Rising demand for electrical power in the U.S. has been prompting data centers to generate unprecedented amounts of electricity, with the latest estimates for the coming months skyrocketing with recent trends.

What's happening?

While prior forecasts anticipated about a 2% rise in commercial demand and a 1% rise in overall power consumption for the upcoming year, the Energy Information Administration's June report places those same metrics at 5% and 2%, respectively. According to Bloomberg News, the drastic increase in projected power usage rates can be attributed to a sudden expansion in data centers over the past month.

According to EE Power, "This sharp upward revision is largely attributed to the expansion of data centers, particularly in areas served by the ERCOT (Texas) and PJM Interconnection (Mid-Atlantic) independent system operators."

As the EIA's June report noted: "Data center computing is significantly more energy intensive than computing in general. By 2050, as much as 7% of all U.S. commercial floorspace requires additional energy to meet data center demand across most building types."

Why is rising power demand important?

Data centers require massive amounts of energy if they're to continue expanding in order to maintain our current digital needs as well as support in-progress technologies like crypto mining and artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, the pressures placed on power companies as a result can prove taxing both for the environment and for your wallet, since utility costs are sure to rise under duress.

Meanwhile, most conventional power plants rely on the combustion of fossil fuels to generate electricity — a process that releases millions of metric tons of planet-warming carbon pollution into the atmosphere. The power sector accounts for about one-third of the U.S.'s total carbon pollution, per the Congressional Budget Office, making its climate burden quite significant.

The effects of carbon pollution reverberate far and deep, working to the detriment of our weather, our food, our public health, and more.

What's being done about rising power demand?

Finding alternative means to generate power that don't depend on dirty fuels is key to mitigating the carbon problem in the electricity sector and cutting down your electricity costs. Researchers are still working on innovative new solutions — such as various forms of nuclear power — in order to diversify our clean energy possibilities, but in the short term, solar and wind are the most accessible.

You can even take advantage of solar energy from the comfort of your home by installing solar panels, bringing your monthly utility bills, as well as your power-based carbon emissions, down to near zero.

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