In The NoCo

Building data centers in Colorado: Do the economic benefits outweigh the environmental costs?

By In The NoCo,

Published May 2, 2025 at 5:35 AM MDT

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Vijay Gadepally, a man in glasses wearing a lavender patterned shirt, a brown striped tie and slacks, stands in a hallway of a large data center. — "Maybe four or five years ago, more of those operations would be contained on your phone or on your laptop," says Vijay Gadepally, a senior scientist at MIT who studies artificial intelligence and computer science. "These days, because of the computational complexity associated with, say, your chat GPT query, almost every operation we do is talking to a data center somewhere."

In 2025, artificial intelligence gives us personalized shopping recommendations. It writes emails for us. And all those quick tasks require lightning-fast computing and huge amounts of data. Which is why tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon are building massive data centers around the country.

Some state lawmakers have proposed incentives for companies that want to build data centers in Colorado. They say the facilities will create jobs and tax revenue – and that Colorado is competing with other states for that economic boost.

But skeptics point out that data centers use enormous amounts of electricity and water, which strains power grids and water supplies.

To sort through the economic benefits and the environmental costs, we reached out to Vijay Gadepally. He's a senior scientist at MIT who researches high performance computing and artificial intelligence. He’s also the chief technology officer of an AI cloud computing company that hopes to build a data center in Colorado.

He talked with Erin O'Toole about why some people think Colorado’s a good place to build more data centers, and how they work.

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In The NoCo

KUNC's In The NoCo is a daily slice of stories, news, people and issues. It's a window to the communities along the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The show brings context and insight to the stories of the day, often elevating unheard voices in the process. And because life in Northern Colorado is a balance of work and play, we celebrate the lighter side of things here, too.

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Erin O'Toole

As the host of KUNC’s new program and podcast In the NoCo, I work closely with our producers and reporters to bring context and diverse perspectives to the important issues of the day. Northern Colorado is such a diverse and growing region, brimming with history, culture, music, education, civic engagement, and amazing outdoor recreation. I love finding the stories and voices that reflect what makes NoCo such an extraordinary place to live.

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Brad Turner

Brad Turner is an executive producer in KUNC's newsroom. He manages the podcast team that makes In The NoCo, which also airs weekdays in Morning Edition and All Things Considered. His work as a podcaster and journalist has appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition, NPR Music, the PBS Newshour, Colorado Public Radio, MTV Online, the Denver Post, Boulder's Daily Camera, and the Longmont Times-Call.

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Ariel Lavery

Ariel Lavery grew up in Louisville, Colorado and has returned to the Front Range after spending over 25 years moving around the country. She co-created the podcast Middle of Everywhere for WKMS, Murray State University’s NPR member station, and won Public Media Journalism awards in every season she produced for Middle of Everywhere. Her most recent series project is "The Burn Scar", published with The Modern West podcast. In it, she chronicles two years of her family’s financial and emotional struggle following the loss of her childhood home in the Marshall Fire.

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