Data Centers!�June 2026

Amy Sharma, PhD�Executive Director

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Jessica Owens�Dir of Data

www.scienceforgeorgia.org

© Science for Georgia, Inc 2026

Science for Georgia

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• Science communication training for university students and young professionals
• Science outreach events for adults
• Advocating to ensure science has a seat at the table

• Connecting human health to environmental health
• Connecting data scientists to communities to public health to resources to other resources
• Providing the facts to back up the anecdotes

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• Data stories that are
• Concise 🡪 simply what is happening and why important
• True 🡪 backed by science and facts so we can share
• Relevant 🡪 impactful to people’s lives
• Actionable 🡪 empowers change

bit.ly/data4ga

Outline

• What are data centers?
• Why are the coming to Georgia?
• What are the issues?
• What are the solutions so they can be good neighbors?
• What can you do?

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What are Data Centers?

Data Centers -�What they do

• Non-AI Hyperscale – since the dawn of internet
• Support small businesses infrastructure
• Offsite backups
• The ‘cloud’
• Lots of storage (low energy needs)
• How many connected devices in a home?
• About 21 – phones, computers, gaming systems, thermostats, lightbulbs, toasters, fridges

Data Centers -�What they do

• AI - Hyperscale
• Large Language Models i.e. Chat GPT, Claude, etc.
• Bad things - Survellance, Deep Fakes
• Good things – research breakthroughs
• Unnecessary things – internet searches
• Processor intensive (energy intensive)

AI / Hyperscale Data Centers�Like nothing we’ve seen before

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-ND

Data Centers�Like nothing we’ve seen before

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-ND

CEOs agree: It’s out with the white-collar jobs, in with the blue-collar

“If you’re an electrician, you’re a plumber, a carpenter—we’re going to need hundreds of thousands of them to build all of these factories,”

-- Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang 

Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang says electricians and plumbers will be needed by the hundreds of thousands in the new working world

– 30 Sept, 2025

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Data Centers in Georgia�By the Numbers (as of May 2026)

Data Centers in Georgia�By the Numbers (as of May 2026)

Why Georgia?

Georgia is Attractive…

• Cheap land, power, and water
• Good broadband
• Unlike the other hotspots of TX, AZ, and CA – we are considered water rich

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We* asked them to come

• Economic Development Authorities
• Property tax
• Sell their local water
• Georgia Power
• Only makes money if demand increases

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Tax breaks

• FY 2026: $2.5 Billion Loss
• Loss of $3B in FY 2027
• 70% of development would show up anyway.

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• Sunset in 2031

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Power Companies and the �Pipeline Companies

• Georgia Power is a subsidiary of Southern Company
• Southern Company also owns the “natural” gas infrastructure and distribution
• Georgia Power / Southern Company gets paid for:
• Each new transmission plant they bring online
• Guaranteed cost recovery + profit
• Selling the gas to the transmission plants
• Passes fuel costs directly onto customers – not part of base rates in power bills
• Selling power in your electric bills

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Resources for engaging at the Georgia Public Service Commission - Southern Environmental Law Center

Resources for engaging at the Georgia Public Service Commission - Southern Environmental Law Center

~17 GW

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Current Capacity

GP took ~100 years to build

~14 GW expansion

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In next 5 years

We are planning for continuous growth

~Double our Power Generation by 2031

At least 80% of planned additional capacity is for data centers.

It's mostly fossil fuels

Keeping coal online and building gas

And also �an expanded �gas pipeline

What is this doing to my power bill?

• Electricity bills in states with the most data centers are surging | CNBC | 14 Nov, 2025
• “But in at least three states with high concentrations of data centers, electric bills climbed much faster than the national average during that period. Prices, for example, surged by 13% in Virginia, 16% in Illinois and 12% in Ohio.”
• Bank of America Report on Rising Utility Bills and Link to Data Centers – 17 Oct, 2025
• “More broadly, the rising demand for electricity generation capacity and grid investments, due in part to the build-out of datacenters, appears to be placing more upward pressure on bills. BofA Global Research points to big increases in prices at auctions of electricity capacity as one sign.”

PSC Rules

• New data centers must cover soup-to-nuts expenses
• For their part only
• Full demand isn’t met = someone has to pay for overbuild
• May 2026 PSC Hearings – large customers don’t have to pay for:
• fuel price changes
• Gas pipeline expansion

Paid by data centers

Paid by unknown

May PSC ‘Settlement’

• Some good news?
• Lower bills by about $4/month
• Storm Costs: Profit off of recovery costs only over $500K (up from $50K)
• Removed: $13M in fuel costs and $100M in storm costs
• New Proceeding by end of 2026
• Address the uncovered data center costs (fuel, pipeline)
• https://www.wabe.org/commission-staff-georgia-power-propose-deal-to-lower-energy-bills/ 

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MC Simulation Results

• Utilities Projection: dotted line
• ~10 GW of growth
• 1 in 500 chance of happening
• More likely: dark wedge (50% of simulations)
• Growth of 3.5 to 5.5 GW
• Approximately half of projected needs

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What are the issues?

We don’t know for certain

• How many
• Location
• Amount of power and water usage
• Albeit – it is already alarmingly large!
• Power provider
• Tax revenue
• Job creation
• Must distinguish between temporary and permanent.
• Additional infrastructure demands

Critical Infrastructure?

• Are they mission critical like hospitals?
• What happens when we have a drought, or heat wave, or ice storm?
• After a disaster:
• When do they get turned on in the queue?
• How many diesel generators will they need for 24/7 operation?
• Augusta, Valdosta, the Coast – didn’t have water for 2 weeks, power for 4 after Helene – do people not get running water so we can have cat videos?

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Environmental Impacts

• Immediate Vicinity:
• Noise & Light Pollution
• Water runoff if not properly graded or during extreme weather events
• Unknown power connection – behind the meter?
• Heat islands
• When the power goes out:
• Air pollution depending on their backup generator type �(diesel generators = lots of air quality impacts)
• Locality:
• Strain on water resources. Possible chemical contamination.
• Loss of tree cover and possible impact on property value due to new power transmission lines
• Big Picture
• Power consumption in Georgia – mainly via polluting sources and water intensive

The 10,500 generators attached to data centers in Virginia produce enough pollution to harm public health even if used rarely, according to a new analysis of emissions permits for The Washington Post. Operating them for less than an hour per week, on average, creates the same public health impact as five power plants the size of the large Possum Point gas-fired power station near Quantico, according to the analysis by Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Washington.

That’s enough to worsen lung and cardiovascular conditions for people in the region and cause at least three premature deaths each year, the analysis found, based on state air permits and reported emissions from the data center owners.

Horrific Pictures of Fayette Co

Two Hits on Water

Direct Consumption

• Cooling
• Proposed chips run so hot – water will need to be chilled before circulation

Indirect Consumption

• Power Generation

Georgia: High Indirect Water Consumption

LBNL Report – 2024:

“U.S. data centers consumed approximately 176 TWh in 2023. The total indirect water footprint of U.S. data centers is nearly 800 billion liters, attributed to water consumed indirectly through electricity use, based on the regional electricity grid mix for U.S. data center locations “ pg 57

Red regions indicate high level of water consumption per kilowatt hour.

In Georgia, it takes a lot of water to generate electricity.

Hey! We are in a Drought – �Apr 9, May 14, May 28

Fun Fact

• Declaration of a Level 1 drought invokes no “emergency powers”
• Nothing happens unless people cut back out of niceness
• As we go up the drought scale
• Most restrictions are on “outdoor use of water”
• Municipalities “negotiate” with large-load users

PFAS?

• Cooling system technologies are changing constantly.
• Closed loop systems contain chemicals
• We don’t know
• What’s in the chemical mix
• How “air tight” it is

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• Best protection?
• Mandated, regular, transparent, testing.

Cooling Systems: �If it doesn't suck, it blows

• Water use in a "closed loop" system uses less water but still needs water - Data Center today notes: "At Vantage’s Wisconsin campus that leverages a closed-loop cooling system, peak water use will be approximately 22,000 gallons per day, the equivalent of approximately 65 homes"
• Heat is "rejected to the atmosphere"

Image Source: https://blog.vantage-dc.com/2026/04/22/cooling-without-the-drain-how-closed-loop-systems-cut-day-to-day-water-use/

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Cooling Systems: �If it doesn't suck, it blows

2026 Study showed "local microclimate zones" or heat islands.

• Average temperature change measured about 3.6 degrees F with highs of 16 degrees F above surroundign area temperatures.
• Within metro Atlanta, this can exacerbate heat waves for surrounding residents leading to negative health outcomes
• Rural areas can see ecosystem disruption.

DOI:10.48550/arXiv.2603.20897

Image Source: https://computeforecast.com/blogs/data-center-heat-island-problem-operators-refusing-to-own/

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Cooling Systems: �If it doesn't suck, it blows

• Europe has been reported to use "aquifer or borehole thermal storage"
• GA has a totally different climate and would not be a reasonable place for this technology.

Source: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/10/15/liquid-loops-urban-warmth-the-next-frontier-in-data-center-efficiency/

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Microsoft: "Although our current fleet will still use a mix of air-cooled and water-cooled systems, new projects in Phoenix, Arizona, and Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, will pilot zero-water evaporated designs in 2026." https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/12/09/sustainable-by-design-next-generation-datacenters-consume-zero-water-for-cooling/#:~:text=,consumes%20zero%20water%20for%20cooling

• With all the technologies out there, we need to know more from the operators of data centers, we need to know real numbers for water use and waste for each project, and we need a way to hold them to those numbers.

Cooling Systems: �If it doesn't suck, it blows

Is this all a bubble?

What happens if they fold leaving us with empty shells and a ton of new power generation capacity?

Gartner Hype Cycle

Visibility

Without data centers, GDP growth was 0.1% in the first half of 2025, Harvard economist says | Fortune

21 Feb, 2026�People Loved the Dot-Com Boom. The A.I. Boom, Not So Much. - The New York Times

Adoption has plateaued. In the fourth quarter of 2025, 38 percent of employees told Gallup that their workplace had integrated A.I. technology. That number was essentially unchanged from the third quarter.

A.I. is clearly not technology that is being universally encouraged as inevitable. Corporations often report that, so far, it does not seem to do much. 

There is hope�they can be good neighbors

Technical data centers improvements

Use that AI for optimal load balancing, intelligent routing, and cooling

Transparency!

Data Centers

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Where are they?

https://bit.ly/DataCenterGA

How do I use this thing?

The top right of the page allows you to open a legend, navigate the different layers, and change the basemap.

How do I use this thing?

The map layers are accessible with the eye-con.

Click the eye on and off to turn the layer on and off

Note: If the eye is crossed out, that layer is not shown on the map.

How do I use this thing?

The legend is showing what the map shows.

• The legend is long so if you don't see something in the legend that you see in the map, scroll down.

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Note: If the eye is crossed out in the layers, that layer is also not in the legend

How do I use this thing?

Basemaps just mean which map the layers are put on top of.

• Below I changed the basemap to Imagery

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Looking for data?

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Just click on the tab at the bottom of the page.

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Make sure you are on the layer you want the data for and click the box with 4 circles to export!

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What can you do?�ADVOCATE!

Ordinances – Community Protections

• Zoned Heavy Industrial
• Power & Water Infrastructure
• costs not passed onto consumers
• impact assessments – where will it all go?
• 15-20 yr minimum contracts
• Testing of wastewater for chemicals
• Water use plan (esp. during drought)
• Noise & light abatements
• Back-Up Power from non-polluting sources
• Surety bonds for end-of-life planning (decommissioning)

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Ordinances – Transparency & Incentives

• Transparent and uniform reporting
• Water & Electricity Use
• Taxes Paid
• Community Benefit Plans - What are they giving back?
• Weatherization funds
• Updated STEM facilities / curricula
• AI certificates
• Hire Local
• Community space improvements

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Local Actions You can Take

• Attend Council, Zoning, Planning, etc Meetings
• Comb your local Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) for code this may break
• i.e. all development has to raise property values, or bring jobs
• Form an Adopt-a-Stream monitoring group and measure baseline data
• Create a “future of our community” council to dream big about what you want to be

Legislative Update

• Over a dozen bills were proposed in the General Assembly
• Nothing passed – NOTHING
• Themes
• End Tax Breaks
• Ensure customers don’t pay for power overbuild
• Transparency
• End NDAs
• Worst bill (did not pass) – extend tax breaks if you build a data center in a poor county, a coastal county, or power it by wood pellets.
• Listing of legislation here: bit.ly/2026-SciLeg4Ga

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Tools to help:

• Data Center Community Organizing toolkit
• Guidance for public meetings, model ordinances, one-pagers, outreach language, and more!
• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CJQZFC_p1kJPYvfCFfrHhNE7Hjn5zGVjRmOIVPHPtds/edit?usp=sharing
• Science for GA Data Center Map
• https://bit.ly/DataCenterGA
• Energy Burden Resources
• https://bit.ly/EnergyInfo4Ga

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http://bit.ly/DataCenterGA

Thank you!