US heatwave raises alarms over AI data centre energy demands

Published 3 July 2026 · us

A massive heatwave sweeping across the United States is straining the country’s power grid and water supplies, testing public support for the rapid expansion of

A massive heatwave sweeping across the United States is straining the country’s power grid and water supplies, testing public support for the rapid expansion of AI data centres, which consume vast amounts of electricity and water. The heatwave comes at a time when the US is racing to build thousands of new AI data centres to support the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. Utilities, regulators, and policymakers have increasingly warned that the pace of construction is outstripping the expansion of the country’s electricity and water infrastructure. Across the political spectrum, lawmakers are calling for increased oversight of data centres. Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for a ban on building data centres in rural areas during a campaign stop on Tuesday. The sitting Texas governor has previously said that data centres should generate their own power and reuse water. Meanwhile, on the left, politicians, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, called for a moratorium on the construction of new data centres. Pushing back on data centre construction is a popular position to have. Seven in 10 Americans opposed data centre construction in their local communities, according to a recent Gallup survey, with half of them citing the excessive use of resources, including power and water supply, as a main concern. Data centres account for 4 percent of US power demand. That is expected to increase to 9 percent by 2030, according to the US Department of Energy. The heat dome blanketing much of the US is a test of the nation’s power system that is increasingly being pressured by extreme weather events. “Heatwaves are demonstrating that the current siting and cooling model was designed for average conditions, and average conditions are disappearing with each passing day,” Arif Gasilov, partner leading natural resources & built environment practice at Gasilov Group, told Al Jazeera. Power providers see this. On the US east coast, PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest power grid operator, asked the US Department of Energy to order data centres to switch to backup power generators within 15 minutes of an emergency signal alerting them to do so.

PJM, which operates power grids in 13 states and the nation’s capital, said that would free up power for residential and commercial customers. The power provider requested the change as a so-called heat dome locks in across the Eastern Seaboard, with feel-like temperatures expected to exceed 38.9 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in Washington, DC and 37.7 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) in New York. In Central Park, the temperature is expected to hit a record high not seen in the iconic park in more than a decade. In the US, the majority of the data centres are located in the South and Midwest, and 38 percent of Americans live within five miles (eight kilometres) of one of the 3,000 currently operational data centres, according to data compiled by Pew Research. During normal temperatures, data centres’ cooling systems alone account for as much as 40 percent of electricity usage during normal weather, but that increases as the temperature elevates, an increasingly common occurrence now because of climate change, according to Gasilov. Data centres are already driving up temperatures around the globe by creating what are called heat islands around them. A University of Cambridge study found that temperatures increased by an average of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and by as much as 9.2 degrees Celsius (16.3 degrees Fahrenheit) in the immediate vicinity of a data centre. Experts believe that this heatwave is an example of the pressures on the power grid that will become even tighter and harder to manage in the years to come as the prevalence of water- and power-intensive AI data centres surges. The strain extends well beyond this heat dome. Utilities across the country have warned that electricity demand is growing for the first time in decades after years of relatively flat consumption. Much of that increase is being driven by AI data centres, the electrification of transportation, and new manufacturing facilities, forcing utilities to delay the retirement of ageing power plants while accelerating investment in new generation and transmission lines.