Air quality impacts of data centers should guide development decisions

Data centers and server farms are proliferating across the United States and other countries, and so, like any new industry, their environmental impact, especially from on-site powerplants and the use of cooling water, needs to be assessed. This analysis of a Memphis data center showed relatively small increases in air pollution from burning natural gas for electricity (https://bit.ly/4mtl3bn), but that is on top of already non-compliant regional air quality. The physical location of data centers is not their most important feature from a functional perspective, so development rules should nudge installations to places that can accept the additional pollution with less of an impact on people’s health.