America’s digital supremacy depends on our ability to upgrade the power grid — quickly

The nation’s service industry has been fueled in lock step with the digital economy. In such an environment, data has become a monetizable asset, a driver for innovation and economic growth. And with the spread and growth of artificial intelligence across numerous sectors of society, the collection, storage and analysis of data has become a multibillion-dollar growth industry.

This has become most apparent with the proliferation of data centers. There are now more than 4,400 data centers scattered around the U.S., more than the total number in Germany, the U.K., France, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, China and Japan combined. Six states (Virginia, California, Texas, Illinois, Ohio and Georgia) collectively house around one-half of these centers, providing a concentration of data storage and analytics capacity that positions the U.S. for worldwide data supremacy well into the foreseeable future.

This all sounds quite promising. However, what is well known is that data centers consume massive amounts of electricity and water. This is placing strains on local infrastructures, creating headwinds on data centers being located in some communities. In 2023, just over 4 percent of all electricity consumed across the nation was due to servicing data centers. This is expected to grow to as much as 12 percent of all electricity consumed by 2028.

In terms of kilowatts used, data centers consumed 58 billion kilowatts in 2014, 176 billion kilowatts in 2023, and are estimated to use as much as 580 billion kilowatts in 2028. To put these numbers into perspective, data centers in 2023 used as much electricity as about 16 million homes,........

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