In the tranquil Washington-area suburb of Ashburn, Virginia, is a large yet unassuming building. In front is a small pond with a fountain, the only sounds the quacking of the ducks paddling across it and the muted roar of distant motorway traffic.
But inside is what many consider to be part of the backbone of the future of technological development: a massive data centre. Rows and rows of servers thrum loudly, neatly organised and secured behind constantly monitored locked cages.
Artificial intelligence is driving an unprecedented demand for data centres around the world and the state of Virginia is believed to be home to at least 650, leading some in technology circles to refer to it as the data centre capital of the world.
“Some say that 80 per cent of US internet traffic ends up coming through Northern Virginia here,” Jon Lin, chief business officer at Equinix, told The National during a rare tour inside one of the company's plants in Ashburn.
Equinix is one of the world's largest data centre companies, and runs 273 of them in 37 countries, including France, Oman and the UAE.
While AI might be the latest tech buzzword, Equinix is confident that overall trends in cloud computing and digitisation will continue to bolster the sector.
“The mainstream utilisation of computer data continues to drive demand and that's a steady development,” Mr Lin said. Although AI has created more demand around the world, nuance is important when discussing it, he added.
“The new wrinkle from AI has been a lot more requirements for much larger-scale capacity facilities, and that's ended up creating like new pockets of demand all around the world.”
He said due to burgeoning AI growth and investment, some companies are choosing to build hyper-scale data centres with a “singular focus around supporting one customer's needs and growth”.
On site, Equinix has backup generators to make sure there is always a reliable source of electricity in the event of a power cut. There are also various mechanical systems in place to keep the servers from overheating.
“Over the last five years or so now, we've really been supporting liquid cooling more often,” Mr Lin said, pointing out that the water is reused in the process of keeping the technology cool.
“From a sustainability perspective, we want to be as efficient as possible and just be good stewards of all the infrastructure and energy that we're consuming.”
Grid pains
Not every data centre operator has the same approach, and therein lies some of the controversy.
AI's massive potential as a transformative force for humankind requires more powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processing units (CPUs) in data centres, particularly compared with the previous decades of cloud computing and traditional data centres.
Those GPUs and CPUs need a massive amount of electricity, which is already putting a strain on power grids.
Companies such as Microsoft have teamed up with energy firms to increase power production, going as far as to bring formerly decommissioned nuclear reactors back online to feed energy-hungry data centres.
AI infrastructure construction and what some have referred to as “zombie nuclear reactor” projects are happening against a backdrop of rising electricity bills in the US.
Late last year, an announcement from two US senators provided a glimpse into the continuing debate over electricity costs and AI data centres that is expected to gain momentum next year.
Democrats Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal said they had launched an investigation into the proliferation of data centres, warning they could be driving up electricity bills throughout the nation.
“Utility companies have spent billions of dollars updating the electrical grid to accommodate the data centres’ unprecedented energy demands, including building expensive new transmission lines and power plants,” they wrote, insisting these updates to the electrical grids were ultimately being passed on to consumers.
A recent report from the non-partisan Pew Research Centre points out that Americans in recent years have been paying increasingly higher prices to keep the lights on.
That same report cites a Carnegie Mellon University study that predicts data centres could be a factor in “leading to an 8 per cent increase in the average US electricity bill by 2030, potentially exceeding 25 per cent in the highest-demand markets of central and northern Virginia”.
When combined with the rising cost of living already stressing many US households, increasing energy costs are taking a significant toll.
Critics such as Ms Warren and Mr Blumenthal say big-tech companies often do not pay their fair share of the extra infrastructure.
“The contracts between data centres and utility companies that underlie these arrangements are almost always confidential,” they wrote in a recent letter to the chief executive of Amazon, which builds and operates its own data centres.
In the year ahead, policymakers are expected to take a much closer look at addressing how best to address those criticisms, and the classic “not in my backyard” factor remains a force to be reckoned with.
Various cities and municipalities are already debating the establishment of data centres during public meetings, with residents demanding answers about electricity usage.
During a meeting hosted by the Congressional Internet Caucus Academy, Leslie Abrahams, a senior energy fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said one in six US households are already behind on electricity payments.
She said while the US grid has spare capacity during off-peak times, when data centres become more plentiful, “excess capacity starts to get squeezed”.
“That's where we're talking about having to add new infrastructure and new capacity,” she said.
According to the Columbus Dispatch, Amazon had received a secretive break on its electricity bill from American Electric Power amid the construction of data centres.
Amazon later said the deal was no longer necessary, the Columbus Dispatch reported, but the story led to widespread concern and resistance from consumers hit with rising energy bills.
The US is not alone in trying to deal with the growing pains of building data centres.
Media reports show that in recent years, a proliferation of data centres in Ireland has resulted in those sites collectively consuming more electricity than homes in the country.
Grid gains?
Proponents of the AI infrastructure expansion, however, say it is unfair to blame data centres, noting electricity bills could be even higher if big tech companies in the US do not team up with energy companies to upgrade the power grid.
Over at Equinix, Mr Lin said the company has long held the position that consumers should not be burdened by the proliferation of data centres.
“We've been spending money on investing with our utility partners around infrastructure, making sure that we can help wherever we can around that,” he said.
“The kind of trajectory that you're seeing around AI and the acceleration of growth right now is tremendous and I do think that will end up naturally having the flatten a little bit because the power demands that are being projected right now are so high that you utility concerns and all of that will end up constraining some of that growth.”
Mr Lin said the concerns presented by some, however, revolve around a lot of misconceptions about AI and technology overall.
“People think it's just being used to make cat pictures and stuff,” he said, when in reality the use cases are far more complicated and could bring untold benefits to society.
AI aside, he reiterated that consumers are streaming videos, shows and movies more than ever and also relying more heavily on the cloud to store data.
“These are the things are actually contributing to your GDP. And these things that are actually producing economic outcomes,” he said, pointing out that employment opportunities provided by data centres with healthy wages.
“It's a very competitive market in a very specific set of skills for required to do this … the property taxes that we actually take back to the community are a huge driver for why Loudoun County, Virginia has some of the best schools in the country.”
Mr Lin is not alone in his enthusiasm for the benefits brought by data centres. Many elected officials have sought across the US have taken notice, and sought to embrace the sector.
Speaking at the Congressional Internet Caucus Academy briefing, Levi Patterson, Nvidia's director of energy, science and AI infrastructure policy, said electricity bills do not always reflect basic economic rules.
“The supply and demand curve wherein if you have more demand than the prices should go up, it's misleading because that's not how the grid works,” he said, implying data centres could eventually help stabilise electricity bills because of the power they consume.
“If you add more demand to share those costs with the grid, then prices will actually go down, because you're all sharing these big fixed costs.” He added that big tech's aspirations to help lower the cost of electricity transmission and distribution across the grid could also help.
Some analysts and experts have pointed out that AI is already being used to increase the efficiency of electrical grids and that those behind the efforts have only just begun to scratch the surface of what is possible.
