Google plans to replenish more freshwater than its data centers consume by 2030 as it expands water stewardship efforts amid growing AI infrastructure scrutiny.
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One of the biggest “David versus Goliath” stories in tech right now is the towns beset by AI data center projects they may or may not have asked for. Powered By Who is tracking data center development in the US on this convenient map.
Currently, there are over 2,100 data centers being tracked by the project ranging from proposals to sites fully up-and-running. While you have to build bypasses data centers to keep the internet running (which we’re partial to here at Hackaday), there are certainly questions around the amount of power and water consumed by these sites, the emissions they’re sending into the surrounding community, and who exactly is reaping the benefits.
Whether you’re pro, against, or ambivalent about the proliferation of “AI” data centers, the map offers an engaging way to look at what projects are happening around the nation, especially when you start looking at clusters and how that interacts with the power generation and political makeup in a region. It’s particularly interesting how only three states account for roughly 70% of all the projects. Let us know if there’s a similar tracker in your area if you’re from one of the other parts of the globe!
Looking past the debate, there’s a lot of interesting engineering involved in keeping these data centers cool, although there are questions about where that heat ends up going. DC distribution inside the site, underwater data centers, and even putting them in space are some of the solutions for keeping the cooling loads tamed.
Microsoft Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa faced a barrage of pointed questions from the audience Friday during a session at the annual Pacific Northwest Climate Week in Seattle.
Protesters challenged Nakagawa through most of the 30-minute session held in a conference room at Seattle’s City Hall, calling out the company’s use of fossil fuel energy sources to power its AI data centers and challenging Microsoft’s commitment to climate goals set years ago.
As a reporter covering sustainability issues for GeekWire, I moderated the session. Many of the issues raised by the crowd were on my list of questions for Nakagawa. The disruptions also included chants from protesters seated among attendees, at times going beyond climate issues to condemn Microsoft’s technology deals with Israel.
Security guards ultimately ushered some protesters out of the space, while others remained. Interruptions from the audience continued for all but the final 10 minutes of the session.
The event capped off Pacific Northwest Climate Week, which included conversations around the city and region about climate change solutions, policies and innovations.
Microsoft has for many years been viewed as an environmental corporate leader, setting an ambitious goal in 2020 to become carbon negative within a decade. It created an internal carbon tax — one of the corporate world’s largest — that charges individual Microsoft divisions for emissions from sources like air travel to fund climate-friendly initiatives. The company is credited with helping create and sustain the carbon dioxide removal sector, among other roles.
But the rapid expansion of AI data centers and their huge energy demands are undercutting Microsoft’s standing. The company recently released its annual sustainability report, disclosing that its carbon footprint grew 25% last year, moving it further from its 2030 target.
One protester’s question was about a deal announced earlier this year in which Microsoft is partnering with Chevron to build a 2.7 gigawatt natural gas facility to power a data center campus in Texas. I asked Nakagawa how the company defends the agreement, and she pointed to the 4.7 gigawatts of renewable energy that Microsoft has supported in the state. I followed up by asking about the Redmond, Wash.-based company’s commitment to carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects given recent reports about a pause on new deals.
Nakagawa was unable to answer before the crowd drowned her out with a call-and-response chant: “Microsoft, you can’t hide. We can see your dirty side.”
Another protester criticized the escalating pursuit of AI. “You’re selling us a product that we don’t even need, and we never should ask for,” he said. “No one wants AI. You’re destroying the climate with AI.”
I brought up legislation proposed earlier this year in Washington to mandate clean energy use and bring transparency to data center impacts in the state. Microsoft opposed and helped defeat the bill, though the company says it wants to work with lawmakers to pass rules next year. I asked what needed to change in the legislation for Microsoft to support it.
Nakagawa didn’t provide specifics, but noted that this year, for the first time, the company shared facility-level information in its annual report on electricity and water use for data centers worldwide.
“People want to know more about the data, and we believe you can have an honest and candid conversation with transparency and access to that information and data,” she said.
Given the obvious public concerns, I asked Nakagawa, “Do you really honestly believe that by 2030, the company can hit that carbon-negative goal?”
Nakagawa pointed to wide-ranging initiatives that are starting to help curb specific emissions, including investments to make Xbox devices lower carbon and financial support for the recent opening of a production plant in Moses Lake, Wash., for sustainable aviation fuel company Twelve.
“There are a couple areas where we’re seeing a lot of promising progress,” she said. “Look, this is going to be a hard target. We’ve not been at all shying away from the fact that this is a difficult goal.”
TSMC plans four more Arizona fabs, bringing its total US investment to $265 billion and expanding chip capacity amid surging AI demand and geopolitical risk.
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One of Amazon’s top cloud leaders will be joining Meta as the Facebook parent company considers turning its massive AI buildout into a cloud business of its own.
That’s the report from the Wall Street Journal overnight, quoting anonymous sources saying that Dave Brown, the senior Amazon executive who led AWS compute and AI services, will join Meta in the coming weeks to work on its data center build-out.
Meta hasn’t committed to becoming a cloud provider, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the idea is on the table. He told shareholders in May that companies were regularly approaching Meta to pay for access to its AI models or spare computing capacity — a business that would put Meta in competition with cloud providers it now relies on, including AWS.
At Meta, Brown will report to infrastructure chief Santosh Janardhan, according to the WSJ report. Janardhan co-leads Meta Compute, an initiative Zuckerberg launched in January to plan the company’s data center buildout. Meta has said it expects to spend $125 billion to $145 billion on capital expenditures this year, much of it tied to AI data centers.
Amazon isn’t commenting on the report. We’ve contacted Meta for confirmation and details.
Brown’s departure from AWS was announced on Wednesday, with a warmly worded message from AWS CEO Matt Garman giving no indication that Amazon would try to challenge or restrict his new role on competitive grounds.
AWS has gone to court before to enforce noncompete agreements against departing executives, suing two AWS leaders who left for Google Cloud in 2019 and 2020, respectively. But such agreements have grown harder to enforce. California bars them almost entirely, and Washington — Amazon’s home state — enacted a near-total ban this year, though it doesn’t take effect until mid-2027.
Garman’s message said Brown had decided to take “a new role outside of the company” but did not say where he was going. He’s remaining at AWS through the end of July to help with the transition.
At AWS, Brown will be succeeded by Dave Treadwell, a longtime Amazon executive who has run the technology behind the company’s retail operations and spent 27 years at Microsoft before joining Amazon in 2016. He takes over AWS Compute and ML Services on Aug. 1.
Elon Musk’s $1 billion APR Energy acquisition could help xAI expand faster while raising new questions about emissions, cost, and grid dependence.
The post Elon Musk Acquires APR Energy in Deal Valued at More Than $1 Billion appeared first on TechRepublic.
New Zealand's AI infrastructure ambitions are running into growing local opposition over land, power, and water use, giving Samsung's planned floating data centers bigger relevance.
The post Samsung’s Floating Data Center Concept Finds a Fit in New Zealand appeared first on TechRepublic.
Energy companies are raising money at IPO at their fastest pace this century, taking advantage of investors’ hunt for new ways to bet on the boom in power-intensive AI data centers.
Initial public offerings for energy firms raised $12.6 billion in the first half of this year, according to data firm Dealogic. That marks the highest half-year level since the peak of the dotcom bubble in late 1999 and the highest first-half figure on record. It is well above 2025’s full-year total of $4.3 billion.
The surge in fundraising comes as access to the vast amounts of energy needed to run data centers emerges as a bottleneck in a multi-trillion-dollar AI investment boom.
© Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
New York paused new hyperscale data center permits for up to one year while it studies grid, water, ratepayer, and community impacts.
The post New York Imposes One-Year Moratorium on New Hyperscale Data Centers appeared first on TechRepublic.
SpaceX has pinned the bulk of its future value on orbital data centers. Not rockets. Not spacecraft.
Instead, it envisions launching and maintaining a constellation of 1 million satellites capable of generating 120 GW to power tens of millions—and potentially up to 100 million—frontier-class GPUs for data center services.
The company's founder, Elon Musk, revealed plans for this massive constellation months ago, but until recently, the scope of the individual satellites was largely unknown. That changed in June, when Musk and Ian Dahl, director of satellite engineering for SpaceX, spoke in a promotional video about the company's plans to develop the first iteration of an orbital data center, called an AI1 satellite. The video finally provided the company's numbers about the satellite's size and power capabilities.
© Aurich Lawson | Getty Images
Apple’s failed car project reportedly shaped its Neural Engine, future M7 chips, and plans for more powerful AI server infrastructure.
The post Apple’s Failed Car Project Reportedly Shapes M7 AI Chips appeared first on TechRepublic.
See what you missed in Daily Tech Insider from July 6–10.
The post AI Breakthroughs, Security Breaches, and Industry Shakeups Define the Week appeared first on TechRepublic.
Meta reportedly plans to deploy its fourth custom AI chip by September as it looks to cut AI costs and reduce reliance on Nvidia and AMD.
The post Meta’s Custom AI Chip Timeline Just Got More Interesting appeared first on TechRepublic.
Meta’s Cheyenne AI data center project was linked to the presence of rare bacteria in reclaimed irrigation water, adding scrutiny to local data center wastewater rules.
The post Meta AI Data Center Linked to Rare Bacteria Water Scare appeared first on TechRepublic.
Microsoft has just four more years to reach its ambitious goal of removing more planet-warming carbon that it produces. But the company’s annual sustainability report, released Thursday, shows it’s moving in the opposite direction, as its 2025 emissions spiked 25% over the previous year.
Despite the troubling increase, Microsoft leaders say they remain committed to the longer-term goal.
“We continue to really be focused around carbon negativity by 2030,” said Melanie Nakagawa, chief sustainability officer, in an interview with GeekWire.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company is the latest tech giant to fall further behind its climate targets as they invest billions of dollars in new, energy-hungry data centers to power the AI boom. Amazon’s carbon footprint jumped 16% last year, while Google’s greenhouse gas emissions swelled 18%.
The report also shows how much energy use drove that increase, with Microsoft’s total electricity consumption growing by 24% last year.
In total, Microsoft produced 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2025, which would have been roughly 34 million metric tons without carbon reducing initiatives including purchasing clean electricity and sustainable fuels, Xbox console efficiency and Surface device decarbonization. The reduced number puts the company’s footprint roughly on par with the total emissions of Panama or Lithuania.
In addition to data center expansion, Nakagawa said, the carbon increase was also driven by Microsoft’s decision to stop buying unbundled, short-term renewable energy certificates, or RECs — a mechanism companies can use to quickly lower their reported emissions for a given year. Microsoft is instead prioritizing longer-term initiatives with bigger impact, she said.
The challenge Microsoft wants to answer, she said, is how to take a “portfolio approach” that spans carbon dioxide removal, carbon-free electricity, sustainable materials, and fuels — addressing all of them together rather than in isolation.
The annual report highlighted areas of success. That includes:
Microsoft’s sustainability disclosures come after a series of announcements and news reports that have raised concerns among climate advocates.
Nakagawa said the company has not canceled any removal projects, though she did not provide specifics about new purchases going forward. “We’re just continuing to take a hard look at each of the deals that are coming through,” she said, and looking for “credible opportunities to scale.”
Asked about Microsoft’s commitment to purchasing clean energy 24/7 — an approach that would eliminate reliance on coal- or gas-powered energy when wind and solar aren’t available — Nakagawa declined to confirm it. “We still are looking towards opportunities around carbon-free electricity,” while focusing on the 2030 carbon negative goals, she said.
As to the natural gas deal, the chief sustainability officer said Microsoft has also contracted to purchase 4.7 gigawatts of renewable power in Texas alone and that the company evaluates its energy investments as part of a broader mix.
Even as data centers remain the prime driver of Microsoft’s rising energy use and emissions, the company points to other steps aimed at reducing the environmental footprint of the facilities.
That includes increasing the use of lower-carbon steel and concrete and incorporating mass timber into data center buildings. And In the past year, Microsoft has added a seventh Circular Center — one of several facilities worldwide where the company recycles and reuses electronics from data center operations.
Microsoft is also working with developers to use AI models more efficiently and build right-sized products. AI agents can review, test and improve code so it uses less energy when it runs, Nakagawa said.
“I definitely think there’s an opportunity here,” she said.
Editor’s note: A correction was made regarding Microsoft’s total energy use last year, replacing a data point on Scope 2 emission, and clarifying the steps taken to reduce its carbon emissions to 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Samsung Heavy Industries plans to commercialize a floating AI data center by 2028 as power, land, and cooling constraints squeeze AI infrastructure.
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