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As the world keeps warming and electricity bills take center stage in national politics, the data center boom will drive up USA 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 artificial intelligence boom. The USA 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 decade, the analysis finds. If policies stay the same as they currently are—with attacks on renewable energy being embedded into regulatory regimes and few significant national policies restricting carbon emissions from power plants—we could see between a 19 and 29 percent increase in CO emissions from USA power plants tied just to the energy needs of data centers over the next 10 years. There are answers, though: Bringing back tax credits for wind and solar energy, even if data centers eat up a significant chunk of new demand for electricity, would cut CO emissions by more than 30 percent over the next decade. They could also make wholesale electricity costs go down by about 4 percent by 2050, after a slight rise over the next decade. Power plants are the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the USA, making up about a quarter of the country"s overall emissions. Last year, emissions from the USA power sector rose slightly, marking the first increase since 2023; commercial buildings like data centers, a separate analysis released last week from the Rhodium Group found, were the main drivers of that demand.
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