Emory faculty Kristin Phillips (left), associate professor of anthropology, and Jola Ajibade, associate professor of environmental sciences, are co-investigators on a three-year project to study the impact of the rapid growth of data centers.

— Photos courtesy of Philips and Ajibade.

The massive data centers needed to run AI systems are rapidly altering geographical landscapes and communities. That’s especially true in the U.S. South, where many states are dominated by large, investor-owned utilities and land and other natural resources are still relatively available.

“Data centers are proliferating alongside the explosive growth of cloud computing and AI technologies,” says Kristin Phillips, associate professor of anthropology at Emory University. “People are raising concerns about who is reaping the benefits of these facilities and who is bearing the economic and environmental costs.”

Phillips, a sociocultural anthropologist who studies the social context of energy and infrastructure, is digging deeply into these questions and their implications for the U.S. South, funded by a $1 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 

Her co-principal investigators on the grant are Jola Ajibade, Emory associate professor of environmental sciences, and Gabe Schwartzman, assistant professor of geography and sustainability at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Cathy Kunkel, from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, and Nikki Luke, a human geographer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will serve as consultants to the co-investigators.

The three-year project will research the current and potential effects of data centers on electricity costs for individual ratepayers, structural changes to how energy is supplied and consumed, and issues of environmental and social justice. The researchers will conduct case studies for three states: Georgia, Virginia and Tennessee.

They will combine qualitative and quantitative methods, drawing data from interviews, surveys, official documents, cost analyses, focus groups and ethnography to consider the perspectives of utilities, state and local officials, workers, community organizations and residents.

Existing and planned data center sites will be mapped and made available online. These maps will be overlaid with demographic data on the surrounding communities.

The researchers will also develop a comparative analysis of the regulatory and policy landscapes across the three states to identify best practices. The different stakeholders will be actively engaged in all aspects of the work, from project scoping to implementing research plans and disseminating the results.