Environmental Impacts of Data Centers

Communities across the country, including here in Illinois, are facing proposals from data centers of daunting size. What was once a very large data center is now a small data center. This presentation aimed to explain the boom in data centers, identified some environmental impacts to consider from them, and presented on policy solutions with a Illinois state and local lens. Andrew Rehn is the Climate Policy Director at Prairie Rivers Network, lives in Urbana, serves on the Champaign County Data Center Activities Task Force, and works on statewide policy like the POWER Act, which proposes regulations on data centers.