Data centres could make neighbourhoods hotter: study

Data centres already have a bad rep, and it’s only getting worse as companies rush to build more of them across Canada and the U.S. amid the AI craze. Increased energy demand, impacts on local water supplies, pollution, noise — the list of reasons to dislike data centres keeps growing, and a new study has added another: increased temperatures.

The study, which was published on May 18 in the Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities, measured heat pollution from a 36 megawatt (MW) data centre in Mesa, Arizona, and a 169MW data centre campus in nearby Chandler. From this, researchers found that air temperatures downwinds from these facilities were up to two degrees Celsius (four degrees Fahrenheit) higher than temperatures upwind from the facility. It was also noted that the heat impact extended up to half a kilometer out from the perimeter of the data centres.

As Gizmodo pointed out, the findings suggest that data centres can compound what is known as the urban island effect, which is when a city experiences much warmer temperatures than nearby rural areas. It was also noted that this is especially concerning for cities that already experience extreme heat, like the previously-noted Mesa and Chandler.

While an increase of a degree or two may not sound like a lot, David Sailor, the director of Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Panning, said that even an increase of that size would be enough to drive up air conditioning (AC) use across entire neighbourhoods and produce even more heat pollution.

Previous modelling done for Phoenix, Arizona, showed that waste heat from residential AC units alone increased overnight temperatures by roughly one degree Celsius, creating a feedback loop where data centre operations increased the energy burden on surrounding neighbourhoods.

Source: Gizmodo

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