IDAHO FALLS, ID – Federal land in Idaho could be used to build a data center to power artificial intelligence and the project comes with potential costs for the region.
The Department of Energy has selected four sites for AI data centers and energy projects. Among them is the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho. The Trump administration said the move will strengthen the country’s global leadership in AI and will lower energy costs.
Quentin Good, policy analyst for the nonprofit research organization Frontier Group, which studied the effects of data centers, found they will be a major source of electricity demand for the country over the next decade. He said construction of “server farms” is delaying the closure of fossil fuel plants because the centers sometimes need as much energy as a small city.
“Even some of these sites that they’re putting on federal land will still end up hooking up to the grid and impacting reliability and increasing costs for other residents,” Good pointed out.
The Frontier Group’s analysis found the closure of at least 17 fossil fuel generating units has been delayed or is at risk of being delayed because of increasing electricity demand, with data centers among the main concerns. However, Good noted there are ways to make data centers more efficient and use less energy. The Department of Energy said it aims to select partners for its projects at the four sites by the end of the year.
The initiative is part of President Donald Trump’s executive orders on Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure, Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security, and Unleashing American Energy. The Idaho National Laboratory develops nuclear technology. But Good is wary of the pairing of data centers with nuclear energy, which has as long history of overblown budgets and timelines.
“There’s no reason to think that wouldn’t be the case if we started to seek out a new buildout of nuclear energy,” Good contended. “It may be a feasible solution in the long run but it’ll take a long time and it’ll be very expensive.”
Good noted the largest data centers also consume large amounts of water, as much as five million gallons a day, which could make a data center an especially bad match for the semiarid climate of eastern Idaho.
“They’ve also been found to use more water in water scarce regions. So in places where it’s hotter and drier, they actually have a larger water footprint and, of course, those are the places that are also more water scarce,” Good explained.
