A coalition of more than 230 environmental groups has demanded a national moratorium on new datacenters in the US, the latest salvo in a growing backlash to a booming artificial intelligence industry that has been blamed for escalating electricity bills and worsening the climate crisis.
The green groups, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Food & Water Watch and dozens of local organizations, have urged members of Congress to halt the proliferation of energy-hungry datacenters, accusing them of causing planet-heating emissions, sucking up vast amounts of water and exacerbating electricity bill increases that have hit Americans this year.
In 2015 Greenpeace Energy attempted to sue the European Commission over approving state aid for the nuclear power plant Hinkley Point C "as a potential competitor on the energy market". The European Court of Justice eventually denied Green Planet Energy's request as inadmissible.
That’s not greanpeace. That’s an energy company that leased the use of the name, with the stipulation that they sell green energy for the privilege. Greanpeace holds 5 shares of that company and has an office in the same building, and is otherwise independent. From the wiki you linked:
“As a founding member of the association, Greenpeace e.V. holds only five shares at €55 in the cooperative, otherwise the environmental group and the company are financially and legally independent, although they share the same office building in Hamburg.[2] The former use of the Greenpeace name was licensed under the condition that the energy cooperative met the Greenpeace e.V. quality criteria for "clean energy".”
And in places where cooling is easier. Some of the places where data centers are currently being built are not great. There's no need for sub 1 milisecond response times
Delays payment pressing by a day or so to maybe 2 weeks depending on their policy. A check postmarked and mailed on the first can vs a direct deposit at 12:01 am will add up over millions of people.
Plus it would make IT and accounts receivable freak out which would add to the desired effect.
At absolute best if every customer of the utility did this it would effectively delay their capital by 30 days. Sure there's a cost to capital but this wouldn't do much. Compare that to them being able to add 50%+ to their monthly invoicing by servicing data centers and it becomes a trivial annoyance (if that) in comparison.
This was bound to happen once AI and cloud expansion went into overdrive. Data centers are invisible to most people, but the energy and water demands are very real at the local level.
Halting US data centers will just mean they'll build them elsewhere, probably somewhere with a dirtier grid. They should instead just use their energy to keep pushing for green energy.
Don't think it gets much dirtier than running them on jet engine powered generators, which depressingly is an actual thing. We're so cooked it's not even funny, all so we can get some shitty AI ambient slop music for Spotify.
Don’t worry, we are building gigawatts of new capacity to feed them with ….. gas turbine power plants, but hey, at least they are really big jet engines this time and last for 30+ years.
Most of the liberal fucks in california and new York don't care about climate change anymore because they are making money in the stock market in the AI bubble. Once that's done they will be back to having us suck on paper straws.
Liberals are not different than conservatives. In their own way they are all selfish, self-centered assholes.
All so chrome can have an AI button that I choose to ignore and not use
A coalition of more than 230 environmental groups has demanded a national moratorium on new datacenters in the US, the latest salvo in a growing backlash to a booming artificial intelligence industry that has been blamed for escalating electricity bills and worsening the climate crisis.
The green groups, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Food & Water Watch and dozens of local organizations, have urged members of Congress to halt the proliferation of energy-hungry datacenters, accusing them of causing planet-heating emissions, sucking up vast amounts of water and exacerbating electricity bill increases that have hit Americans this year.
If we are going to be honest a couple of those organizations share responsibility for the climate crisis due to their opposition to nuclear energy.
Friends of the Earth was founded by an oil tycoon and Greenpeace takes fossil fuel money(they even sell fossil fuels in Europe).
Can I gat some verifiable sauce on those last two claims?
Its actually worse than what they said. Greenpeace founded a company that takes Russian gas and sells it to Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Planet_Energy
They fight to keep Europe reliant on Russian gas.
That’s not greanpeace. That’s an energy company that leased the use of the name, with the stipulation that they sell green energy for the privilege. Greanpeace holds 5 shares of that company and has an office in the same building, and is otherwise independent. From the wiki you linked:
“As a founding member of the association, Greenpeace e.V. holds only five shares at €55 in the cooperative, otherwise the environmental group and the company are financially and legally independent, although they share the same office building in Hamburg.[2] The former use of the Greenpeace name was licensed under the condition that the energy cooperative met the Greenpeace e.V. quality criteria for "clean energy".”
They are lucky if trump doesn't try to arrest them.
Don't listen the luddite trolls
There’s no way any country with the ability isn’t participating in the race to AGI, so good luck with that.
why not build it, - but you know - not too close to people? build it close to nuclear power plants or other sources of cheap energy
And in places where cooling is easier. Some of the places where data centers are currently being built are not great. There's no need for sub 1 milisecond response times
No one will extend the energy infrastructure beyond the Arctic Circle.
I'm already deleting my energy provider's direct debit. They can invoice me for their new charges. Hit the wallets.
How exactly does you needing to make transactions manually hit their wallet?
Delays payment pressing by a day or so to maybe 2 weeks depending on their policy. A check postmarked and mailed on the first can vs a direct deposit at 12:01 am will add up over millions of people.
Plus it would make IT and accounts receivable freak out which would add to the desired effect.
At absolute best if every customer of the utility did this it would effectively delay their capital by 30 days. Sure there's a cost to capital but this wouldn't do much. Compare that to them being able to add 50%+ to their monthly invoicing by servicing data centers and it becomes a trivial annoyance (if that) in comparison.
IT ain’t gonna give a flying fuck about this, I regret to inform you. I’m all for “fuck the provider up” but this won’t do it, I’m afraid.
Pocketbooks can only vote one way.
Any country not ruled by oligarchic corporations can pursue the objective without all the bullshit
This was bound to happen once AI and cloud expansion went into overdrive. Data centers are invisible to most people, but the energy and water demands are very real at the local level.
As if that will stop the US technocrats?
BrUH ChINa WilL wIn aI rACe!
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/22/climate/china-us-nuclear-energy-race.html
Halting US data centers will just mean they'll build them elsewhere, probably somewhere with a dirtier grid. They should instead just use their energy to keep pushing for green energy.
Don't think it gets much dirtier than running them on jet engine powered generators, which depressingly is an actual thing. We're so cooked it's not even funny, all so we can get some shitty AI ambient slop music for Spotify.
Don’t worry, we are building gigawatts of new capacity to feed them with ….. gas turbine power plants, but hey, at least they are really big jet engines this time and last for 30+ years.
Uh most of our grid isn't jet engine powered generators, and if data centers were run on that it wouldn't be impacting out electricity costs.
It was in reference to dirtier grids, you don't get more dirty energy production than jet powered data centres, or Elon Musk using diesel generators
Shut up peasants, you’ll get what you’re told.
How many people are registered members of said groups? And what percentage of the total population? Ignore them!!
I bet these same people scroll Instagram and watch Netflix and do banking which is the vast majority of what data centres are for.
That is no longer the vast majority.
Yes it is. AI is about 5% of data centres.
Most of the liberal fucks in california and new York don't care about climate change anymore because they are making money in the stock market in the AI bubble. Once that's done they will be back to having us suck on paper straws.
Liberals are not different than conservatives. In their own way they are all selfish, self-centered assholes.
Under the last US government, there were huge steps towards green energy.
Under the current US government, it's drill baby drill.
These things are not the same.