this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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Data centers are creating ‘heat islands’ and warming the land around them by up to 16 degrees | CNN (www.cnn.com)
submitted 4 hours ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
41 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The vast data centers that power artificial intelligence are so energy hungry that they’re heating up their surroundings, according to new research. It’s an alarming finding given the number of data centers is predicted to explode over the next few years.

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[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 24 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (2 children)

100% of electricity burned turns to heat save light that leaves earth. Gigawatt data center? That's ~650,000 1500w space heaters.

[–] expatriado@lemmy.world 29 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

i work for a large power company, we have a data center customer that have as many equally sized cooling towers as one of our nuclear power plants.

[–] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 8 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

Pretty soon you’ll just have nuclear plants just to power data centers.

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 26 minutes ago* (last edited 26 minutes ago) (1 children)

Nuclear plants to power data centers to make ai slop to make more need for data centers to feed us ai ad slop...when does it fucking end?

I hope some vigilantes start taking action against these damn wastes of space.

[–] BanMe@lemmy.world 1 points 6 minutes ago

The disease is late stage capitalism, the symptom is a mad dash to trade our natural resources for energy and pollution. The mad dash will continue as long as we're bleeding humanity to keep the shareholders high and dry.

[–] ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world 5 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Didn't Microsoft try to pay for a nuclear plant to be recommissioned just to power a data centre or something?

[–] teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 46 minutes ago

There have been several data centers that have bought nuclear plants, including Three Mile Island, they're going to fire that bitch back up, also the Regulators have been disempowered. Propublica on the last part if I recall.

[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

Isn't the largest data center currently something like 100MW? So "only" 0.1GW...65.000 space heaters is still insane though.

[–] mushroommunk@lemmy.today 6 points 3 hours ago

That currently exist? I believe Colossus is pushing 150MW and aiming for 300. But Gigawatt centers are on the way

[–] expatriado@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 48 minutes ago)

we were asked 400MW for a new data center, we told them 100MW is the max we could provide for now, and increase later, we have a new natural gas plant soon to enter operation to replace two retiring coal plants, but looks like we're extending decommission targets to keep demand

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 4 points 3 hours ago

Oh. I originally put megawatt and thought that was too small so I just incremented the metric exponent.