There's big buzz around data centers, the massive complexes that tech companies are building across the nation, including in Wisconsin. The companies use the centers to process, store and transmit digital information that travels through the internet.
Microsoft is building a data center in Mount Pleasant. Vantage hopes to locate a complex in Port Washington. Additional projects are are being discussed or developed.
Demand for new centers has risen as tech companies invest in facilities that train AI models. Developers say AI will change our lives for the better. They argue that by building data centers, tech companies are creating construction jobs and permanent positions.
Environmentalists and many residents worry the projects will consume too much water, require too much energy, and increase residential utility bills.
Data centers are gravitating to the Great Lakes where fresh water is plentiful. Melissa Scanlan directs the Center for Water Policy at UWM's School of Freshwater Sciences.
She says since 2008, water used by communities and industries across the basin has been governed by an agreement between the U.S. and Canada.
“We actually have this wonderful thing called the Great Lakes Compact that sets standards for the entire region of how our surface and ground waters are to be used and managed,” she says.
Last year, as Scanlan noticed more and more data center proposals popping up, she and her students began digging to see if the Compact applies to the giant tech complexes.
“So we started looking there of course. Like, yes, this is where we need to look for this data! Well, there was nothing,” she says.
Scanlan says the Compact does not apply because data centers are tapping into existing municipal water systems. The data centers don’t draw their water directly from a Great Lake.
Microsoft’s Mount Pleasant center is using Racine water. The center being built by Vantage in Port Washington will hook up to that city’s water system. And that, Scanlan says, makes it hard to gauge the data centers’ water consumption.
“There isn’t one centralized place to look for the regional impact of this because it’s lumped in with all of the municipal ways that water is being used by a city,” she says.
Scanlan and her team did uncover useful information on how much water data centers use to keep their equipment cool. The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab tallied water usage and submitted it to Congress.
“They looked at data from 2023 and showed that data centers across the country had consumed 17 billion gallons of water,” Scanlan says.
The report predicts that number will double in three years, with the proliferation of data centers.
Yet Scanlan says the staggering finding was how much water is needed to produce the electricity that powers data centers.
Clean Wisconsin projects that when the Port Washington data center is fully built out, it will need 3.5 gigawatts of energy. The amount of water needed to produce that power is twice the amount used by every home, business and manufacturer in the city of Green Bay.
Scanlan says thoughtful planning is critical to determine how the water used by utilities to provide power to data centers could impact the Great Lakes basin — and to figure out how to protect and manage the basin for generations to come.
“There needs to be greater disclosure of what the water needs are and how the centers will be powered. Stepping back and taking the long view of how to manage the water would give the states and the Great Lakes region more control over their future than allowing this to be a piecemeal locality-by-locality kind of decision making that’s happening,” Scanlan says.
As for who will spearhead that long view, Todd Ambs says the Great Lakes Commission could play a part.
“That’s one of the things the Commission has done for its 70 years. It’s a very well-recognized and accepted convener on difficult issues,” Ambs says.
The Great Lakes Commission was created in 1955. It has delegations from each of the Great Lakes states and the Canadian provinces that share the basin. Ambs is one of three delegates representing Wisconsin. He says last month, the Commission passed a resolution in support of coordinated basin-wide management of AI projects.
“I think the need for greater recognition of the connection between the water use and the energy use — and a very big concern about the lack of transparency in what is the anticipated amount of water and energy that would be needed to run any one of these — caused a lot of concern sort of across the board that caused the Commission members to pass the resolution that they did,” Ambs says, adding, “The fact that we were able to easily get consensus around this resolution I think spoke volumes about these pressure points that are impacting every state."
But Ambs says the Commission has no power to enforce the resolution. So, what might galvanize basin-wide coordination around data centers? "There are a lot of different ways that this could go," Ambs says. "It could be that one of the states actually moves forward quickly and passes some meaningful statewide legislation, that then gets the other states to say ‘we want to do something like that as well.'"
Recently, Democratic state Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin proposed data center accountability legislation. It calls for transparency around water and energy use.
Ambs finds the move to be encouraging. "Hopefully, every state including Wisconsin (comes) up with some good legislation that actually passes into law. But at a minimum, if they’ve actually got a bill dropped and they’re having hearings and (talking) about this, that’s a good step,” he says.
Ambs recalls hundreds of meetings and drafts that culminated in the Great Lakes Compact. He’s counting on that level of resolve to manage challenges facing the basin now.
