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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Environment
Tom Perkins

Advocates raise alarm over Pfas pollution from datacenters amid AI boom

a datacenter
Aerial view of a datacenter owned by the US multinational and technology company Google in Santiago on 9 October 2024. Photograph: Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images

Datacenters’ electricity demands have been accused of delaying the US’s transition to clean energy and requiring fossil fuel plants to stay online, while their high level of water consumption has also raised alarm. Now public health advocates fear another environmental problem could be linked to them – Pfas “forever chemical” pollution.

Big tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon often need datacenters to store servers and networking equipment that process the world’s digital traffic, and the artificial intelligence boom is driving demand for more facilities.

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