Walk down the aisle of a modern data center and the first thing you notice is the noise: thousands of fans pushing cold air through rows of blinking servers. The second is the heat. Every email, video stream and chatbot answer depends on buildings like this, and their appetite for electricity is growing faster than ever.
Data centers are estimated to use around 1.5 percent of the world’s electricity, and energy analysts expect that share could roughly double by the end of the decade. The main driver is artificial intelligence: training and running large AI models requires specialized chips that draw far more power than ordinary servers.
A local test case
In the country, the debate now has a concrete address. A new data campus on the edge of Northvale, which opened its first hall this summer, will need up to 120 megawatts at full capacity, roughly as much as 100,000 homes. Its operator says it will buy all its electricity from wind and solar farms under long-term contracts, and from this winter the campus will pipe its waste heat into Northvale’s district heating network.
Heat used to be our biggest problem. Now we see it as a product. This winter it will warm around 8,000 apartments.
Katrin Vos, energy manager at the Northvale data campus
The limits of going green
Experts say buying green power on paper is not the same as running on it every hour. On still, dark winter evenings, wind and solar output falls while data centers still need steady power, which puts more strain on the grid and can keep gas plants running longer.
The question is not whether a company signs a green contract, but whether new clean power is actually built and whether the grid can carry it.
Dr. Omar Sayed, energy systems researcher at Elmbridge University
Water is another concern. Many data centers use evaporative cooling, which can consume large amounts of water in hot summers. Newer designs, including the one in Northvale, use closed-loop liquid cooling that brings water use close to zero.
What could make a difference
Engineers point to several steps: more efficient chips and software, cooling that uses outside air, building data centers next to new renewable plants, and shifting flexible computing work to hours when clean power is plentiful.
The energy ministry is preparing rules that would require large data centers to report their electricity and water use every year and to reuse waste heat where possible. The proposal is expected in the National Assembly in the spring, with the Green Alliance pushing for stricter targets.
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