Study suggests data centers will boost power bills up to 57% by 2030
New research suggests electricity demand from data centers and cryptocurrency mining is likely to increase power costs in some parts of the country by up to 57% by 2030, with a national average increase of 6%-29%. Electricity demand related to data centers is also likely to increase CO2 emissions by up to 28% by 2030, relative to a future with no data center growth, according to the analysis from North Carolina State University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Toronto.
“Power demand in the U.S. was relatively flat for almost 20 years,” says Jeremiah Johnson, corresponding author of a journal article on the work and an associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University. “But in the past couple of years we’ve seen a significant increase in power demand, due largely to data centers and – to a lesser extent – cryptocurrency mining.
“We wanted to understand the implications of this increased demand,” Johnson says. “What new power infrastructure will need to be built? Where? How will these systems be operated? What will that mean for the cost of electricity? And what will it mean for carbon emissions?”
The researchers drew on recent research to estimate data center and cryptocurrency power demand through 2030, and then made use of computational modeling tools to forecast what technologies would be used to generate that power.
“Specifically, we used an energy system optimization model,” says Anderson de Queiroz, co-author of the paper and an associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC State. “An energy system is the full supply chain that delivers energy to people. And optimization models are tools that can be used to search for the least expensive ways to plan, maintain and operate energy systems in order to meet energy demand while complying with existing laws and regulations.”
“The optimization model we used for this work was designed to focus on electrical power generation,” says Johnson. “We were able to look at energy supply and demand on an hourly level for 26 regions of the power grid, covering the lower 48 United States.”
One key finding from the optimization model is that increased demand will lead to increased carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation, by up to 28% over the next three and a half years.
“The power sector has made progress in reducing carbon emissions over the past 20 years, but the increased demand will essentially erase a lot of that progress,” says Johnson.
“We also found that electricity costs will increase by an average of 6%-29%, nationally. However, those prices could increase as much as 57%, depending on where you are in the country.”
Those electricity price increases would be most pronounced in Virginia, eastern North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, west Texas, Ohio, West Virginia and New York.
“But those future price increases depend on where new data centers are built,” Johnson says. “For example, price increases in Virginia jump due to substantial expansion of data centers. If the data centers are distributed more broadly across the country, Virginia won’t be hit as hard. Prices will still go up for everyone, but the expense will be spread more evenly across the country.
“There is a great deal of uncertainty regarding the cost of installing new natural gas turbines and the cost of natural gas itself,” Johnson says. “But regardless of fuel cost and the cost to build new natural gas plants, we still see substantial increases in electricity cost and CO2 emissions.
“The public and policymakers need to be aware of these near-term challenges – 2030 is less than four years away,” says Johnson. “Our findings highlight the need for regulators and utilities to make informed decisions about near-term power generation, and for government officials at all levels to make informed decisions related to the construction of data centers.”
The paper, “Power System Costs and Emissions from Data Center and Cryptocurrency Mining Expansion in the United States,” is published open access in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The paper was co-authored by Cameron Wade of Sutubra Research; Michael Blackhurst of the University of Pittsburgh; Joseph DeCarolis and Paulina Jaramillo of Carnegie Mellon University; and Daniel Posen of the University of Toronto.
Journal
Environmental Research Letters
Method of Research
Computational simulation/modeling
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Power System Costs and Emissions from Data Center and Cryptocurrency Mining Expansion in the United States
Article Publication Date
12-May-2026
Turning down the heat from data centers
Research aims to reduce impact of heat pollution on downwind neighborhoods
Arizona State University
image:
Data centers can discharge air heated to 14 to 25 degrees F above the surrounding air temperature, creating thermal plumes that move downwind.
view moreCredit: Wikimedia Commons
Waste heat from data centers can boost air temperatures in downwind neighborhoods by as much as 4 degrees Fahrenheit, researchers at Arizona State University report in a new study conducted in the Phoenix metro area, the hottest in the U.S.
“As we do more measurements under different kinds of atmospheric conditions, I think we're going to see more significant impacts around data centers,” said lead author David Sailor.
With hundreds of megawatts of data center capacity operating in many cities, and thousands more proposed, the combined impact on urban temperature could be substantial. U.S. data center capacity is projected to more than double by 2030. Sailor and co-authors said the overlooked heat hazard demands attention from city planners and industry developers. The researchers aim to help develop solutions that could significantly reduce downwind impacts.
The waste heat produced by a single data center can surpass the amount emitted by 40,000 households, according to Sailor. Air-cooled condenser arrays discharge air heated to 14 to 25 degrees F above the surrounding air temperature, creating thermal plumes that move downwind over neighboring areas.
“They're such a concentrated load of electricity consumption and hence heat emissions that we became concerned about the impact that they could have locally, and also in the downwind neighborhoods,” said Sailor, a professor at Arizona State University and director of ASU’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning.
Other researchers have tried to use remote sensing data from satellites to estimate the heat impact of data centers historically. The ASU study is the first to directly measure air temperatures downwind and upwind of data centers to record the real-time effects of waste heat on surrounding communities. Sailor and co-authors Soroush Samareh Abolhassani and Eli Martin are publishing their findings in the Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities.
The researchers mounted data-logging high-accuracy and fast-response temperature sensors on cars that drove around Phoenix-area data centers and throughout nearby neighborhoods from June 18 to October 25, 2025. Using multiple cars allowed them to simultaneously measure temperatures upwind and the downwind of the four selected facilities ranging from a 36-megawatt single-building data center in Mesa to a 169-megawatt colocation campus in Chandler. The chosen centers reflect the typical design of “hyperscalers” that house many thousands of servers and use primarily air-based cooling systems.
Temperatures downwind of data centers averaged 1.3 to 1.6 degrees F warmer than upwind temperatures and reached as high as 4 degrees F above upwind temperatures. The heat impact was detectable up to a third of a mile, or about five city blocks, distant from the perimeter of datacenters.
“Even if these data centers only contribute to an additional heat island magnitude of one degree or two degrees, that can still have a very significant impact on our lives,” Sailor said. That’s especially true in places where extreme heat already poses serious public health risks.
A one-degree boost in air temperature, for example, is enough to drive higher use of air conditioning across entire neighborhoods. Those air conditioners, in turn, put even more heat into the surroundings.
Sailor and colleagues are planning a more extensive effort collect data over a wider range of times and weather conditions. That data will allow them to develop an accurate atmospheric model to study the effects of measures to lessen the heat impact on downwind neighborhoods.
“Data centers are inherently an important part of our society, and they're going to become even more necessary going forward,” Sailor said. Rather than just highlight adverse consequences, his goal is to collaborate with data center providers and other stakeholders to develop the knowledge needed to reduce the heat pollution problem.
Design modifications to facilities and cooling equipment informed by high-resolution microclimate modeling, for example, could lower the thermal footprint of a data center without compromising data center operations. Greenbelts or parks could buffer heat pollution. Cities could require such fixes in siting and permitting of data centers.
This research was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research’s Urban Integrated Field Laboratories research activity, under Award Number DE-SC0023520.
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Data center waste heat as an emerging urban thermal hazard: First field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts
Article Publication Date
12-May-2026
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