Around 150 people gathered in University of Illinois Springfield’s Brookens Auditorium Oct. 21 to learn more about the environmental impacts of data centers.
Mary Willis, assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health, discussed federal policies that sped up development and various environmental concerns stemming from the gigantic buildouts that typically require public utilities to run non-stop. Willis cited a federal executive order from July 2025 as a cause of the country’s data center proliferation.
“Data centers are simply reshaping U.S. electricity demand, which really leads to a bunch of questions related to air pollution. First, we’ve got the additional need for electricity, which yields additional fossil fuel generation on the grid. There are coal-fired power plants that were unretired specifically with the data centers in mind,” Willis said. “If we are stressing the electrical grid more, we’re at a higher risk of blackouts; and blackouts have a whole host of health effects associated with them as well.”
Local blackouts are usually caused by storms damaging transmission and distribution lines, which is what happened in Gary, Indiana, in August – much of the city had no power for two weeks.
“It’s worth remembering that we have a decent number of blackouts per year and it’s been increasing over time largely due to storms, but there’s also other components of stressing this aging electrical grid that we really should keep in mind,” Willis said.
But assuming a region’s electrical infrastructure can support a hyperscale data center, concerns then extend to how it’s being backstopped.
“A lot of these sites have some sort of backup generator, either gas turbines or diesel backup generators, which yields diesel particulate matter or other types of particulate matter,” she said. “Literature shows that increased levels of fine particulate matter are associated with everything from increased rates of stillbirth to mortality across the life course.”
That’s not to discount the considerations of noise and impacts to nearby water systems. Newer data centers are promoting the idea of “closed-loop” systems, which require less water but are more energy-intensive and require additional cooling chemicals called refrigerants.
“The water that (a) data center is using can go back into the community with some sort of proprietary chemicals potentially in it,” Willis said. “This part of the literature, what is in data center fluid, is really just not as well-described as, say, this water stress component.”
She also pointed out how it’s advantageous for both developers and communities to figure out how to lower water use and decrease dependence on expensive fossil fuel power.
“We also are in an interesting scenario where a lot of the things that are problems with data centers also don’t benefit the data center – no one wants to be using millions of gallons of water because that’s expensive,” she said. “There’s probably a lot of engineering solutions that could be brought into the forefront that could get rid of a lot of our problems that we have. It’s not necessarily perfect, but getting rid of some of the excess water usage, improving the efficiency of how it’s interacting with the grid.
“There’s a lot of things here that actually truly benefit the company that also would have co-benefits for the community and population,” Willis said.
Attendees asked about negotiating community benefits agreements, what might happen if the AI boom is actually a bubble, and whether there should be concerns over electronic waste.
Addressing community benefits agreements, Willis mentioned how sites with prime location to utilities might have negotiating power to get the best development deal possible.
“Where the county would be a really viable spot for a data center – the community has a lot of power in those scenarios sometimes,” she said.
Willis also provided insight into how the lack of knowledge surrounding data centers provides an opportunity for citizen science, even locally, such as to see how the approved CyrusOne data center project might impact people near the site.
“It’s remarkable how many generators are on that particular (project) and that they even got that far,” she said. “There aren’t a lot of great examples of people being able to pre-think about a cohort study – a cohort study being you recruit people in the community and follow them forward in time – the best sort of evidence you can get.”
She pointed out how other counties and municipalities in Illinois, including Bloomington and Morgan County, have advisory questions on the November ballot related to data center development.
“Are these perfect? Definitely not, but are they a starting point? I think it’s a much better starting point than having nothing,” Willis said.
