DTE? 

Most utilities don’t run their power plants at peak efficiency for most of the day, so there’s certainly some unused capacity that they’d love to sell to data centers. 

But utilities also make money building infrastructure — it’s the only way investor-owned utilities are legally allowed to make money in Michigan — so the chance to build new natural gas plants to support data centers has them salivating.

Yet there’s a huge difference between new large-scale renewable energy infrastructure and data centers. It’s one you haven’t heard many people speak meaningfully about since January of last year. Renewables generate electricity that is carbon-free (or at least compared to coal and natural gas extremely low-carbon). 

Data centers don’t generate electricity. They consume it. A lot of it. And no matter where or how, or how cheaply, the electrons necessary to run those data centers are generated, that generation will emit carbon dioxide and methane, or else use up the carbon-free electricity that the state was intending to rely on to meet decarbonization goals.  

You won’t see any mention of global warming when reading about the pros and cons of data center development however. That’s in part because many rural conservatives, even those who are extremely upset about hyperscale data centers, refuse to acknowledge climate change as a concern. And many liberal policymakers appear to be so afraid of upsetting the Trump administration or about getting labeled “woke,” that they have focused only on acknowledging local environmental impacts, and urging utilities to not pass along what are certainly to be increases in the cost of electricity to consumers.  

The 1,150-gigaton carbon elephant in the room is that on top of everything else concerning about data centers and AI more generally — like my students using ChatGPT to do, well, everything — hyperscale data centers will hyperaccelerate global warming. 

Finally, to those upset about all the solar or wind development in Michigan—and I know there are many of you out there, you should know that a single hyperscale data center requires more electricity to operate than is typically generated by 10 large-scale solar or wind farms. If I were you, I’d be upset too.

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