The rapid growth of data centers is quickly overwhelming our power grid, undermining environmental and climate goals at the city and utility levels, increasing public health impacts, and putting ratepayers at risk of dramatically increased costs for the infrastructure and extraordinary power demands of these facilities.
In Idaho, we've seen the impacts of the climate crisis firsthand, with heatwaves, wildfires, and decreasing snowpack becoming the norm. Massive, hyper-scale data centers risk making all of that worse as they consume our power, precious water, and even use dirty diesel generators or bring new gas plants online that release harmful pollutants into the air we breath.
But Idahoans aren't going to just sit back and take it—together, we can stop the bad and fight for better regulations and legislation that will protect our environment and communities from the whims of profit driven out-of-state Big Tech companies.
At Sierra Club, our approach focuses on key guardrails to ensure that utilities, and their regulators, steer data center development toward outcomes that benefit communities, workers, and the climate. If they can't meet those requirements? They aren't welcome here.
Find more information about our approach by reading this one page factsheet here, and stay tuned for more opportunities to take action and get organized when projects pop up near you.