AI Data Centers: Economy Boom or Environment Bust?

Country:

Brazil Laos Peru

Author:

Joanna S. Kao
Pulitzer Center Staff

A blurred image of a dimly lit datacenter hallway showing out of focus vertical stacks of lights emitted by computer processors.

English

How data center companies are working to avoid regulation at the local and federal levels.

Laís Martins
Grantee

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'It Only Takes a Little Push To Become Arid'

Data centers are popping up all over the news, and their promises of new jobs and revitalizing regions seem hard to resist. Recently, President Donald Trump signed a deal with the United Arab Emirates to build a massive data center in Abu Dhabi larger than the size of Monaco. Companies are also building these supercomputers in space and in the ocean.

But the promises of data centers rarely come to fruition, and communities surrounding them bear the brunt of their environmental impact. Our AI grantee Laís Martins has been investigating data centers in Brazil, where companies like the Chinese social network TikTok are planning a mega data center in a city with a history of drought.

Brazil has become an attractive location for many foreign companies because of its renewable resources and low energy costs. The federal government is aiming to make it even more attractive by forming a new national policy for data centers to reduce bureaucracy. However, in over 80 meetings since the start of the Lula administration in 2023, the Environmental Ministry has been excluded from all of them. Despite the policy not being made official yet, the Brazilian finance minister has already presented it to investors in Silicon Valley.

Understanding the true environmental impact of a data center is difficult for communities where these discussions are happening. Cooling these massive supercomputers requires an enormous amount of water, but companies are not required to disclose the water consumption needed by data centers. The government also withholds technical documentation from licensing agencies, citing industrial secrecy.

The Pulitzer Center would like to see more reporting on the data center industry so that communities have the information they need to make informed decisions. We are working with Lighthouse Reports and Tech Policy Press to understand what journalists need to report on data centers in communities. If you are a journalist, please fill out this survey and share it with others in your network.

Best,

Impact

Rainforest Reporting grantees Beimeng Fu and Zhaoyin Feng have won the Excellence in International Reporting award from the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA). They were recognized for their Pulitzer Center-supported story “Laos Durian Dreams Grow As Plantations Rise To Feed China,” published in English in Nikkei Asia and in Chinese in The Initium.

The story investigates a new trend of large-scale durian planting in Laos, driven by Chinese demand and made possible by undeveloped tropical rainforest and low labor costs. “Whether the Chinese investors’ 'durian dream' is a dream or a nightmare, whether it is a blessing or a curse for the Laotians, only time will tell,” the grantees report.

“The reporters spent more than a year working on breaking this story of rainforest devastation in Laos, following a tip from [an] industry source in China. The investigation supported by Pulitzer Center and Nikkei Asia brought to light a story that had never been publicly told before,” the award announcement said. “This reporting not only reached a global audience but also triggered further investigations and discussions.”