Creation Care Corner June 2026

Have you been hearing about all the giant new data centers being planned and built by tech companies for artificial intelligence?  These will be used as central computing locations for artificial intelligence.  Several are planned for southern Wisconsin, and one is planned for the Green Bay area.  The pattern seems to be that people find out about them after they have been approved.

These data centers are needed by big tech companies to process the extensive amounts of data needed for artificial intelligence.   “A.I.”, as it is commonly abbreviated, is the new field of computer development that allows computers to learn how to do may tasks without human input.  AI can summarize conversations, perform administrative tasks, make financial and weather predictions, operate self-driving cars, manage agriculture and traffic, enhance quality control, predict energy demand, detect fraud, and answer the questions that we ask our phones.  As I write this, AI is suggesting changes in my text and spelling.  These huge computer data centers require enormous amounts of electricity to operate.  WE Energies of Wisconsin proposes 2 new gas-fired power plants to power them, a 5-gigawatt increase, enough to power 3.75 million homes.  This will reverse much progress made in recent years to cut carbon emissions and reduce climate change.

This causes two main problems: climate change and water usage (by both the data centers and the new power plants).

These massive buildings filled with computers will require 800 billion liters of water for cooling.  Where are they going to get it?  It looks like they want to use the Great Lakes and other water bodies, so they locate near water.  The additional power plants will also cause more climate and water problems.  The water will be returned at a higher temperature to the water body, so we will have more atmospheric warming. This also causes fish and animals in the water to be stressed, and aids the spread of invasive species.

There is another aspect to this.  The construction and operating costs of these data centers are not borne by the tech companies alone.  Local electricity customers are finding their electric rates rising quickly due to costs of building new electric plants.

I attended a Faith in Place zoom class last week with Maria Fernandez Chavez, a researcher with the Union of Concerned Scientists.  They advocate for clean energy, and are holding a legislator information event in Madison.  They are also working with the Public Service Commission to create regulations to control the impacts on water, electric costs, emissions, public health, and climate damage.  We should ask all our candidates their position on creating these regulations.

-Sandy McKitrick