Assessing the Carbon Emissions and Energy Consumption of U.S. Hyperscale Data Centers

Title:Assessing the Carbon Emissions and Energy Consumption of U.S. Hyperscale Data Centers

Abstract:The rapid proliferation of hyperscale data centers (HDCs) in the US, mainly driven by the adoption of artificial intelligence, has raised concerns about this industry's environmental footprint. We compiled facility-level information on 403 US hyperscale data centers operating between May 2024 and April 2025 and estimated their electricity consumption, electricity sources, and attributable CO2 emissions. Across different facility-load scenarios, these HDCs consumed approximately 68-99 TWh of electricity and were associated with about 37-54 million metric tons of CO2. Under the central scenario, HDC electricity demand corresponded to approximately 1.8% of total US electricity consumption, with roughly 54% of attributed generation supplied by fossil-fuel sources. The HDC electricity-weighted average carbon intensity was approximately 545 gCO2/kWh, about 48% above the contemporaneous US national grid-average carbon intensity of 370 gCO2/kWh. Our approach provides an attributional tool for assessing the environmental footprint of hyperscale data centers using the most recent EPA eGRID plant-level data.

Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Applications (stat.AP)

arXiv:2606.05420 [cs.AI]

(or arXiv:2606.05420v1 [cs.AI] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.05420 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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