The True Environmental Cost of Data Centers: An Insight into the Construction Phase of the Era of Artificial Intelligence

In recent years, there has been a significant adoption of commercial applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI). These applications have created a demand for infrastructure that support data storage, mining, and throughput compute power services, commonly known as data centers. This demand, which is projected to substantially increase over the next decade, places data centers to be a major contributor to the construction industry's global carbon emissions. However, with research mostly focusing on minimizing carbon emissions during the operation phase of most buildings, environmental impacts incurred during their construction phase are still deserving a deeper study. To address this gap, this work empirically evaluates the true cost to the environment of the construction of a data center by collecting and analyzing real-world project data on carbon emissions of material utilization and operation sequences. Findings of the presented analyses expose how on average carbon emissions are higher by 414% in the case of foundation systems (A - Substructure) for all data centers when compared to residential projects, and how the expected 25% increase of data center construction can pose an additional 1,832.51M kgCO2e in 2025, translating to 0.0054% of the world’s total carbon emissions coming from the U.S. market alone. This work aims to address sustainable development goals through understanding the extent of the environmental impact of building such critical infrastructure, which is vital in supporting the connectivity of people, fostering innovation, and accelerating industrialization.