(GPB News)-Clean air advocates say unchecked growth in Georgia’s data center industry could harm public health. Especially for people in metro Atlanta where air quality has worsened.
More than 4% of all electricity used nationwide powers data centers, according to the Pew Research Center, and AI-optimized hyperscale data centers use servers equipped with powerful computer chips that can perform trillions of mathematical calculations per second and require two to four times as many watts to run than their traditional counterparts.
Five data center projects are ongoing, and more are proposed — all in the city of South Fulton. They are being built in anticipation of growth in artificial intelligence,
“There’s also a 1-million-square-foot one that’s being proposed in South DeKalb,” said Kiya Stanford with the advocacy group Moms Clean Air Force in Georgia. “If you look at the demographics of these regions, they have in common that they’re primarily communities of color. And that’s intentional.”
While the projects may bring jobs and money into a community while under construction, data centers won’t sustain economic growth, Stanford said.
“We need to connect the dots between industrial development, environmental pollution, and our right to breathe clean air,” she said, adding that residents should attend local government meetings to share their concerns.
Pollutants that come from the power sources of these data centers can have an adverse effect on human health, she said.
In metro Atlanta specifically, the number of unhealthy ozone days rose from 1.8 days in 2023 to 5.5 days in 2024, she said.
“So, there are immediate correlations happening in terms of extreme heat and unhealthy ozone,” she said. “That’s happening within metro Atlanta specifically.”
