This article is the third in a multipart series that examines how artificial intelligence has been changing many core aspects of college and student life.
A concern that students persistently raise is how AI is affecting the environment. This includes the amount of water and energy consumption needed for the cooling systems in data centers as well as the light and noise pollution they emit. We are now seeing how these larger centers could be negatively impacting local communities.
The growing demand for data centers has raised concerns about how much of our local resources would be needed to run and maintain them, including how much land would be required to construct such buildings. According to the UN University, “AI-related water consumption could equal the basic annual domestic needs of 1.3 billion people by the end of the decade, while it may exceed 14,500 square kilometers, roughly twice the size of the Jakarta metropolitan area in Indonesia.”
“I have concerns about how AI could be affecting the environment. I saw that last year, AI used more water than the whole water bottle industry,” said Alex Poplawski, theater.
There are multiple research articles that back up his claim. Directly from Google’s yearly water consumption report was 10.9 billion gallons in 2025; that’s up 34% from 2024. They reported that 7.7 billion gallons, or 78% of that water was recycled. Google’s data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa consumed an average of around 2.8 million gallons a day in 2024.
Resource consumption isn’t the only concern. According to UN University, “The same research estimates that Carbon Dioxide emissions generated by artificial intelligence in 2025 will be between 32.6 and 79.7 million tons. To give an order of magnitude, these values are comparable to the annual emissions of a city like New York, considering the energy and transport sectors.”
In many neighborhoods, people within an estimated quarter mile to a mile radius report hearing noise, sometimes for an entire day: From a Frontiers 2026 article: “Continuous operation of cooling systems and generators produces persistent noise exposure near data centers, creating a direct environmental stressor. Short-term effects include sleep disturbance and annoyance, while long-term exposure is associated with cardiovascular, cognitive, and mental health impacts (Babisch et al., 2013; Thompson et al., 2022).”
Statistically, we see that the expansion and demand for generative AI are also increasing the demands for resources and space to fuel it. We know that there are negative health effects associated with living close to a data center.
Currently, our government does not have a limit on how many of these centers can be built. Local governments give companies tax breaks to encourage building.
Does technological advancement outweigh the negative impact these centers have on the environment? Who can make these decisions? When building in the name of progress, why do we see our most vulnerable not being given the choice?
Categories: Feature
