this post was submitted on 30 May 2026
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[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Current datacenters are much more concerning environmentally for their electricity usage. The previous 20 years before the current LLM boom, their electrical usage was more or less flat. In the US, it's now estimated to go from 5% of the US electrical demand to 15% in the next few years and is delaying fossil fuel plant closures


The water usage is concerning in some local situations (often more so from pollution from poor construction) for various data centers, but agriculture and especially animal agriculture really does dominate water usage in water scarce areas and is enormously wasteful with water. For instance, in the American West, it's mostly all going to animal feed where plants for human consumption use significantly less

https://archive.is/GnPy9


This is not to say it's good that it's using this water. Just that we really should actually also be very much concerned about the agricultural impact because it's horribly inefficient. Producing animal products is massively inefficient

[–] stopdropandprole@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

great graphs and summary. ty for sharing