BOX ELDER COUNTY, Utah — Ford Copple of the Sutherland Institute authored a report on data centers intended for voters and policymakers.
Ford Copple, development coordinator at the Sutherland Institute in Salt Lake City, says data about the real-world impacts of data centers should inform the public conversation about their growth.
Copple, who holds a master's degree in international affairs and global enterprise, authored a recent report on data centers intended for use by voters and policymakers.
"There's good high quality data that exists, um, that shows for one, that data centers so far just have not had the consumer rate increases on the electric grid that we see, you know, is a common fear, um, and that there are positive, um, new advances in water usage and cooling, um, that really have high potential to reduce water strain," Copple said.
He says air quality concerns around data centers are essentially the same as for any area near natural gas power plants, which have been around for a long time. He says that can be an open question.
Copple says data centers have been around for a long time and the need for them continues to increase. He says supply is outstripping demand, so the issue needs to be addressed.
"Things like um, electric impacts on the grid, water usage, air quality, things like that, um, aren't things that we should just gloss over, um, but they also need to be balanced with, um, data, and they need to be balanced with the potential positive impacts that AI brings and the benefits that it's already bringing right now, um, you know, as we discussed, data centers are already in use and so many things that we use every day that we don't even think about, but we would be kind of helpless now if we didn't have them," Copple said.
Copple encourages everyone to read his report on the Sutherland Institute's website, along with a report by the Brookings Institute and one by the Kem C. Gardner Institute. Links to those reports are available at fox13now.com.
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