Andrew Montequin for WTTW:
Data centers are a hot topic in Illinois and around the country.
Alongside more construction comes more public scrutiny — of their economic and environmental impacts, their strain on the electrical grid, and their role in the development of artificial intelligence models.
Data centers pack rows upon rows of computer chips and other hardware into climate-controlled warehouses. These facilities support cloud data storage, computing, smartphone use and more. But with AI occupying a growing slice of this infrastructure, the build-out of data centers has exploded around the country.
“The data center industry has been around for decades,” said Brad Tietz, state policy director of the Data Center Coalition. “We’re going to use twice the amount of data in the next five years that we used in the past 10 years… and it’s not just entertainment. It’s hospital records, bank records, government, schools, public safety, remote work, telehealth, the list goes on.”
In 2018, data centers accounted for 1.9% of all electricity consumption in the U.S. according to a 2024 report from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. By 2023, that jumped to 4.4% of all electricity in the country. And the trend is not slowing down, with estimates for 2028 ranging from 6.7-12%.
Environmental advocates see an opportunity to meet this energy demand with new clean energy sources, like wind and solar power.