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Local fights over data centers now turn on things residents can see and measure: how much power a campus will draw, whether the nearby grid can carry it, how much water and land it needs, and who pays for the upgrades. Climate belongs in that conversation, but it is usually reduced to a narrower question about how a facility buys its electricity. The short answer is that climate accountability for data centers is incomplete and contested. There is no single accepted footprint, and a clean-energy contract does not settle what one facility does to one grid or one watershed.
The sections below keep U.S. electricity estimates, UK council testimony, and UK digital-versus-physical energy comparisons separate, because each answers a different question.
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How much electricity do data centers use?
These figures are U.S. estimates from Department of Energy reports. Each one needs its year and forecast horizon attached, because the projections change as the assumptions about buildout and methods change.
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| Figure | Year | What it describes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 58 TWh | 2014 | Historical U.S. data-center electricity use | DOE, 2024 report |
| 176 TWh | 2023 | Historical U.S. data-center electricity use | DOE, 2024 report |
| About 4.4% of U.S. electricity | 2023 | Historical share of U.S. electricity | DOE, 2024 report |
| 325–580 TWh | 2028 | Projected U.S. data-center electricity use (estimate) | DOE, 2024 report |
| 6.7%–12% of U.S. electricity | 2028 | Projected share of U.S. electricity (estimate) | DOE, 2024 report |
| Possible 11.8% of U.S. electricity | 2030 | Projected share; a total TWh figure is not stated in the OSTI summary | DOE and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, United States Data Center Energy Usage Report: 2025 Update, as summarized by OSTI |
What the 2024 DOE report says
The Department of Energy’s 2024 report, DOE Releases New Report Evaluating Increase in Electricity Demand from Data Centers, puts U.S. data-center consumption at 58 TWh in 2014 and 176 TWh in 2023, about 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023. Its 2028 projection is 325–580 TWh, or 6.7% to 12% of U.S. electricity. Those are forecasts. The width of the range reflects buildout assumptions, and nothing in the report measures 2028 outcomes.
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The department’s public framing centers on supply. Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm said on December 20, 2024: “We can meet this growth with clean energy.” That is a statement of policy position, not a finding that the growth will be met with clean power in any particular place.
Why the 2025 update reads differently
The 2025 update from DOE and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as summarized by OSTI, estimates a possible 11.8% share of total U.S. electricity by 2030. The horizon is later, and the method and buildout assumptions differ from the 2024 projection. Read the two as separate estimates. The gap between them is not a measured change in actual consumption.
How much water do data centers use?
The national-level sources cited here do not publish a comparable water-use total for U.S. or UK data centers, so no national water figure appears in this article. Water is local in practice. The UK Local Government Association treats water availability and wastewater capacity as constraints to be tested against a specific place and against cumulative regional demand.
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Any water figure you encounter should be checked against four questions:
- Does it count only water used on site for cooling, or also water consumed to generate the electricity the facility buys?
- Which cooling design is assumed: evaporative, closed-loop, or air cooling?
- What year and climate region does the figure describe?
- Is it set against local supply and wastewater treatment capacity, or presented as a standalone number?
Do renewable-energy contracts make data centers carbon neutral?
Not on their own. A renewable-energy contract is mainly an accounting tool for Scope 2, the indirect emissions from electricity a company buys. The UK Local Government Association says renewables can help with Scope 2 accounting but do not remove local grid congestion, continuous load, or capacity constraints. A contract can change the reported emissions figure without changing what a new campus asks of the local substation or the water supply beside it.
The meaning of a clean-power claim also depends on its boundaries. Whether a purchase is matched to a facility’s actual demand by place and time, and whether the clean generation is additional and available at matching times, determines how much the claim tells a reader. The sources cited here do not settle those questions for any particular facility.
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Three layers of a climate claim
A useful climate reckoning separates three layers that are often collapsed into one.
- Facility efficiency. Energy or water use relative to computing output. It is a useful ratio, but it does not reveal the absolute total demand or the impact of a particular location.
- Electricity-system consequences. When and where the load arrives, what generation serves it, whether new clean generation is additional, and who pays for grid upgrades.
- Community and place. Water supply, wastewater, land use, noise, local accountability, and cumulative effects alongside existing demand.
Renewable procurement speaks mostly to the first layer and to parts of the second. The third is where the Local Government Association argues these constraints should shape siting and planning early.
Who pays for the grid
The most concrete policy proposals in the U.S. debate concern the grid rather than the carbon ledger. In September 2025, the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy organization, published A Better Path to Managing Data Center Load Growth. Its lead author, policy analyst McKenna Beck, said: “But, done right, we can have the data centers the technology industry wants while also keeping customers’ bills in check and protecting the environment.” NRDC state power-sector policy director Jackson Morris said: “Data center load growth is a challenge of unprecedented scale and magnitude in the modern electric system.” These are the organization’s positions, not independent findings.
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Why are communities opposing data centers?
The sources do not establish that climate concern is the main driver of local opposition. The considerations that appear in the material are electricity prices, water, land use, noise, and infrastructure, and the evidence does not show how much weight each carries in a given dispute. Climate is one possible concern among these, not the explanation for the pattern.
Project cancellations
The Electric Power Research Institute’s executive summary, Partnering for Progress: Understanding Community-Centered Data Center Development, reports the following counts of U.S. project cancellations attributed to local opposition. These are EPRI’s figures and should be attributed to it. They are not an official national tally, and the summary does not say that climate concerns caused any of them.
| Year | U.S. project cancellations attributed to local opposition (EPRI) |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 2 |
| 2024 | 6 |
| 2025 | At least 25 |
The transparency gap
The Local Government Association’s assessment is that current frameworks and reporting do not adequately account for the scale and cumulative effects of data centers, leaving councils with limited information to explain impacts to residents. This is a UK local-government view, not a universal legal finding. It still names the problem: a council cannot weigh emissions, water, or grid effects that existing reporting does not show. Transparency is therefore a climate question as much as a planning one.
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Does digitalization always add to energy use?
No, and the claim cuts both ways. The UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero published Impact of growth of data centres on energy consumption (2025, page updated 2026), which compared the full digital delivery chain with physical alternatives. In its three initial examples, the digital option matched or used less electricity. Follow-up findings vary by use case, so the outcome depends on which physical activity a digital service replaces.
The comparison is a modeled energy-use analysis under stated scenarios. It is not a complete lifecycle greenhouse-gas assessment for all digital services. For a reckoning, a data center’s demand has to be read alongside the service it enables or replaces, and neither side can be assumed.
What a fuller climate reckoning would ask
A climate accounting that matches the local debate would answer these questions for each proposal and publish the answers in terms a council can check.
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- Grid cost. Who pays for upgrades, does the tariff reflect the costs the facility imposes, and can the load curtail at peak?
- Water and wastewater. Are supply and treatment capacity tested before approval, including cumulative demand from other users in the region?
- Disclosure. Can residents and local authorities obtain usable environmental information, and do they have a real role in decisions?
- Service substitution. What service does the facility deliver, and what physical activity does it replace or enable?
Each question draws on a different evidence base. The grid and water questions are local, the substitution question depends on the service, and the boundary question depends on contract structure and grid operations. A single headline percentage answers none of them.
What the evidence does not establish
- A comparable global lifecycle greenhouse-gas total for data centers. Combining U.S. or UK electricity shares with third-party estimates built on different boundaries would produce a number that looks precise and is not.
- How much local opposition is driven by climate concern, as opposed to the other considerations listed above.
- Uniform conditions. Each project’s carbon intensity, water burden, and relationship to its community differs, so no single claim should be applied to every data center.
For a specific locality, the decisive numbers sit in that jurisdiction’s own utility, water, planning, and emissions records. Check those records and their dates before drawing a local conclusion. The U.S. projections above come from 2024 and 2025 reports, and the UK council and DESNZ material was updated in 2026.
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