Data Centers

An Ungrateful Public Underappreciates Data Centers

Their few defenders often misunderstand their benefits.

Christian Britschgi | 8.21.2026 10:50 AM

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When data center opponents seek to hype the environmental strains caused by these facilities, they often describe their water and electricity usage in terms of household or community equivalents.

This data center will consume as much electricity as a small town. That data center's water usage is the same as 50,000 homes. 

The implied takeaway is that this is a lot. But it's not really. 

In today's modern economy, the individual household is a mostly production-free zone. Where we once grew our own food and made our own clothes, today we buy those things from large enterprises that produce them offsite.

While the amount of resources individual households in rich countries consume is gargantuan, the resources needed to run individual homes that are mostly used for sleeping, eating, and child-rearing are relatively insignificant.

A data center using as much power as 50,000 homes sounds pretty scary. A data center using as much power as a single steel plant sounds less impressive.

The fact that data centers also allow us to outsource the electricity and water needed to power the digital services we consume is one of their many unsung benefits, as a........

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