Data Centers

Boulder City appeals a decision by the Bureau of Land Management which approved a data center without its involvement

Environmental groups in New Mexico say those efforts are not enough

We dig into the amount of energy that large data centers consume, and why Longmont leaders passed the new ordinance.

The City of Denver along with other Colorado and Idaho counties have passed moratoriums on data center development. Cheyenne, Wyoming, opted to speed ahead.

Budget pressures, policy compromises and intraparty tensions shaped this year’s session under Colorado’s Gold Dome.

Sponsors added a tax incentive but it was not enough to get the bill passed.

A compromise bill backed by environmental groups is still being negotiated.

Data centers are pivotal to artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Some Colorado lawmakers say the state needs more data centers – and that they could generate jobs and tax revenue. But data centers also consume huge amounts of energy and water. Do the future benefits outweigh the costs?

The U.S. already has about 3,000 data centers — and that number is expected to grow quickly in the coming years. A new report finds much of that growth is shifting away from cities and into rural areas, including in the Mountain West.

As data centers rapidly expand across the Mountain West, researchers say a key question is getting harder to answer: how much water are they actually using?